How to Hire a COO Rockstar!

Okay, on today's episode, we're going to talk about starting the process of hiring a COO or hiring that second in command, bringing them into your company. What do you look for? How do you create the scorecard? How do you create the job description? What kind of search firms should you engage in doing it? Really, really understanding what it is you're looking for and where you're going to.

Find these people because they're tough to find.

The good ones are never out looking for a job.

You need to go and poach them.

So we're going to talk about that on today's episode. Starting the process of hiring the COO.

Starting the process it's all about the people. Everything that you will do and no matter what level of success you're trying to achieve, it will depend on the people you have supporting you. Figure out the types of people you want and try your best to get the hiring right. Roman Cowan, COO Alliance Member and COO of College Hunks Hauling junk. You've checked your management team, your structure, whether you have too many core projects and whether there are holes to fill. You may have tried consultants, new function roles or an ea, and you still need a second in command. Then it's time to hire the perfect COO for you and the business. There are a number of ways to do that, including word of mouth, posting a job listing, contracting a recruiter. Before you can start any of them, however, you need to sit down and figure out exactly the type of person who will fill the need that you have identified and then how to find that person. Your activity inventory has helped identify your unique abilities and where you are lacking. Now continue a similar exercise to determine the type of person who would be your Yin to your yang. Simply put, their unique abilities and weaknesses are likely the opposite of yours and they share your core values for the organization. Consider the domains they'd oversee and the personality traits that would complement yours. The CEO and COO tend to have strengths in different areas that creates a well rounded package, but unless the fit is perfect, those differences can also lead to tension. That's why I go back to repeating what a CEO has to truly know themselves to hire the right partner. The deeper your understanding of your skills, weaknesses and unique abilities, as well as the areas that you want to delegate, the better your chances of finding the person who likes doing what you don't and is great in the areas where you suck. Defining such a person might sound daunting, but it doesn't have to be a long, drawn out process. Your activity inventory, UAs and core needs provide the parameters. A couple of focused hours spent using them as a framework should give you a good idea of what you're looking for. That's the information you'll use to write a job description that is extremely specific, including the behavioral traits that you require in a second in command, which will depend on the areas of the business reporting to this person, as well as the core responsibilities and metrics for which they'll be accountable. Specify what you want them to oversee equally, make it clear on what you'll be keeping under your purview and don't want them to touch. This is where understanding yourself is key to preventing you from falling into stereotypes, assumptions and lazy thinkings There's a popular belief that CEOs should be gregarious cult like figures. Steve Jobs is one of the best known examples. But you don't have to be like that.

Nearly any type of personality can make.

A successful CEO, and it's fine you don't have to play a role. If culture is where you lag, then accept that fact and delegate culture to a coo. It's not a sign of weakness. It doesn't matter who does it, just as long as it gets done. If you're a strong engineer who invented the product and what you really want.

To stay involved in is the technical.

Side, then your unique ability might not be cheerleading. In that case, specify that you need someone who can be an outward facing culture person by leaving the technical aspects of the product well alone. There's almost no part of the business you can't assign to a coo. Legal, Finance Engineering Culture the division of labor is entirely driven by unique abilities and personality, although the CEO obviously still needs to attend board meetings and planning meetings that require top level input. In theory too, a CEO can keep as much for themselves as they want, as long as they have the bandwidth and enjoy doing the work. After all, it's their business. That's especially true for entrepreneurs. They just need to make sure they're thinking strategically about the best use of their time and energy Two in a Box at the Bottom, not the Top it's easy to approach hiring a second command as hiring leader. That's not how I see it. A COO is a supporter as much as a leader, which is exactly how I see the role of the CEO. When you've got your two in a box, a yin and yang combination of the CEO and coo, that box belongs at the bottom of the org chart, not at the top. The CEO and the COO have a joint mission to support the people on the front lines and their customers. They're the two most senior people in the business, but that doesn't mean they should be at the top telling everyone what to do. Instead, they should be serving the organization by removing obstacles, providing support, and aligning and inspiring people. I visualize org charts upside down with the CEO and the COO at the bottom, supporting the other C level and VP roles above them, who are supporting and growing the managers above them, and so on. It's true that our grandfathers wouldn't recognize that definition of a CEO or coo, but it's also true that their old school hierarchical business model doesn't work anymore. Most people know that intuitively. Leaning into the to help get clarity about the ideal person you're looking for, try leaning out into the future. Imagine your business three years from now. What's your vivid vision of what the company will look like, act like, and feel like? How will the org chart change to get you there? That clarity allows you to answer the question what do I need in a second in command? As the Cheshire Cat says in Alice in Wonderland, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. Leaning out into the future helps you find the right road. It allows you to figure out where.

You'Re going so you can reverse engineer.

That future and figure out the people who will help make it come true. Maybe the future holds growth through acquisitions or a move into multiple new markets. Strategizing those steps will highlight gaps both in the structure and systems of the business and in your personal skill set. When Brian leaned out into the future, thinking of building one got junk. We realized he needed to launch franchise sales and coaching programs, build a marketing calendar, budget and campaigns, create a leadership training program for his people, and do recruiting and interviewing.

He also realized he didn't know how to make those initiatives happen, and that.

It would have been much more effective to find someone who had the skills he needed rather than trying to learn them himself. That's why he brought me in. Your plan for the future doesn't have to be perfect, so don't get stuck on details. You simply need a clear direction for the company, an understanding of what it will look like so you can envision a future where a new second in command would sit and you don't have to shape the future alone. Sit down with your leadership team, ask questions, and come up with a working plan. You don't have to know everything. Whenever I used to ask my mom how to spell a word her response was D I C T I O n a r Y. She was smart. Traditional schooling does us all a disservice by teaching us that we should aspire to be the person who has all the answers. It's a ridiculous goal. As my mom understood, you don't need to know stuff, you just need to know where you can find the answers. Kids increasingly realize they don't have to know all the answers, but only have to know how to find the answers quickly. That's why so many of them are turning their backs on college. They realize there's no need to spend huge amounts of time and money learning information they can find out easily for free. It's the same in business More than ever, Effective business leaders recognize or my friends Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy outlined in their book who not how you solve problems by finding the right people, not by endlessly having to learn how to do everything. Dan and Ben explained that business leaders no longer have to know how to tackle every situation, rather they have to know how to find other people to do it for them. It's a powerful and common sense approach, but it also requires overcoming many of the ideas we are brought up with. It's not as if I see a lot of teachers running large companies. The school system teaches us that if we're bad at something, we should get a tutor, we should work at it and get good at it. The reality is that if you're really bad at something and you work at it, you're still likely only ever going to become average. If you're really bad at something, you don't have to work at it. Instead, you can get a COO who's great at it. At a stroke, you've leveraged your combined abilities to address the company's needs in a different way. It should be a relief for a CEO to realize they don't have to invest in getting better at skills. They can just find the right person instead of continuing to struggle. Even if the tasks are those that fall under the traditional auspices of the CEO, no CEO should feel they need to master areas of their business that don't play to their unique abilities. Your exact list of what you need a COO to do will be hugely unique, but you'd be a fool if it didn't start with all the things that you suck at or hate. That's the whole point of the exercise. If you're great at strategy, the COO had better be great at execution. If you're natural at execution, then CEO needs to be a great deal of Strategic thinking to balance that out. Just because you're the CEO doesn't mean you have to be great at stuff other CEOs are great at. You might absolutely suck at strategy, which means you can hire a second in command who can fill that gap. Strategy is a skill and a way of thinking and asking questions. It involves connecting, networking and masterminding. And not all CEOs are good at those elements or enjoy doing them. Some CEOs are amazing engineers focused in technology who have weaknesses in strategy, vision, culture and people. No problem. Just hire a COO who excels in those areas. Just because you're the boss doesn't you need to do everything the business needs? It's far better to find the right person to follow through. Traditionally, CEOs have been the visionaries, but you can turn that dynamic on its head if doing so will play to your strengths. Traditionally, men worked outside the home and women stayed home with kids.

But now many families find it's better to have a stay at home dad.

And a breadwinner mom. There are no rules. Core values and Behavioral traits the CEO sets the core values for the company and needs a CEO who supports them. They might be the result of conscious decisions and even consultation throughout the business, or they might be embodied by the CEO's own personal conduct. To hire the right second in command, however, a CEO needs to figure out what the core values are and how to identify them in a potential hire. It's far easier to recruit somebody who already lives the same core values than to take someone on who doesn't and persuade them to fall in line. The key is to figure out what are core values and what are values that are simply nice to have. The difference is that core values are make or break. Not only do you live by them under all circumstances, but you're willing to fire people who break them. That's the key. Other cultural qualities might be a bonus or an aspiration, but they're not core values. That's a distinction most CEOs agree with. I use the example of growing up in the Roman Catholic Church. When my dad told me people confessed to the priest all the bad things they'd done, I I assumed the priests spanked them. When dad said that they just had to say some prayers to make everything okay, I concluded they clearly weren't breaking the church's core values. In my family, if we broke core values, we got a spanking. As well as spelling out the values you need in a second in command, you should specify the necessary behavioral traits they will need to mesh with yours and the company as a whole. If you're focused and shy, are you looking for a more gregarious leader? Do you need someone more detail oriented or someone focused on the bigger picture? As we'll see later, these needs sometimes change over time, which is why I'm no longer coo at 1-800-got junk like a marriage the closest equivalent in ordinary life to finding a COO in a business is finding a spouse. Once you're crystal clear on what you're looking for and can describe it, you will pass over anyone who doesn't fit the bill because a bad marriage is not worth it. When you drop your job description of the right coo, you're not creating a list of nice to haves. You're listing the essentials that are 100% required. A candidate without all of them need not bother apply. You're looking for trust, core values, behavioral traits, skill set, strengths and desires that complement yours. All in a package that comes with a personal chemistry that might grow into a deep friendship. Bear in mind another parallel with marriage. When you finally end up with the right person, you're not going to be able to change their personality. Focus on exactly what makes the right match to get the perfect fit right off. If this process sounds high stakes, it is. It can feel like a hellish ordeal to go through. Remember, though, that you don't have to go through it alone. You have a whole leadership team to help you. You don't even have to be the person who conducts the interviews. You can use an executive search firm, your board of advisors, members of your leadership team, as long as you're clear on who you're looking for. Not just a Cameron I'm constantly asked to be COO for companies and I just laugh. For one thing, most people can't afford me yet.

They really need to find a way to hire a truly competent COO.

For another 90% of the CEOs who ask me to be their COO, I'd be a horrible fit. I can see that because I can understand myself and where I add value. To successfully hire a second in command, a CEO needs to be able to see that too. People who simply assume that they can plug me or someone like me into their business to solve their problems don't understand the nature of a strong working partnership. Sometimes I don't have the skills to work in their business or don't like doing the tasks they need. Sometimes I don't have the required behavioral traits. Sometimes there's no trust factor. I can see those mismatches where my Yin doesn't fit someone else's yang, but the CEOs who approach me can't. That's because they aren't thinking about the situation in the right way. They're simply trying to plug an execution hole with anyone. And they've heard my name. They've not considered what shape the hole is and who can best fill it. Written and narrated by Cameron Herold Text Copyright 2022 by Cameron Herald Production. Copyright 2023 by Cameron Herold. All rights reserved. Thank you for listening.