Cameron Herold shares how COOs can improve problem-solving by delegating more and training staff instead of solving everything themselves. He uses the example of teaching his child to fry an egg to show why letting people struggle through tasks builds their confidence and skills.
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So your CEO's job is not to answer all their questions. When they come to him with a question, his response is, well, what do you think we should do? They go, I don't know. Well, go away and think about it and come back and tell me. So they come back and they go, I think we should do this. Great, go do it. Or if they go, well, I think we should do this, what do you think you'll. Well, what do you think? I don't know. Well, then go think about it. Like, is it within your responsibilities? Is it within our core values? Is it within your budget? Are you living to with, you know, live by the decision, then go do it. Every time you're at a small size company like 30, 40 employees, every manager's solution to every problem is hire more people. That's often not the solution to the problem. The solution isn't how to hire more people to handle all those people coming to you. The solution is, hey, stop coming to me. How can you start figuring this stuff out for your yourself? Like, when my 15 year old came to me one day and said, hey, dad, can you fry me an egg? I said, yeah. I went into the kitchen, I said, grab two eggs. He goes, no, I only want one. I go, I know, I'm going to fry you an egg. You're going to fry me an egg. And then I said, here's how you, like put oil in the pan, slosh it around, turn the heat on. Here's how you crack an egg. You crack an egg. And then I showed him how to fry an egg. The next day, when I walk into my kitchen, my kid's making an omelet. I'm like, where'd you learn how to do that? He goes, I knew you weren't going to do it. So I went on YouTube. My job was to grow my kids. So your CEO's job is not to answer all their questions. When they come to him with a question, his response is, well, what do you think we should do? They go, I don't know. Well, go away and think about it and come back and tell me. They come back and they go, I think we should do this. Great, go do it. Or if they go, well, I think we should do this, what do you think? You go, well, what do you think? I don't know. Well, then go think about it. Like, is it within your responsibilities? Is it within our core values? Is it within your budget? Are you living to with, you know, live by the decision, then go do it. But we often get bombarded with these requests because we're trying to help people, but we're not helping them at all. Our job to help them is to grow their skills and confidence so they can do all this stuff without us. This was the number one thing we learned at college Pro Painters. I was in the top 30 people of that 9,000 person company. I visualized all of our employees climbing up two 40 foot ladders. Their left hand and left foot climbing up the skills ladder. Their right hand and right foot climbing up the confidence ladder. So confident skills, confident skills. We need to work with him on delegating everything and growing people's skills and confidence. Every discussion you have with him has to be, what are you working on? Why are you doing it? Who can you delegate it to? He'll be like, well, they can't do it. I don't care. Delegate it to them and train them. Show them what you do. Stand beside them, show them everything that you do. Because you're not the best in the world at doing all of these things. So the to do list of all of our executives, it needs to be done, but not by them. So stay ahead of the curve as a coo. This next video is packed with great leadership lessons for you. They'll really help you as you continue in your growth.
