The Critical Role of the COO in Driving Growth

Welcome to another episode of my Wake Up Call. This is the podcast where I get to know people a little bit and I say getting to know them for the podcast. And it's rare that I have someone on a second time. We're up to about 450 episodes and I can count on one hand when I have someone back a second time because they're lifelong learners. When I find out what they're up to since we last spoke, it blows me away. And that's why I'm excited to have Cameron Herald back. Let me tell you a little bit about him. The mastermind behind hundreds of companies, exponential growth, and he's earned his reputation as a business growth guru. He's built a dynamic consultancy with clients that include a monarchy and a big four wireless company. He's the author of five books and his sixth book is the Second in Command, unleash the power of your coo, which is about entrepreneurs and how they can unleash the power of their second in command. I'm so excited about this because, you know, COOs often feel like the step kids, like, what the heck am I doing here? And, and, and they don't stand up for themselves enough. You know, they often feel like between a rock and a hard place and they add so much value, but they're often between, you know, the CEO who doesn't want to deal with things and says take care of it and you're more than a step and fetch it. And so we're going to find out all about that. He's also a top rated international speaker. He's spoken on all seven continents, including Antarctica. And he's the founder of the COO alliance, the world's leading network for Seconds in Command. He also is the host of the second in Command, the chief behind the Chief podcast, where he interviews CEOs and other seconds to share their insights with their listeners. So, Cameron, good to have you back.

Hey, Mark, thank you very much for having me. And I also really appreciated the time you gave me before the show. I know that if your listeners know, but you, you kind of mentioned you're moving into this space as the world's greatest healthy conflict coach. And just I'll tell you, in the 15 minutes that you spent with me has been extraordinarily impactful in my life and my relationship with my son. I really, really appreciate the nuggets you've already given me. So I really appreciate that.

Well, it's my pleasure and we'll do more offline, but with that in mind. Using the word Conflicts and how that applies to the job of coo wax and wane on some of the most common conflicts that stymie them and they're overcoming them.

Yeah. So it's interesting my, my experience and where I kind of decided to write the book called the Second in Command was I was the COO for a company called 1-800-GOT Junk. So Brian, who was the founder and CEO of 1,800-GOT Junk, he had a bit of an unfair advantage hiring me as his coo. He was my best friend. He'd been my best man at my wedding three months before I joined him. And we were in EO forum together for four and a half years where he saw me grow two other companies before I started to work for him. So it's almost like he had a four and a half year interview to know my skill set. And our trust was so strong and our friendship and relationship was so strong that day one, we kind of just joined hands and off we ran. And I think that gave us the unfair advantage because we were able to have good, healthy conflict. We'd already cried in front of each other before I started working for him. We'd already been open and vulnerable. We'd already given each other shit for stuff, personal and business, prior to me even working with him. So we already had a good strong foundation of trust as friends and trust as business associates that we were able to bring that into the workforce. And I've talked about it in the book the Second In Command, how to develop that. But I just wanted to kind of underscore that as, you know, maybe some of my foundational learnings so years ago, and I know you've done a lot of work with EO and with ypo. Brian and I, when I started to work for him as his coo, had some very early conflict that even though we had that four and a half year base, we didn't really know how to work through it. So we got a coach and we turned to a woman named Joan Mara. And Joan is a big forum trainer for EO globally. And her husband John Mara was the EO global chair 25ish years ago, Joan came in and started to coach us on conflict and coach us on how to actually work through some of those issues. And they were very foundational for us in moving forward. One of them was just getting out of the office together and spending time with each other, you know, another was just making sure that we stayed connected as friends. And another was to stay out of each other's swim lanes right to Decide who had what roles and responsibilities, where the communication channels lay, and how to make sure that that was clear not only to us, but to everyone in the organization, and how to respect that. We were also taught how to shine a light on each other. Where my job was to make Brian look good and make him iconic, and his job internally was to make me look good internally because I was often the person who was taking all the tough decisions and rolling them out or having to figure out all of the crazy ideas. And it was hard for me to do that internally. So we really shined the spotlight on each other. So I think a lot of our lessons and growth came from spending the time together and really respecting that. We would argue an issue, but it was never about the person. The issues were about how do we build a better company? How do we build a globally admired brand? How do we go from 2 million to 100 million in five years? How do we build this globally admired culture? We were the number two company in all of Canada to work for. It was always debating the issues and debating ideas, but with a huge underlying trust and respect for the other person, which also we continue to build through our date nights and spending time together socially and all the activities that we did together as friends.

I'm going to put on my COO hat and I'm not a coo, but I can channel, I can channel various roles. So if I'm a COO and I'm brought in and I haven't known the CEO or the founder for years, so we don't have a personal relationship, we haven't observed each other in action, we haven't observed each other to see the value that the other person brings. One of the things that I'll do in coaching is and I was thinking of renaming my coaching into TCR coaching, which means to coach you to be someone that engenders not just trust and confidence, but respect. And a lot of COOs, they say, well, I have the trust and confidence of my CEO. I mean, I'm staying in my job and you know, I get raises, but would you like to be respected? And some of them are kind of like, yeah, I, I'd like to, but I don't know how to do that. I fulfill a role and yeah, I would like to feel respected because I'd feel more fulfilled as opposed to a well paid and appreciated function.

There's a lot of areas I could go with that. I think the first one that just keeps popping to mind is just continuing to live and exhibit the core values of the organization and to also, in a way, flip the org chart upside down. So my job isn't to do stuff. My job is to grow people so that they can do stuff. Right? To be there as a servant leader where if I grow their skills and I grow their confidence and I delegate more and I grow their skills and grow their confidence and delegate more, I think that's where some of the respect will come from. But if I'm trying to be the one who's doing it all, I'm trying to be the one who's showing people that I'm doing it all and I'm doing it at all costs, that's not ever going to garner respect for me. It is just that kind of exhibiting and living the core values. And then also, I think it's also, you know, how do you show up vulnerable like we can do in a forum, like experience in YPO or EO or even a vistage group where we can share and throw it all on the table. But how can we be vulnerable in front of our team without that destroying the respect that you also need from the team? Right. There's a healthy balance. You can't walk into your team and go, I'm scared and I'm afraid and I'm worried we're going to go out of business. That doesn't really bode well. Like there's. There's kind of a time and a place for vulnerability or there's vulnerability to a level. But that's where my head first went with that kind of comment, I guess.

How unusual are you in the world of coos?

I'm pretty unusual. That's an interesting question. There's. There was a Harvard article wrote 15 years ago by the guys who wrote the book Riding Shotgun. The article was called the Misunderstood Role of the coo and they identified seven distinct types of chief operating officers. When I came in at 1-800-got junk, I kind of came in as the MVP and partner change agent. There was a lot of their seven kind of definitions that I started to play. Where I'm unusual is I'm a very strong entrepreneurial DNA. My Colby profile is a 4393, which is a high quick start. My disc profile, I'm a high D and a second high. I. I have a 98D, which is like I'm running a thousand miles an hour and I can only see 90ft in front of me. But I. Because I learned entrepreneurship at a young age, I was groomed to be an entrepreneur. And then I was also in a franchising system where I learned systems systems system systems. I think that allowed me to become that entrepreneurial coo. I would be a horrible COO in a large organization. I'd be a horrible COO in kind of a thousand person plus company. My zone of genius for COO is really the 20 people to 250 or 20 people to 500 employee range. But when you get into the multi matrix decision making and the real company politics and lots of maybe the international or high tech, I would probably start to fall. I'm very strong on the operations, execution culture, building out teams, a lot of the things on people that would be very strong. But yeah, I'm a very different DNA from most entrepreneurs or sorry for most CEOs most of this and we talk about this even in the book the Second in Command. We did profiles of all of our COO alliance members and we also profiled all of their CEOs. And most of the CEOs are very high fact finders and follow throughs. They like to ask a lot of questions before they start working on projects or they like to put a playbook or a system in place before they start the project. Most entrepreneurs start the project and we figure it out as we're going.

And one of my mentors was Warren Bennis. I miss him because he was a great leader and beloved by people who were fortunate enough to be one of his mentors. Howard Schultz, David Gergen, other people like that. And I remember one of our discussions, we made a distinction between leaders and managers. And maybe it's the same distinction between CEOs and CEOs. The distinction was leaders go where they're looking, managers look where they're going.

I think there's something to be very true about that. I think all leaders today, at the speed of growth that we're growing, if you're growing a slow organization, managers don't have to look where they're going. They just have to just have to kind of execute. But I think today if you're going to have a rapidly growing company, you need a leadership team that can also be strategic, that can also look into the future, that can also look for and see things coming. Because if you rely on just the CEO to be the only forward looking person I think you can be, you can be dead real fast. We doubled the size of one, 800 got junk six years in a row. So when you're doubling the size of the organization, if there's only one person in charge of vision, you're probably in trouble. But one person needs to decide what the vision is. Other people can help figure out strategy, other people can help then put the plans and the teams in place. But yes, I think that the CEO definitely needs to be more on figuring out how are we going to get there. And the CEO needs to figure out where there is.

To your CEO audience, if I was listening to you and I'm part of the alliance, I'm thinking this will work for you because you've got courage, you've got chutzpah, you have a different DNA than us. Can you help me if I'm a CEO without your chutzpah and DNA, bridge the gap? Because I'd like to grow into and being someone who my CEO really regards as second in command with all the trust, confidence and respect of being that. So help me fill the gap between me and you. If I'm just a regular coo.

Sure. So one of the things I try to get them to understand is I'm not there as their peer. Right. I happen to have been a CEO at one point. But the whole purpose of the CEO alliance is to give our members a forum to work with each other and help grow each other. So they're very much there to issue, clear and problem solve with each other and to experience, share with each other. I'm kind of there as a facilitator to pull that community together and let them contribute. That's one part. The second part that I try to show them is that the COO needs to be kind of the one who tells the king that they're naked like the emperor's new suit. We need to be the one who goes in and says privately. So I try to teach them how to talk to the entrepreneurial CEOs, how to talk to them in a way that we go, hey, I love your idea. Let me ask you a few questions about your idea. So I understand it more as a way to not have to start every idea that they hand to us right away as a way to take the ideas out of their mind. Because the CEO's hard drive, their brain is often full and they need to get rid of their ideas, but they don't want to necessarily start them all, even though that's kind of what they say to us. So I teach them how to take the ideas and how to understand the ideas and then how to put them in a parking lot and revisit them every quarter. I also try to teach them that you don't need to have that much, but you don't need to have the cult of leadership style. You can definitely be the more level five leader that Jim Collins talks about where you're humble and you're, you're focused and it's that drive and it's the caring about people and trying to grow people. You don't need to have energy. I would say that probably 30% of the CEOs in the CEO alliance though do have that kind of energy and enthusiasm because they are more outward facing of a coo. They might have sales and marketing and business development and partnerships reporting to them and in some cases the CEO do not have those areas. You know, you think about a Harley Finkelstein from Shopify, he makes me look boring, the coo, but he's outward facing. Biz dev, sales, marketing, pr, pushing the whole Shopify brand forward. Tobias Luque is the engineering, very inward facing, very focused, very kind of analytical. So that's what's so misunderstood about the CEO role is there isn't really that one DNA to put us into a group. The one commonality we have though is we are second to the CEO and we need to build that real yin and yang partnership with the CEO so that we can be great at the stuff that they suck at and we can stay out of their way in the areas that they're really great at. That's the hard, challenging part.

So unpack the yin and yang and facilitating it coming into existence so that it's not zero sum, push, pull. Give us how you interact with the CEO so that you develop that yin and yang.

So it's, it's really sitting. And I talk about this in the second command. If a CEO is hiring a CEO, how do you know what to hire for? So the first way is to sit down and think about your business and all of the areas that report to you. And which areas do you love reporting to you? Which areas drain you of energy? Which areas do you have a lot of competency and confidence in overseeing? Which areas do you maybe feel a little bit insecure or nervous or faking until you make it kind of. Which areas are you kind of. There's no way I would ever let anyone else run them, right? Those are like, they have to stay reporting to you. So that's the starting point. And then when you understand that basket of areas that drain you and you're not great at and you don't really want to run to you anyway, that can start to define what the person looks like who's going to come in and run those areas. The second is the behavioral traits that you need. You're not looking for someone just like you. You know, you're looking for someone who is loves those areas and has the behavioral traits to manage those areas on that side of the business that will really complement you. So that kind of is the real kind of core starting point. And then I guess it's the CEO also realizing that they don't have to be good at all things. They have to try to free up more and more of their time so they can be great at those few things. That starting point that I think is critical for the CEO, it's similar. The CEO has to look and say, are these this basket of things that I get to oversee or I get to lead? Are they the ones that are going to make me happiest? Are they the ones that I'm really, really good at? And are there any areas over here that the CEO has that I'm going to want to keep poking my nose into their space? As long as the answer is clear, then you've got a good starting point. I think, for that Yin and yang. The second part is clarifying the communication channels internally, because there's going to be people internally that are used to going to the CEO for everything, where now they maybe have to go through the coo, or maybe they feel like, wow, I used to get to report to the CEO and now I have to report to the coo. Maybe that doesn't feel as good. Or maybe they're also the person who is really hoping to get that COO role, and they didn't get it because they didn't have the skill set or the traits or the trust of the CEO, and now they feel like kind of being relegated to report in. So that's something to be very cognizant of as well.

You toggle between smart and wise. I'm listening to your communication and how you communicate and what you communicate. And just like the CEO and CEO don't integrate that often, but smartness and wisdom don't necessarily integrate. And I just wanted to give you that observation.

Thank you.

Something that I coach people on, whether they have a book or whether they have a speech, is to me what engages audiences. And so I'm going to ask you three questions and how you would answer it from your book or your experience. But the three questions that engage people is. The first one is people listen for something that is counterintuitive where they go, I never would have thought of that ever. The second thing is something that's intuitively correct, that could actually work. I mean, that could solve our problems. And the third is something that feels imminently doable. I think we could do that. I think we can get that done. As a side note, I worked in the O.J. simpson trial with the prosecution, and I don't bring it up that much because they lost. But what got me in were those three things. I shared with them an observation when they were picking juries, and they came back to me and said, we never would have thought of that, ever. And as soon as you pointed it out, it was like the elephant in the room. And the second is that's going to be really important in our selecting a jury. The third thing is we don't know if it's doable. But do you want to join and come into the courtroom whenever you can and just fax us these little things that you see that we don't see? It might be an interesting gig for you, but it was. But I think those three things, I try to make sure I come up with those when I'm doing a presentation or if I'm writing a book, someone else shared with me something. So this may be for future books for both of us. But someone very wise said to me, you need to write your back cover first. The first thing you write is your back cover, because that's the promise that you deliver. And then you must re engineer the back cover. Something I have not. Because for me, I'm so into the book and they say, so what do you want to say in the back cover? And it was a missed opportunity. And I thought it was really helpful. So if I do.

Insightful. Yeah.

So I'm just sharing that with you because even though some of my.

Thank you.

Well, I blew it. Yes.

Yeah. I want to speak to those three things. Can I. Can I speak to those three things? Please do. The first one was something that you wouldn't have necessarily thought about. Is that right?

Right.

When I see. When I hear problems that companies are having or when I'm speaking to groups and I've been. I've been paid to speak now in 27 countries on all seven continents. When I'm trying to work with a group or, you know, assist COOs or CEOs, et cetera, I kind of. I think it was because I was the dumb kid in school and I had to find the shortcuts. I was never going to be the smartest kid. I got very 63, 65% on all my tests and exams. I was a 2.3 GPA. Some of it was because I was busy, some was my add, some of school just didn't work for me, but I had to find the shortcuts to get things done. So I often see companies working hard and I see them like a fly banging their head on the window. They're going to keep working hard until they get out the window. And they don't get out the window, they all end up dead on the windowsill. And I end up seeing the door just to the right, that if they turn and go out the door, if they take the shortcut, they'd get outside. And I don't know why I see things that way, but I often just see things that way in business. So I'm often trying to, if I'm giving advice or suggestions, I'm trying to give them the shortcut where they often go, oh, I didn't see it that way. It's not out of ego, it's just, I just see it differently is one thing. And I think I've always approached business that way. Which is one of the interesting things about all the companies that I've coached is I don't know anything about their industry. I coached the CEO of Sprint as an example, Marcelo Claret, and when he was doing the turnaround of Sprint and trying to get it ready to sell to T Mobile. And I coached his COO, Jamie Jones, for 18 months. I know nothing about cell phone business. I know nothing about telecommunications. I know nothing about growing a company that's that big one. Marcelo said they had to cut OPEX by $4 billion. I was like, what, what am I doing here? Like, how am I even helping you? Well, it was because I saw their company from an entrepreneurial viewpoint that they could take some of these ideas and do things in an entrepreneurial way. And that was helpful. The second one was, it was something about I wrote down being obvious.

The first thing is sharing something from the book or your experience where people would say, I never would have thought of that. So to summarize, what you were saying is the shortcut, the shortcut. One of my mentors, Warren Be, he gave me this quote that he borrowed from Saul Bello, a playwright. And the quote was, which applies to you is be a first class noticer. Noticing is different than looking, watching and seeing. When you look, watch and see, you're an observer, you're passive. So you're a first class noticer. Geez, I notice the flies are all hitting the window and there's a door next to it and why aren't they using or. And it's just so obvious. But they don't know how to do that. That's what I hear.

Do you know why?

Yes, please.

Do you know why I'm a first class noticer? I'm a first class noticer because I have 17 of the 18 signs of attention deficit disorder. So I notice everything. I'm so distracted because I notice everything. And in the medical community and school system told me I was a problem because they wanted me to focus. I'm like, I can't focus. There's so much to see. There's so much that I'm seeing. So I think that is a strength for me. It's a superpower, is I am a noticer of things and I can focus for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. But then I get so overwhelmed with all the stuff that I'm seeing that I need to delegate it and show it to other people.

There's a book, I don't remember the title, but you need to read it. And the essence of it is, are you a farmer or are you a hunter? And it talks about ADD and it basically says ADD people are hunters, so they always have their eye on environment, the dangers, and then they go after it. It's a wonderful book. I think it's called In a Different Voice or a Different Mind. And then they talk about faul farmers who can plant things and then they can wait for them to grow and then they harvest them. And the book came out as a way to build the self esteem of people who have add because a lot of people who have ADD have not managed to turn it into your life. And they beat up.

Correct? Because, well, and. And the system beat up on us, right? When. When you're told for 18 years by your teachers and professors that there's something wrong with you. I don't even need to beat up on myself. They were doing it for me for 18 years. Like, that's a hard thing to go through. I heard a quote the other day about cavemen and they said the cavemen that survived were the ones that had ADD because they saw the tiger coming out from behind them and they were able to defend themselves. The people that were so focused on building the fire all died. I'm like, that's amazing. Maybe ADD is a superpower after all.

Well, I'll share something with you because this is a conversation. One of my specialties when I was practicing as a psychiatrist is focused on suicide prevention. And none of my patients died by suicide. And I didn't know what the method is. I do know now. I actually gave it a name. Surgical Empathy, surgical empathy is when people are highly suicidal. They form psychological adhesions to death to take the pain away. It's an adhesion. Yeah. Worst comes to worse, I'll kill myself. And so surgical empathy is going into that adhesion and severing it by causing them to feel felt by you versus understood. But to your point, what would happen is researchers in depression and suicide would me their kids, and I'd say, do you have any desire to figure out what I do so we could scale it? And they say, well, if it's not evidence based and you don't have a control group, we can't look at it. I said, wait, you're doing research in this and why don't you just send your kids your clinic, ucla? And they said, we don't have your track record and I'm worried about my kid.

Unbelievable.

And I'd say, send me your kid, but do you follow me? And what's interesting is I got a pass from them. In fact, I was just honored by the LA County Medical association along with Steve Kerr and Pfizer for shedding a light on mental health issues. And it's because I was able to see things that they didn't see and connect people, especially parents, to their kids. And what happens is I get a pass. So if I was talking about something else, the medical society would not honor me. They'd marginalize me. But they say, well, none of his patients died, so he gets a pass, but we don't want to know what he does.

Yeah, it's crazy. That was like, when I, when I first started coaching people. What gives you the accreditation to be a coach? This was back in, you know, I guess in the early 90s, International Federation of Coaches was starting and Coach you was starting. It's like, well, it was 1993 and I'd already coached 120 entrepreneurs, and coaching wasn't even a thing in 1993. I'm like, I guess what gives me the accreditation is I've been doing it. Like, Elon's brother was an employee of mine. I coached him. Like, maybe I don't need a degree after all. I don't know. I want to touch on those three things because you talked about, one, something they wouldn't have seen. Second was something that's obvious to them. And the third is something that's doable. Is that right?

The first is they never would have seen. The second is that could solve our problems in a unique way that we hadn't considered. So when I'm trying to teach People about surgical empathy, and they say, oh, yeah, my kid, my suicidal kid, if you're unfortunate, is really dark because they just want the pain to go away. But they're scaring the hell out the of me. Oh, they're attached to that because they want relief, whereas what they're doing is scaring our whole family. So do you follow me? So, well, maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe give them something that they can attach to which is more emotionally connecting than it is. A logical solution. Oh, that makes sense. So what I would say to you is it sounds like it's hidden in plain sight. What doors that are just there waiting to be opened are you missing out on? In what ways are you doing the same things and expecting different results? The definition of insanity. And then the second thing would be something that as soon as they hear it, they say, I never would have thought of that. And that would work. That would solve this problem. Give us a taste of that.

Yeah. So I guess the second one is I see all of these entrepreneurs joining organizations like EO and YPO and vistage and Genius Network, and they're all members of these amazing organizations to grow themselves as CEOs. But the person building your business for you, or certainly with you, is your coo. Why don't we invest in their growth? Why don't you give them a network, Give them a safe space, give them a place to talk about your crazy about their. Crazy about their team. So that's why I started the CEO alliance. And it's become like, oh, I get it, that's been obvious. And the other one is to grow the skill set of all these people. You know, I was coaching a CEO, had 700 employees. I taught him one of the systems that's in my invest in your leaders course. And he said, oh, gosh, that's going to change the whole company. I'm like, no, it's going to change you. What will change the whole company is teaching all 700 people that system that I just taught you. That's what's going to get you the scale. And I think we miss the opportunity to really focus on. We don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You know, that's a very 1970s, 1980s idea that we have to be the smartest person in the room. We have to create and grow lots of smart people. We have to attract and retain lots of smart people. We have to get all the smart people we've got collaborating and working together and problem solving together. So it's, how do we grow them, how do we grow their confidence? How do we grow their skills? And I don't think that leaders often talk about that enough either. And it isn't even that hard to do if you focus on the core areas. I kind of identified 12 core areas that if we would grow the manager's skills in, they could scale the company and then it's just giving them very easy to implement systems to do that. Which is what we had to do to grow College pro painters and 1 800, God junk was create these very simple systems that the worst franchisee and the worst market and the worst weather could actually execute on so we could get the very predictable results.

Can I share a suggestion to you? Is that okay we're having this conversation? I'm a great believer in changing mindset. One of the things we talked about is when I talk about healthy conflict, since conflict happens so often, if you look forward to it not because you like it, but you know it's going to make you grow because things are going to get revealed and as long as you just don't get agitated and make it worse, you're going to have a great opportunity to grow. That non conflict doesn't present. There's an exercise that I will do when I want CEOs to be able to viscerally connect to manager. And you're welcome to do this. You can even do it now. And the exercise is if you take your index finger and you hold it in front of you and you can do that and focus on your index finger, everything behind it is double. And if you focus on what's behind it, your index finger is double. Can you see that?

Whoa.

See that?

Wow, that's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is a mindset thing. You could say you're the CEO and you need to keep your eye on that distant vision. And every time you keep that eye on that distant vision, what your people are doing is double vision. And in fact, if you hold you're going to try to pull you into what they're doing into their index finger. You're going to miss the vision.

But it's amazing.

It's a way to viscerally teach them. You could say if you're a manager and you're focused on the index finger, you can see that your vision is going to be double. What we really need is. So how do we solve that? There are different points of view. Maybe that's why we need the coo.

You know, it's funny, I started this Second in Command podcast and at the same time really As I was starting the COO alliance and the reason for starting the podcast was twofold. I remembered calling my dad, my mom passed away 20 years ago. And I remember calling my dad about six years ago, and I asked him a question about when he and my mom were raising us as kids, and they were together their whole lives until I was 35, when my mom passed away, are still married. I asked him a question that I thought any parent would have remembered. And my dad's like, I don't know. That was kind of your mom's area. And like, how do you not know you were raising us as kids? But they did. They had her area, his area, and they kind of partnered as a way to. To kind of scale us. And then I, I thought about, in the business world, the CEO has their perspective of how a company is getting built, and the CEO has a very different perspective. And it's kind of somewhere in between are the combination of those things that has to happen.

Don't you think Something that helps CEOs to truly appreciate CEOs is when something happens to the hubris of the CEO, like a big failure. That wasn't the vision. It was something with the execution and that they were humbled. It's a little bit why a second marriage may have a better chance than a first marriage.

Yeah, I think something happens with that. With that. When they fail the learning, the adult controls the learning environment. Until somebody fails, they're often not ready to learn. Right. It creates a gap that they're now ready to learn. But I think the other thing that happens in that CEO COO around growth for the CEO is when the COO pulls them aside privately and maybe shows them something that's going wrong without embarrassing them. You can't tell the CEO in front of the board that you disagree or they're being an idiot, or they're being stubborn or they're doing something wrong. But if you do it privately, they'll be like, oh, because no one else is going to tell them the truth. And if you say, hey, I want to tell you something, because I think it'll help the company and you show them what happened in a safe place, they go, oh, you're right. But if you do it in front of the peers or in front of the leadership, they're going to protect their space. They're going to kind of, you know, like the scorpion, they're going to sting because they have to. They have to protect themselves. Conflict is really good in the work environment. As long as it's to grow the organization, it's about the issue, not the person. Right. I think people need a model for handling conflict as well. Businesses need a conflict for him. I have a marriage counselor that I've introduced to a bunch of CEOs and COOs to work to help the partnership. Her name is Dr. Patty Ann. And Patty Ann literally will do calls with them as if they're a husband and a wife. And she coaches them on how to build a better trusting relationship with each other. And that, that real yin and yang partnership to scale. It's a very powerful concept that if you can, if you can learn how to a couple, you can certainly learn how to be a CEO COO couple as well.

There's something that I learned and developed. I was working with a company called China Foundations in Shanghai and Beijing, and we would coach Fortune 500 managers and executives how to work with Chinese workers, because companies, Fortune 500 companies would bring in literally towns and villages with schools and Hundreds of Fortune 500American manager managers and how to work with Chinese workers. And one of the things that we developed that we found really helpful is something that we call anticipatory humility. And this would work with a COO to a CEO, I believe you could say, going forward, in the event that I see things that could be hurting the company and getting in the way of our mission, how do you want me to be with that? What's the best way for me to bring that up to you? And so it hasn't happened yet. And then what's really important is when they tell you how to do it. Like they might say, never in front of a board, not by an email. Take me aside and send me a text. So what's really helpful is this lessens conflict avoidance by 50% because you then have a way to approach the CEO and say, I don't know if you'll remember, but we had a little conversation about six months ago about the way to talk to you when I'm noticing something that hurting what we're trying to do, and you're the one who's doing it it. And if memory serves, this is what you told me to do. So that's a way of giving them the chance to prepare that you're going to be critical of them.

Super interesting. I love the anticipatory. I love that you can even brand it in a way and teach that internally, too. Like if you teach that skill to leaders internally inside of an organization, that supercharges things.

And one of the other things that we did at China Foundations because, you know, it was very easy for bias to screw up everything. And so when you're crossing departments within a company, a way you can use this is to say, I'd like your help going forward. In the event that I act in a way or my department acts in a way where you have to then explain to your people who the jerk is, I want to prevent that from happening. And I know that there will be instances where I do something or fail to do something and you'll smile and your people will be thinking, this guy is an a hole and I'm not doing it intentionally. So going forward, what must I do and what must I not do so that I don't put you in that awkward position of having to explain to your people who the jerk is?

Yeah, this is really, really, really strong stuff. And these are the systems that I think, again, if a CEO isn't open to these ideas, the COO somehow tries to has to socialize that. One of the ways I've tried to work with coos on it is teach the system to the rest of the employees. Talk about it in front of the CEO that you're doing it with the rest of the employees. When the CEO starts to observe it working and they do trip and fall at some point, they'll be more apt to learn it later. But sometimes maybe they're not in a YPO or an EO where they're used to vulnerability as well. Right. I'm mentioning these organizations and I probably should even give a YPO is the young President's organization global network. About 20,000 CEOs, kind of all running $10 million plus businesses, all under 50 years old. Entrepreneurs, organization similar, about a million dollars or greater. 15,000 members globally. All entrepreneurs, they learn how to be vulnerable in that group. But there's lots of CEOs out there that don't think they can let their guard down. Right. They're trying to stay kind of in that suit of armor. And so it's hard to sometimes coach them when they're not ready to be coached on some of these issues. Do you have any thoughts around that at all?

Yeah. One of the things I'm coaching people try to be formidable instead of forceful. I was interviewing someone Australian, very high energy, high drive. I said, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is I like you. The bad news is you're leaving effectiveness and impact on the table. And I said, try to be more formidable than forceful. And he said, what does that mean? I said, you're coming off as too forceful, AKA pushy and pushy triggers in other people. You eliminate their freedom to choose to agree with you because you're taking over the space. Being so pushy. You're too busy being pushy. They can't pause and think, well, what do I choose to do? And a lot of people don't like being pushed. Especially, you know, they get that from their marriage. Whereas formidable is you stand for something that's not personally ego gratifying and you put a stake in the ground. And the stake in the ground could be in the next six months, we have an opportunity to be a unicorn. That doesn't happen very often. And here's one of the reasons why. We have the opportunity to be a unicorn. And I want us to do everything we can to seize that opportunity because it will go away. And I am going to stand up to anything or anyone that gets in the way of that. And I ask that any of you stand up to me if I'm getting in the way of that.

So I like that too. Right.

So formidable also is being declarative instead of explanatory. So I believe that Trump, part of why Trump won 2016 is because he was declarative and Hillary Clinton was explanatory. Declarative means you put a stake in the ground. Now, unfortunately, with I don't want to get into politics, but when Hillary was explanatory and she was just wanting to show how prepared she were, she was for the job, being explanatory comes off as the lady death explain too much. It comes off ending your position. Whereas. So for you, as the head of the CEO alliance, you could say, what I stand for is you have the opportunity to be taken more seriously and add more value to your organizations than you could ever imagine. And I see how to make that happen. And I'm going to stand up to anything that I see that gets in the way of the value you can provide and the respect that you deserve from your CEO. Though, does anybody have a problem and they're going to go count us in. Do you see the slight difference between those?

Very much so, yeah. Declarative versus descriptive describing very much.

But the key is when you're declarative, stand for something that's not obviously only personally about you being right.

Yeah.

So when I'm brought in to manage a problem between partners, I'll write an article on this, because at this stage of my life, I'm just giving away ip. You don't have to hire me. So I have a simple approach in mediating conflict between people. And I tell people, this is what I'm going to do, and you may not have to hire me. I'm going to speak to the conflicted parties ahead of time for 15 minutes, and I'm going to say, if this thing goes your way, what does that look like? The second question is, is that going to be perceived as fair, reasonable and realistic by the other person? Because if they feel this is unfair, this is not reasonable, it's not realistic, they're going to push back. And I'm not here to judge what you. And I'm going to speak to each person and then I say, and when we, when it's showtime, when I'm going to meet with the two of you, we're going to find out what agreement we can come to. But I'm telling each of you at the first stage that either of you gets a little bit agitated, I'm calling a timeout, sending the other person off for coffee, and I'm going to take that person aside and say, well, what's going on? What's got you so agitated? And I'll talk you down off a cliff. And that's what it's going to look like. And if you don't like the way it looks like, I mean, it's, it's not rocket science, don't hire me. But that's a, that's formidable. I stand for it being psychologically safe conversation between two people who can't stand each other. And don't hire me. Go hire someone where you can vent and rant and blah, blah, blah, and try and get your way in some stupid, dysfunctional way and you know, go hire them. And you know, I don't need this in my life. But do you follow me? Like, I think you have the capacity. What I'm picking up with the smart and wise is you have a capacity for such clarity. I'll send you the video. Listen to yourself. You are so clear, it's almost painful. And you're not being doing it to be a smarty pants. It's that because you had that add, you noticed stuff that nobody else noticed because they were too busy being reined in a better grade than you did.

And I've been able to speak in ways that are more succinct, probably from years of having to do lots of PR interviews, but also having to create systems for people so that I can kind of dumb it down or simplify as well. Plus, I was never the smart person. Right. I, by the way, I can see why Marshall Goldsmith selected you as one of the coaches to be involved in his whole global program. You've definitely got the right stuff to be in that program. He's. You're wicked smart.

Well, thank you. Thank you. We're going to continue offline to cover other things. So where's the best place people can find you and your new book?

Yeah. So the second in command is how to unleash the power of a coo. All six of my books are available on Amazon, Audible, and itunes. People should definitely check out the COO Alliance. And then also investinyourleaders.com is the course content on how to grow all of your managers and leaders. That would be the three core areas for sure. And then check out the second in command podcast.

I definitely will. We'll do that. So, Cameron, I can't wait until making you the only person I have on three times in about a year and a half as you. No, I don't want to put performance.

Thank you, Mark.

Look, it's one add person to another. I have total confidence in you.

Thank you. And I look forward to connecting offline as well about some of the stuff that you're working on as well, related to depression and kids with that too. There's some cool stuff.

We will definitely do that. And today was a master class. So thank you, Cameron.

You're welcome, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. Really, really appreciate it.

As do I.