Cameron Herold explains how a COO manages a CEO by removing low-value work, offering private feedback on mistakes, and keeping them aligned with key metrics. A CEO earning $1,000 per hour shouldn't spend time on tasks worth less than that.
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If you don't know how to manage up, you'll never be a good second in command. So do you even know what managing up means? Let me explain it to you and show you how to actually get more value as a second in command. Our role as the COO is to make the CEO look good. Our role as the COO is to take everything off the plates of the CEO, to leave them with the critical few things that they're amazing at, to leave them in their zone of genius or in their unique ability. So your job is to always look to take things off the plate of the CEO. We which means you have to manage up and say, hey, let me take these things and give them to somebody else. Your role as the COO is to know the projects that the CEO is working on and to identify the ones that drain them of energy or that they're not good at or that are below their effective hourly rate. So as an example, let's say that your company makes $2 million a year in profit. That equates to $1,000 an hour, which means your CEO should not be working on any projects that are less than $1,000 an hour tasks. Those are pretty expensive tasks. Your job is to understand everything that they're working on, to get those off their plate so that they can spend more time in their zone of genius and they can spend more time on strategy, on networking, on thinking about the people, thinking about cash, thinking about the direction of the organization. But if your CEO is always working in the business, they're always working on projects that are below their effective hourly rate, than they're harming themselves. So in managing up, you got to get some of that stuff off their plate. The second area that you have to manage up is you have to show the CEO or show that entrepreneur where they are hurting themselves. Right? So your job is to be the person behind the scenes, privately away from the other team members to say, hey, you're screwing up. Hey, you're making a mistake in this area. Hey, you're saying the wrong thing, or the message that you're delivering is hurting these people, or The way that you're showing up in a meeting is causing disruption. The way that you're not living the core values is hurting the company. So your job is to coach them and develop them and show them the areas they have to be improving on. But you have to do it in a safe place. And then lastly, the way you manage up is making sure that they understand that your COO is making sure that the CEO knows the communication channels that they have to work through. They have to know the core projects that they should be working on and the metrics that they're responsible for. So just like you're making sure that your direct reports know that, one of your direct reports is managing up and making sure the CEO knows that too. So those are the 3 things that you have to do in terms of managing up inside of the organization and the COO. It's critical that you know how to do that.
