Cameron Herold argues that vision without execution fails and that every strong CEO needs a complementary second-in-command (COO or equivalent) who can operationalize the founder’s vision. He emphasizes hiring the right "business spouse" by assessing the CEO’s strengths, weaknesses, energy drivers, and core values, then finding a COO who fills gaps and shares values. Herold outlines a four-part culture framework—core values, core purpose, a BHAG/vivid vision, and people systems—and recommends leaders obsess about growing people: skills, confidence, and connections. He gives practical guidance on people-development budgets (minimum 1% of annual compensation or $1,000, whichever is greater) and examples from his experience (COO Alliance, coaching CEOs globally, his book The Second in Command).
Questions this video answers
Minimum of 1% of annual compensation or $1,000, whichever is greater.
$740 per person.
$350 million.
The Second in Command.
Rich Karlgaard.
Chapters
It was Thomas Edison that said vision without execution is hallucination. And I think so often entrepreneurs have the kind of trendy visionary title, but the only ones who actually are visionary and can actually make it happen are the ones that can either execute or that they have that operations type person right beside them. I'll give a crazy example that I've never spoken about. The very first business that Elon Musk built was, was called Zip2. And in January of 1995 I got a phone call from his brother Kimball, who had just finished working for me for a summer, running a house painting business. And the company that was going to invest in Zip2 would not invest in Elon Musk because he was too visionary, too out of the box, had never done anything right. Remember this is 1995, they actually backed Kimbal Musk and put all the initial money into Zip2, which was all what they sold for 350 million prior to selling PayPal. So their first company was funded based on the CEO experience of Kimbal Musk, not on the visionary. You really need to have both parts for anybody to believe in the company, quit their jobs, come over, or to just even scale. Every good CEO has that second in command. Without it, it's really, really tough because the visionary role is so particular. It's almost like a homeowner who's building their dream home. I need to be able to visualize what my home's going to look like, how it's going to feel, what the cabinets like, what the flooring is like. But I don't have to be good at making it happen. I shouldn't be a good electrician or a plumber, but I should know how to get a contractor, the COO who can hire all those people like the leadership team and frontline staff to make my vision come true. And I think that's where the beauty of the CEO COO relationship is. CEOs go awry in their first couple of hires and trying to hire that second in command regardless of the title is they don't do a deep enough dive on themselves. What do I love? What do I hate? What am I really good at? Or what are my unique abilities? What do I suck at? Or what am I just okay at? What fills me with energy on a day to day and what drains me? And then how can I hire somebody who can do all the stuff that I hate, can do all the stuff that drains me of energy, can do all the stuff that I suck at and they match me in terms of core values, they match Me in terms of the scale of the organization. Maybe they can bring in more strategic insight or P and L responsibility or autonomy. It's a very different hire than hiring ahead of any other functional area that just has to be good at that area. This you're hiring your business spouse as well. I run an organization called the COO Alliance. So I have second in command COOs that are members from countries all over the world. My job is working with them to help them balance and become that real yin and yang with their CEO. I was given that moniker by the publisher of Forbes magazine. So Rich Karlgaard has been the publisher of the physical print of Forbes and online for about 20 years now. He has seen me speak about four or five times and gave me the nickname the CEO whisperer. Because I'm often behind the scenes talking to CEOs of these kind of 50 to 500 person companies. And I've worked behind the scenes with CEOs in 28 countries now, including at the highest level. I coach the CEO and the second in command of Sprint. I coached a monarchy. They own the country of Qatar. So I coached the royal family on running their groups of companies. So I've always worked behind the scenes teaching the CEO what has to happen and then often working with their COO on how to make it happen. So even in my book called the Second in Command, I talked about how do you find the right person? How do you build a relationship with the person? And a lot of it starts with understanding yourself as the CEO first. I'm actually very well known globally for having built world class company cultures. So I've coached companies that have gone on to rank number one in their country, to work for number one in their state. Multiple countries, two companies that went on to rank number one year after year in Australia, I coached both of them. Culture is not all of the free massages and free lunches. Those are perks. Okay, perks are fine. But that's not where culture comes from. Culture comes from an alignment with four things. The first is your core values. It's a deeply ingrained system around four or five core values that you're willing to fire people if they break them. You hire people based on them. They're easy to understand. They don't need any explanation. And the CEO lives by the core values. Right? Culture permeates off. Core values is number one. Number two is that focus on core purpose. It's the why we exist. It's like Simon Sinek talked about in his book Start with why Simon was on our board. Of advisors five years before he wrote that book. So we were indoctrinated in this core purpose idea by him. And then you go into your bhag, that Jim Collins term, that big hairy audacious goal. It's that long term driving stretch at 1,800 God junk. Ours was building a globally admired brand. My vhag today is to replace vision statements with vivid visions worldwide. So that that driving bhag is culture permeates from that. And then the fourth is all the people systems and that's the recruiting, the interviewing, the hiring, the onboarding, the leadership development of people. Because when you obsess about happy people that are connected, that are growing your high employee net promoter score drives customer engagement, drives how much more you can charge, drives profitability, drives product everything. So it's a really an obsession with those four things. Culture comes from that. Leaders core job is to grow people, right? So if you're a CEO and you've got five people working for you, if you're an entrepreneurial company, you got 30 people for you. Whatever it is. Our job as leaders, whether we're managers, directors, VPs or C level, is to grow people, to grow their skills, to grow their confidence, to grow their connections. Very similar to being a parent. Our job as a parent, yes, it's to show love to our kids, yes, it's to be there for them, but it's to give them the skills and the confidence so that they can do all the that they need so they can move out of the house one day and become adults, right? And if you don't teach them how to do laundry and do cooking and do some painting and do some basic car repairs, they're not going to have the confidence to get out of the house at 19 and 20. Our great grandparents were running companies at 14 years old because they had the confidence and the skill set. So our job is to grow the skills and confidence and connections of our people. So one way to do that is create that mindset in your company. A second way is to put a budget in place. I suggest a minimum of 1% of their annual compensation or $1,000, whatever is greater. So if somebody's getting 120 grand a year, put $1,200 into a budget to grow them. You could have one person come in to a speaking event to 15 people. So you got the one person's fee covering over 15. You could have a book club on a monthly basis. You could send out videos for them. You could put people through my invest in your leaders course, which is only $740 a person. So you could do it in lots of ways. The key is to create that mindset and the budget, and then remember that if you're always trying to grow their skills and confidence and connections, they're going to be able to take on more, which means you can continue to delegate, and that actually buys back your time, scales up the entire organization.
