Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

Why Hiring the “Right” Leader Almost Killed the Company

21 Jan 2026 · 1 min

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0:57

Cameron Herold warns about hiring a head of operations (a company’s second-in-command), arguing that rigorous interviewing, reference checks, and cultural screening are essential because technical skills alone are insufficient. He tells an anecdote about Brian hiring a former president of Starbucks North America who had the skills but not the cultural fit (disliked franchisee input and entrepreneurship), which allegedly reduced revenue from $106M to $70M and required about a year to undo.

Questions this video answers

From $106 million down to $70 million.

About one full year.

President of Starbucks North America.

Chapters

When you're looking to hire a head of operations, when you're hiring that second in command, you need to have really good interviewing systems and reference check systems and cultural systems to screen out all the candidates to ensure that you know who you're getting. Because you can't bring somebody in and wait three months or six months or 12 months to figure out if it's going to work. Brian sadly made that misstep after hiring me. He hired president of Starbucks North America and she had run, you know, Starbucks North America multi unit operations, very strong leader. But she culturally didn't mesh with the organization. She didn't believe in the entrepreneurial side of the business, she didn't like the franchisees opinions. So even though she had all the skills, she culturally didn't mesh. And then all of a sudden a year later, she'd almost bankrupted the company. She took them from 106 million down to 70. Brian took another full year to have to unwind all that. So yeah, it's a tough role to hire for because you're not just looking for skills, you're looking for that cultural mesh too.