Is your CEO-COO relationship a marriage made in heaven or a recipe for disaster? Discover the secrets to a successful partnership!
What makes a good COO? It's about finding someone who complements the CEO's skills and passions, handles the tasks the CEO dislikes, and brings unique strategic insights to the table.
Early-stage entrepreneurs, ditch the admin tasks! Hire an EA first, then focus on finding a second-in-command who can grow your team's skills and confidence. The secret? Be a Chief Energizing Officer, showing praise and gratitude! None of this matters if you don't care for your people.
00:00What makes a good COO is almost like saying what makes a good wife or what makes a good husband.
00:04The CEO-COO relationship almost like being a marriage.
00:07Hi, I'm Cameron Harreld. I'm the founder of the COO Alliance and you're watching me on Incarabia.
00:16At the end of the day, entrepreneurs start a company for one of three reasons.
00:19To give them money, to give them free time, or to have that sense of accomplishment that they put the flag in the ground.
00:25One of the reasons that they need a second-in-command is to help them get to those three goals more efficiently and faster.
00:31And then once an entrepreneur starts a company, they start to identify there's a whole bunch of stuff that has to get done that they don't love to do.
00:37And there's a whole bunch of stuff that has to get done that they suck at.
00:40So if you can get that second-in-command that likes to do those things, that is really good at those things,
00:45to leave the entrepreneur to only work in their area of genius, in their unique ability, everything gets supercharged.
00:50So it becomes almost like the two-in-a-box, that very yin and yang approach.
00:53Asking what makes a good COO is almost like saying what makes a good wife, or what makes a good husband.
00:58What makes a good wife, for me, is someone who matches my skills, my dreams, my desires, my fears, who's a good match to me.
01:07But my wife might be a horrible wife to you, right?
01:09Your wife, as great as she might be, could be horrible for me.
01:12So it's about the match with the entrepreneur and the CEO.
01:16So what makes a really good COO is the person who's really good at the stuff the entrepreneur's not,
01:21who really loves to do the stuff the entrepreneur doesn't love to do,
01:25someone who actually has done it before,
01:27and then usually someone who comes in with some strategic insight, P&L responsibility,
01:32and a level of autonomy that they can actually do the job without having to be delegated and told what to do.
01:37That's a COO.
01:38When you have to be telling the person what to do, they're more like a vice president or a director.
01:42CEO-COO relationship, almost like being a marriage, right?
01:46The conflict that happens in a marriage, men are not hairy versions of women.
01:50COOs are not lesser competent versions of CEOs.
01:53We see the world differently.
01:55We approach problems differently.
01:56We approach projects differently.
01:57We communicate differently.
01:58We need to be communicated to differently.
02:00We have different thoughts around the business.
02:02We have different levels of risk tolerance.
02:04So the first part is to work at your communication and work at your trust.
02:08Take time away from the kids, right?
02:10Take time away from the rest of the leadership team.
02:12I have a lot of CEOs and COOs that I coach, almost like a marriage counselor,
02:17on helping them build trust and build communication and build collaboration and take time away.
02:21If those things are not worked on, if you don't have date night,
02:24if you don't spend time away from the kids, the marriage breaks down.
02:27If you don't grow together, you grow apart.
02:30So it's the same with the CEO and the COO.
02:32Before you hire a COO, the early stage entrepreneurs have to ask themselves is,
02:36do you have an assistant?
02:38If you don't have an executive assistant, you are one.
02:41So the first thing you need to do is hire an EA and get a lot of the admin off your plate,
02:45get a lot of the lower kind of income or lower wage tasks off your plate.
02:49Then you need to start looking at the other stuff that you're not good at
02:52and that you don't love to do.
02:54And if there's enough of those things, then you can put them in place and say,
02:57what are you willing to pay for that?
02:58It might be a director.
02:59It might be a VP.
03:00It's certainly a second in command, but don't give away a big title yet.
03:04But if you can hire somebody and they can get at least four times their cost
03:08in terms of incremental gross margin because it frees up your time
03:12or it grows other people, that's a big one.
03:15And then the last part is, if you're the entrepreneur
03:17and you don't have time to grow the skills and the confidence
03:20and the connection of your team,
03:21hiring a second in command to grow them will supercharge your company.
03:25The big thing I would give for CEOs,
03:27and this is pretty appropriate for being in the Middle East right now,
03:30is at the end of our lives, we end up as a burnt kebab.
03:33We literally end up as meat on a stick and we're probably going to get cremated.
03:36None of this matters.
03:38So what we have to do as entrepreneurs is remember that our job as the CEO
03:41is to be the chief energizing officer.
03:43And it's to show up and show praise and show gratitude and care about people,
03:47celebrate the core values.
03:48And I think if entrepreneurs would slow down and celebrate and say thank you and praise,
03:53our employees will go through brick walls for us.
03:56If the entrepreneur can have fun along the journey,
03:59our employees will work harder.
04:00That's the biggest secret I can leave everybody
04:02because at the end of the day, none of this stuff matters.
