In this episode we unpack the topic of: The COO Role: Why Would You Ever Want the Job? with Chuck Orzechowski, CEO of the COO Forum. 

Bethany and I discuss the following: 

• How do you avoid being the dumping ground for things that others don’t want to do?  
• Why would you want the COO job? 

We then discuss the following with Chuck: 

• What are the most common issues you see across your COO membership? 
• What is the best approach to clarifying decision-making authority with the CEO? 
• Why is “pace of change” a common frustration for COO’s? 
• What do you do when the CEO relationship is not working for you? 
• What is the key criteria for determining a good COO-CEO match? 
• What are the rewarding elements of being a COO? 

References

• The COO Forum® has been delivering on the mission of helping Operations Executives achieve more since 2004. Our members tackle the most pressing challenges facing their businesses and those that shape their careers. Join the best Operations Executives in the world as we celebrate our 20th Anniversary. Don't go it alone in 2024.
• Launching this February, Find Your COO™ will provide CEOs/Recruiters a one-stop source for finding talented COOs. The platform is built on top of the CEO-COO Alignment Index™ scoring system. It uses 25 key questions to create profiles for both the hiring CEO and COO candidates. These questions cover areas such as preferred communication frequency, speed of change, role relationship, delegation, trust development and more. Then, both parties can see each other's scoring reports to better assess potential fit or mis-alignment. This sets the stage for improved recruitment, interviewing and alignment post hire, which leads to better performance and COO job satisfaction. 

Biography: Chuck Orzechowski serves as CEO of the Chief Operating Officer Business Forum® (COO Forum®.) Since 2004, the COO Forum’s mission has been to support operations executives in achieving more in their business and professional lives. As a peer-based professional development organization, the COO Forum has helped 1000’s of executives navigate the challenges of their roles and improve business outcomes. 

Over the past 28 years, Chuck has spent most of his career leading operations in a wide variety of industries and company sizes, ranging from start-up through Fortune 500s. Chuck has a passion for improving operations, scaling businesses, and the professional development of others. 

It’s what gets him out of bed each morning...that and coffee!

Summary:

• Whiskey, rock concerts, and personal values. 0:05
• Brandon and Bethany discuss Bethany's husband's illness and their celebration with whiskey advent calendars.
• Brandon attends a Danko Jones concert at the Garage in North Islington, describing the band as a fusion of rock, punk, and jazz.
• Brandon mentions a mosh pit at a concert where he was the "enforcer" to push back, but he was not tempted to join due to his age and past experiences.
• Bethany has been reflecting on her values and purpose in life, realizing that having fun is her guiding principle, and she's looking for innovative and energizing experiences that bring her joy.
• Bethany was approached to become a CEO but lacked passion and interest in the domain, leading to her rejection in the final interview.
• Despite feeling relieved to not have to present, Bethany's lack of enthusiasm was picked up on by the only woman on the board, who ultimately decided not to move forward with her candidacy.
• CEO roles, delegation, and avoiding unnecessary work. 7:21
• Bethany shares her realization that she doesn't want to leave her children a large inheritance and instead wants to prioritize their education as their inheritance.
• Brandon questions the appeal of the CEO role and why Bethany would want the job, given her newfound priorities and interests.
• Brandon and Bethany discuss how operations professionals can avoid taking on tasks that nobody else wants to do, such as ISO certification or back-office work.
• Brandon suggests delegating tasks to others or hiring someone to handle them, while Bethany agrees and shares her own experience of successfully pushing off ISO certification to others.
• Both Brandon and Bethany emphasize the importance of owning your role and delegating tasks to others to avoid taking on too much work that you're not passionate about.
• CEO aspirations and leadership skills. 13:28
• Bethany highlights the variety and problem-solving aspects of being a CEO as a source of enjoyment.
• Bethany desires the CEO role for the authority and accountability it provides, as well as the opportunity for a deep relationship with one person.
• Brandon enjoys connecting the dots to make a company successful, and he finds it fascinating to analyze data and trends to inform go-to-market motions.
• Brandon also enjoys coaching others, whether it's helping them rise in their careers or gain confidence, and he finds it both altruistic and selfish.
• The COO role and its universality. 19:08
• Chuck discusses the COO role and its universality beyond just tech startups.
• CEO-CFO relationship, decision-making challenges. 20:41
• Chuck identifies the top 2 challenges faced by operations executives: misalignment between the CFO and CEO, and scaling the business while dealing with people challenges such as decision making. (20 words)
• Bethany asks Chuck about the most common complaints and challenges she hears from new members, and Chuck shares his own war stories and insights. (10 words)
• CEO makes decisions differently than operations executives, with a unique perspective that's difficult for others to understand.
• Communication is key to understanding CEO decision-making process and partnering with them to offload some decisions.
• CEO role, decision-making, and pace of change in organizations. 26:09
• Brandon and Chuck discuss the challenges of decision-making as a CEO, including the need to balance facilitating the leadership team with making decisions as a group.
• Chuck mentions the importance of documenting the decision-making process to avoid confusion and ensure consistency, particularly when it comes to the pace of change within an organization.
• Chuck shares his personal story of joining a startup as COO and making changes despite the owner's return from sabbatical.
• Navigating a business with a non-alignment CEO. 29:47
• Chuck wanted to analyze financials to understand business growth and make decisions to improve the CEO's life.
• Chuck saw the profit and loss statement but not the balance sheet or forecast, despite requests, and struggled to align goals and decision-making with the CEO.
• Chuck emphasizes the importance of communication and decision-making in a CEO-peer relationship, particularly when the CEO's expectations are not aligned with reality.
• Brandon advises peers to assess their ability to operate in the CEO's environment and make decisions based on their own needs and goals.
• Leadership hires, values, and styles in business. 34:25
• Bethany observes that 50% of leadership hires fail, and hypothesizes that this is due to leaders' inability to adapt to different situations and cultures.
• Chuck believes leadership assessments are less important than alignment in a CEO-CFO relationship, focusing on communication, decision-making, trust, and growth expectations.
• Chuck is developing an CEO alignment index to help organizations identify the right CFO fit, based on a candidate's desire for change and growth, and alignment with the CEO's vision.
• CEO role, challenges, and rewards. 38:43
• CEO matchmaking platform assesses alignment between CEO's preferences and role requirements.
• Chuck highlights the importance of people skills for COOs, who often serve as a buffer between the CEO and rest of the organization.
• Brandon asks an unconventional question about the CEO forum, which includes CEOs from various industries, emphasizing the people-based nature of software development and collaboration.
• Chuck emphasizes the importance of communication and alignment among CEOs and their teams, citing the value of diverse perspectives and missions in driving success.
• Chuck encourages CEOs to stick with the role, highlighting its rewarding nature and the importance of perseverance in overcoming challenges

Brandon 0:05

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the operations room a podcast for CEOs I am Brandon Mensa joined by my lovely co host Bethany errors how're things going, Bethany? Okay,

Bethany 0:18

I'm feeling slightly worse for wear on two half measures of whiskey from last night. Oh,

Brandon 0:26

two half measures.

Bethany 0:28

I know. It's pathetic, isn't it? Like, almost one measure of whiskey is enough for a sore head. It was my husband's 50th Last night. But he has something that approximates COVID. But it's keeps coming up negative. And so we celebrated his birthday with some advent calendar whiskies.

Brandon 0:48

Right. Okay, so the husband's sick. You're having Evan whiskies? These like chocolate whiskies or something or just like actual,

Bethany 0:55

actual little, like half measured bottles of whiskey. Oh,

Brandon 0:59

I see. Okay, you can actually buy them as little as small bottles I see or an

Bethany 1:03

advent calendar full of them. If you're Scottish, and you send it down to your son for his 50th.

Brandon 1:08

Okay, really, so it was like a whiskey for every day for 30 days. That sounds like a quasi alcoholic inducing month to kick off December for drinking their little

Bethany 1:21

but intense and I have like a love hate relationship with whiskey. And so my first step is always like, oh my god, I'm drinking fire. Why have I done this help? And then by the end of the glass, like, yeah, I could definitely have another one that was lovely.

Brandon 1:36

Speaking of which, actually went to go see a hard rock band on Saturday nights at the garage in North Islington. And same thing I I feel like I don't drink whiskey very often these days, but when I do, it's definitely for a rock concert. So the band in this case was called Danko Jones, there are a Toronto based band out of Canada. And they have been around for quite some time. They're a fusion of rock, punk and jazz, I would say the songs are a threesome. I know it sounds a bit weird. But it's straight up like hard rock I would say there. You know when you think about AC DC and Green Day. Basically both bands played the same song in 55 different permutations of it, but it's the same song. They're singing essentially with slightly different lyrics and so on. So Danko Jones is kind of the same thing for a set of Danko Jones or 20 songs. It's the same song just played with different lyrics and slightly different chords for the most part.

Bethany 2:31

All Music

Brandon 2:33

Yeah, I guess it was sometimes it's more obvious, I think, somehow, but the audience in this case, not a lot of flash to them. It was all black. Every person in the audience was wearing black. You know, one guy is in a hoodie. one guy's in an old school 80s Rock jacket.

Bethany 2:47

Were you in the mosh pit? Was there a mosh pit? And that just ages me there?

Brandon 2:52

Surprisingly, there actually was, I had these dudes in front of me. And yeah, there was like a quasi mosh pit happening. And I was kind of the guy I was the Enforcer to push back

Bethany 3:03

in the mosh pit, but you were not tempted to join. No,

Brandon 3:06

God. No, I'm past that. I mean, these guys should be past it, too. They were probably my age are similar. So they're just being jackasses I guess, or does having a lot of fun. Yeah, a little too much fun, are you one guy cut out the the shoulders of the other guy and took off his shirt. So the security guy came in at some point and asked him to get down.

Bethany 3:26

And I'm assuming it wasn't a guy whose shirt should have come off. Exactly,

Brandon 3:30

overweight, unappealing. And I'm sure the rest of the crowd was not appreciating his half naked body being visible to all of us,

Bethany 3:38

though, it seems to be the way funny you should or not funny, but the way you were just mentioning we need to have more fun in life or, you know, you had a break over the weekend. I have been working on what's my why, what's my purpose? What are my values as I'm entering into this next chapter of my life and have realised that having fun is I think my number one guiding principle, but not having fun, like foosball and ping pong, but more like, what are the things that are really energising and bring me a lot of joy in life? And what are the things that are innovating? And part of what made this really clear to me was I was in a CEO process couple weeks ago, and I've been approached by a lot of jobs, mostly CFO roles, not interested in doing that, again, I'm interested in being a CEO. This was the first company where it wasn't like just a total shit show that looked like oh, yeah, you know, this is a company that's going somewhere or could go somewhere rather than like it's haemorrhaging customers. Everybody hates each other. You'll have no funding go.

Brandon 4:52

Right, the optimal conditions for a senior executive to join

Bethany 4:55

but that's pretty much as a first time CEO, what you're approached with and the headhunters are In this unenviable position of trying to sell an absolute dog as something that would be interesting and great to join. So this company was at those things has enough money has a strong product. And so I was like, Yeah, okay, let me give it a go. In the course of the process, I really didn't want it, I kept nearly pulling out, I offered it to other people to see if they wanted to join the process instead of me. But then there was always something I was like, no, no, who am I to turn down this opportunity? How very dare i. And so I kept going through the process, and was down to the last two was supposed to be presenting. And I was just so sad. I was grieving my life that I love. Today, I was in my head already negotiating, which of the things that I love what I be able to keep. And I had no idea what my vision was, basically, the presentation was, what is your vision for the company? And I had no vision for the company, my entire vision was, how can we get it to 15 million ARR as quickly as possible and sell it? And who would we sell it

Brandon 6:13

to? Helping financially for the future? That was

Bethany 6:17

it, because I was just like, okay, we can sell it, I can make a decent amount of money, everybody can get their money back done. And then I figured if they liked my vision, then we'd be well aligned, we'd understand. But I actually ended up with an interview with one of the board members who asked me if I had any interest in the domain or any experience in the domain, I was just like, nope. And it's just like, do you want to like, I guess,

Brandon 6:42

kind of have to Yeah. And

Bethany 6:44

so interestingly, out of all of the people I interviewed with she, the only woman by the way, picked up on my entire lack of passion and interest, I was just flagged that she didn't think I could be a CEO who did not care about the domain in any way. And it was down to her that they decided not to bring me forward to the final interview. And I was so relieved. so unbelievably, relieved, on the day that I woke up to this to have to do the presentation, I popped out of bed, and I just turned to my husband was like, guess what, I don't have to present today.

Brandon 7:21

You've been released from the torture of the vision presentation, I'm sure your first slide, it would have been like the 2 million pounds to 50 million pounds slide of like, how do we financially just make this work?

Bethany 7:31

Yeah, exactly. And then how much we can sell it for and who I think might buy it. But what it really made me figure out or see clearly, is, even though I think I'm living by the belief that we only have one life, we should create and live the life that we want to live, it doesn't really matter how much money we earn, because we can't take it with us. And another realisation I've had is that I don't actually want to leave my children lots of money, because if you look at generational wealth, they seem to be the most unhappy and unproductive people on the whole. And so we are very much making the decision that the children's education is their inheritance. And then whatever happens after that it was down to us. So even though I have these views, the seduction of doing what I should and doing the status thing, and doing what is expected was so great that I was willing to give up all of my joy to take a job I didn't want because who who am I? And how dare I not do it?

Brandon 8:37

Because there's no CEO position. Yeah, I

Bethany 8:39

even had, like lined up in my head, the people that I would speak to, to help convince me that I should take the job after I was offered it. First of all astounded by how appealing or I can't think of the word of luring something is that even when every part of my body was saying, No, my brain was still like, Nah, go on, then this is what we should do. And just think it was a great learning for me to listen more to my self and not try and convince myself to do things I don't want. And also to add in another criteria for when I'm approached for SEO roles, which is to either really like and care about the domain, or it being something that I'm genuinely excited about, like socially or social justice or legalising cannabis like you know, something that lights me up. So, lessons for the new year to go in looking for joy. All

Brandon 9:40

right, I like that. Okay, so we have got a great topic, which is the CEO role. Why would you ever want the job actually, now that I just said that that rings true? And just in terms of what we just talked about, why would you ever want the job, both in terms of the actual job but also in terms of the domain expertise part of it and the interest in that we have an amazing guest For this with Chuck, or kowski, he is the CEO of the CEO forum. And the CEO forum is the largest community of CEOs on the planet. So he has a big job to run that organisation. And just before we get to chuck, there are two things that I wanted to talk about Bethany. The first one was this question we'll be talking about with Chuck, which is, how do you avoid the crap that nobody wants to do as the operations professional because I think you and I both know that, oftentimes, in organisations, there's certain types of work that functional leaders simply don't want to do. And they want to push it to the side. But there's a recognition on the part of the operations person that in this company is going to work, somebody has to do it, or somebody has to look at it, and the end up picking up these types of activities. So my question to you is, how do you avoid being that person that picks up the the garbage?

Yeah, I was described by one of our chairs as Miss shortlist. I really feel that that was at newvoicemedia. So it was a bit younger, a bit less experienced, and still looking to prove myself and my value. And so I quite happily took on everything that was shit. But sometimes it's interesting. Oftentimes, it's the problems to solve, rather than just utter shit. So nowadays that I understand my worth, and I'm not uncomfortable having difficult conversations, the first instance is just holding other people to account or ask a why they're not going to do their job. And if they're incapable of doing it, how are they going to solve it? Yeah,

I would agree with us entirely. I feel like in my mind, there's three different things that I think about one of which is what you just said. But the first one is really just owning your role, and crafting it to accentuate the things that you're actually interested in, and to take things that you're not interested in or passionate about. And to push them elsewhere. Essentially, I think there's some different ways of doing that. But if I just think back to an example, back in my career, ISO certification comes up all the time in b2b companies. And I've successfully pushed that off to others pretty consistently, because I'm just simply not interested in it at all. I'm much more interested in how companies become successful, what the go to market should look like for revenue to happen. And for the company, to when they get to the right metrics said, I view compliance is really kind of like back back office of like stuff that has to get done stuff that you're forced to do, but it's not going to help you create a successful business, you simply need to tick the box of being ISO certified in this case, and, you know, I had a VP of engineering, who for whatever reason, loved ISO. So in that case, it was just very clear, I was like, alright, fantastic, you take it. Then later on, we had a CTO, where he expressed interest in picking up the IT manager and having the IT manager report to him in particular around data considerations, and security, and so on. And I said, that's fabulous, you take that, I love that. And I picked up the commercial function in this case, which is, again, much more of my aptitude and interest. And then the second part that I think you just mentioned, is really just backfilling yourself, or delegating, which is if you can hire somebody that works for you hire that person delegated down to them, or to what you said, make sure you're setting up the other teams for success and holding them accountable to stuff they should be responsible for.

Yeah, it's interesting, your ISO point, because that has been my experience as well. I've never run or owned it. And I have none of the skills. Because despite what my teams think I am not a detail oriented person in any way. And I get really bored. And I so is all about caring about the detail, which is why I think it keeps landing with the tech it engineering people who just love going into point three sub bullet b dot, I was like, Oh my God.

If you look at Section three, dot 1.22, it says XYZ and you're like, okay, all right, that sounds great.

Yeah, so definitely suggest the super detail oriented person takes it on, and you don't give it to the strategy, operational strategy people.

Yeah, exactly. Or to your point, you hire that person that is really into that we don't I mean, the operations manager that truly is gets a lot of joy out of the process, the pureplay process side of things in this case, which kind of leads me on to the second point? And second question, which is, I think you just kind of alluded to this, but the areas of the role that you really get a lot of joy out of and I guess it's really answering the question, why would you want this job? Why would you want the CEO job?

You're asking me, why would I want to see our job?

If we rewound the clock by five years, why would Bethany have wanted the CEO job?

So for some of the reasons that we spoke about with Charlene Chen in the whichever episode that was the five successful traits of CLL problem solving, being able to go Big and then small, lot of change. So kind of the on shadow side of the shortlist is the interest of just doing lots of the variety and lots of problem solving. So in terms of somebody who's easily bored, it's a great set of variety. So that's one reason why I enjoyed it. Second, again, being very commercially oriented, but able to communicate, both with investors, and techies, and salespeople. So being like that natural bridge and translator, so that everybody gets aligned, again, something I quite enjoy doing, and I'm good at. And then the final piece is, which is I guess why I want to be CEO now is the authority, I don't know if authority is the right word, accountability, like being second in command is a lot better than being third in command.

Like, I can see the book being written error, instead of the second command is the third and command

for all that I complain about, or, you know, highlight the difficulties of a CEO CFO relationship, there's a lot of it, that's really good. I am a natural introvert. So having a deep relationship with one person, where you can really be a confidant and discuss things openly, is very appealing. And also, it's a good trading ground to being a CEO, because you see the entirety of the business. And you're focused on how best to operate it.

Yep, those are all fabulous and all makes a lot of sense. But there's three things that I think about. The first one is really this idea of connecting the dots, I really, really enjoy it. And I'm really good at it, which is when you look at how to make a company successful in terms of a market opportunity or product that you have, and pricing and packaging that sits around that and how you go to market with going to market motions, and so on, I find all that fascinating. I'm trying to pull that together with the right stakeholders to make it all combust and all work in the sense. And I think I have the same feeling which is being good at that being competent of that really is a good precursor, I think to being a CEO of a company, because that's what it's all about at the end of the day, which is pulling people together to galvanise to create a real company that can deliver with a market opportunity, a product and a go to market motion that actually connects with end users and buyers in this case. The second one is the analyst side of me because when I think back to the the old days, I used to love sitting in Pivot Tables and spreadsheets and looking at numbers and trying to figure out what was going on, basically. And one of my jobs in particular, I really enjoyed I wasn't there for that long. But I was an IDC analyst, we had people that created the spreadsheets and the pivot tables and all that jazz with all the data. And these pivot tables were like enormous, you'd have, you know, one mobile phone with 100 different attributes associated to one phone, and you take one phone and go across the entire world because IDC was a global company, every mobile phone in the world was tracked with 100 attributes. So the amount of pivoting you can do to look at trend lines and what's happening with mobile phones across the globe. It was fascinating. I would spend several days just combing through it trying to figure out again connecting of dots of what was interesting to customers. What was interesting to the wider industry, love doing that stuff. And I think today, working with the financial person on the company is find a lot of joy in that looking at scenario planning and forecasting and playing with numbers and lovers and I find it fun. I

do too. I always save my spreadsheet work to the end because like my desert, so I get through everything else and like a spreadsheet type.

And then the last one, probably similar to as well Bethenny, but I really love the the coaching aspect, I think at this point in my life and career, I get a real kick out of helping others, you know, either rise up in their careers, or seeing people gain confidence, I just find a lot of giving back in this way, is both altruistic, but also very selfish, because I just enjoy working one on one with others to really help them map out their careers and help them think through challenges that they're having, whether they're kind of interpersonal challenges of the company or more technical skills,

that's a good fun, you can do that without being a CEO of true,

but being in the seat of the CEO somehow, I don't know what it is like, again, that holistic viewpoint of the company, you can really help people think more broadly about their roles in the company, and outside of the company at that point. So with that, why don't we move over to our conversation with Chuck and let's ask him the question, why would you ever want this job?

So we're here with Chuck or is it kowski? Today, Chuck is the CEO I think you're CEO of the C O forum. Like there's a lot of C's and knows and that the CFO forum from what I understand and correct me if I'm wrong, is the largest coo professional organisation in America. And it's not just tech, it's all kinds of businesses, real businesses with products and everything that you can touch. So we were super excited when Chuck started following us on LinkedIn, and has commented on some of our podcasts are like, Oh, look, not just tech people care about what we're talking about. So today, we are going to talk about the COO role. Who would ever want to do it, I know that I don't think I'll ever want to do it again. And also the universality of the role rather than it coming from just a start up scale up tech point of view. So welcome, Chuck.

Thank you. Glad to be here. Super excited.

So I guess for me like the first question really is what I write is the CIO forum, the largest organisation for CEOs in America. And tell us a bit more about how it's structured. Sure,

you bet. We're born expressly for the purposes of giving operations executives at home or community where they can work on themselves and work on their challenges. We'd be monthly through a variety of formats, whether it be small group forums, or peer groups that are traditionally known, we have an amazing lineup of thought leaders and presenters that come in and workshops. And I like to say we probably have more time available for learning and growth and what most operations executives have each month. But yeah, that's us. Chuck, I

think the part that is most interesting for me is the small groups, so that you have really spoken to hundreds, if not 1000s, of CEOs over the years. And when we had our chat beforehand, I was mentioning some of the things I find difficult about the role. And you were saying basically everybody has the same challenges. What would you say the five most common complaints issues challenges, how are we want to spin it you hear are from new members?

Yeah, you bet. So literally, it's been 1000s of operations executives, over the years, not only my own experience, but the conversations that we have across the CEO form. And I would say the number one challenge that we have is the the misalignment between the CFO and the CEO. And there's a lot that goes into that misalignment. And I've got some of my own war stories. If we have some time, I'll share but I would say misalignment is number one. Number two is the speed of change at which the CFO, I guess signed up for when they joined the organisation, they anticipated a certain level of change needed. And that might not be what the organisation is ready for. So that is definitely probably number two. Also scaling the business comes up quite a bit. Although oftentimes we think of the CEO being charged with scaling the business. Oftentimes, it's the operation executive, the CFO that's tasked with actually executing the scale portion or the scale side of the business. So that is a prevalent topic. I think, also, just because you're dealing with people so often, in the role of a CFO that the people challenges come up quite a bit in our discussions, decision making.

And be interesting to understand now, from your new view as a CEO. How do you have that discussion? And how does it actually work? Because I feel as though we've had discussions there's best practice but you can't go through an infinite number of decisions and say, do I have this one down tie? You kind of tried to go through principles, but there's always like a grey area? Do you have any experience? Or have you seen it really work to figure out decision making authority? So

ironically, I find myself being the person that I would oftentimes have a challenge with in the CFO role as CEO. Right. So now I get to see from the perspective, one of our thought leaders made a very good point. I think it might have been in June of this year when he presented on the CEO CEO relationship, and that is, no one in the organisation entirely understands the viewpoint of the C E O from their vantage point, and especially if they're the founder, and or owner of the business. That's a perspective that it's very, very difficult to understand as much as we try as operations executives to understand that perspective. You just can't there's a different degree of worry and focus that it's tough to understand whether it be cash flow and funding. And can we keep the lights on? Yeah, there's a lot that's going on that the CEO even shields from the rest of the executive team. So when we talk about it's lonely at the top, and it is lonely at times for CEOs in terms of who they can turn to it's extremely true for the CEO. So first off, in deciding how to make decisions, it's understanding that the CEO is coming from an entirely different perspective. And so with that context, as a CEO, we have to ask the CEO helped me understand how you make decisions. So are kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit, the more that the operations executive can understand what's going on in the CEOs mind and those challenges in that context. And that viewpoint, the more likely the CEO can partner with the CEO to help offload some of those types of decisions, what happens is, there's a lot of assumption that goes around while you hired me to execute, you want me to make the decisions, but you didn't really take the time to sit down and have a real clear conversation. And so I think when it comes to decision making, is Communicate, communicate, communicate, yeah, got to understand what those expectations are.

I think it's interesting to talk about how you make decisions ever, like finding out from the CEO, what their decision making process is, like, it's never occurred to me to do that. I spent a lot of time trying to pretend to make the decision the CEO would make, which I found, I got myself like, really wrapped up in my head and then made very bad decisions, because it wasn't my decision or anyone else's. So I wonder if it's understanding how they make decisions, but then still making what you think is the best decision rather than what you think their decision would be.

Sounds very complicated. Like, it's my perspective has always been that the CEO has their mandate. And as the CEO, I'm not there to make decisions for the company, what I'm there to do is to really facilitate the leadership team, in my view, to really come to collective decisions that we're making, you know, across across functional issues for the company. And if we're not in a position to make those decisions as a group that needs to be escalated, whatever that escalation path is, and ultimately, the escalation path ends at some point with the CEO where they have to make a call because the group can't make a decision or a subgroup can make a decision, whatever the case might be. That's the way that I've kind of operated previously. And in doing so, my mindset has always been I'm not there to be the decider, in that sense, because we have functional leaders making decisions, we have a leadership group dealing with cross functional issues, but that's really that format that it just spoke about, I suppose. So, as I'm saying that, what do you think? Do you think that makes sense? Or is there a different way of doing this, that where it works better? Or is there any optionality on the table when it comes to a decision making process that actually works in companies with the CEO? When

I joined the CLO form as CEO, I sat down with, with our Executive Vice President of Operations, I said, Okay, let's, let's figure out how we're going to communicate how we're going to make decisions and how we're going to deal with conflict. Let's spell that out. And if we can do that, then we're more likely to have a relationship that's going to work. So I wish there was a single solution. But there isn't, it's more of a process. But But getting the document it's key.

You talked about the pace of change as being an element of frustration for the CEO. I'm wondering for you tell me more about that. Because what I do know for myself is that every company I've ever entered, the pace of change requirement is to move as fast as you possibly can. What are you actually talking about as you join an organisation whereby they're moving deadly slow, and you're trying to move fast? Yes,

the assumption would be that as you climb the ladder in the organisation, you, you know, you get to the pinnacle and operations, you're the CFO that you're expected to have the answers run fast, make tremendous change in growth. And we have members, certainly in that position, where they're scaling the business to three, four or five times. And then we also have turnarounds where maybe things weren't going so well. But the pace of change needs to be very, very quick. Here's my personal story. Why that's not always true. So I was in Scotland working for a late stage startup and moving back to the US, the entire leadership team was fired. So I got fired in Scotland, which I've never been fired on a foreign soil before. So that was a first for me, but moved back to the US and took all of my body of knowledge and all my newfound energy for this company. And I figured I'm going to come in and I'm really, really going to help this owner first time, COO hire, instil new processes and systems and really help this business grow. And they were about a $15 million business at the time, founder led had been around for, I think almost about 15 years as well. So I came into that role all fired up bright eyed, bushy tail, and I'm gonna make some a tremendous change in the first week I was there. The owner was on sabbaticals, it was near the holidays, I guess rolling on sabbatical caught holiday, he was on holiday. And so that first week, I'm just going through the organisation, I'm looking at all of these opportunities of improvement that I'm making a list and I'm also a Six Sigma Black Belt. So all of this problem solving is coming to me and I'm just loving it. And so the owner comes back after holiday. And so hey, let's do a report out let's have a conversation. Now, mind you, I didn't design this relationship. Well, again, I wish I would have had the CEO form then and thought about it, but so we have this sit down meeting. He's like, Alright, tell me, you know, what's the lay of the land? What are you excited about? And so I told them, you know, give him a bunch of ideas. I said, Hey, you know, I'd love to grab a hold of the p&l and cash flow and in the balance sheet, everything else like that because you know, I really want to dig into the numbers. And he and he said, huh, I said, Yeah, I said, I'm just looking to get the financials. You know, I went to finance, but they said, You know, I have to see you. So yeah, I just wanted to understand what would you do with the financials, if you had them? I said, Well, I'm your operations guy, like, I need to understand like, what our costs are, what our labour is looking like, you know, our cost of goods, you know, all that. He said, Now, he says, I've never used those to run the business. And I'm like, What do you mean, you've never used those run the business? Am I gonna be the first operations executive in Ohio that does not have the financials? He says, Yeah, you probably are. He says, I just don't understand what you do with them. So fast forward, what I found out is this business was minty money to the point that money wasn't a concern, growth wasn't a concern. And so the speed of change was very slow and deliberate from his, that's what he wanted. But all through the interview process. And we took a tonne of assessments, I was the yang of his Yang, but we never addressed the speed of change, or what his goals were, I assumed, like any business owner, you want to continue to grow, and grow aggressively, who wakes up in the morning says, I don't want to grow aggressively. I just want to grow a little bit today. So after week one, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, what did I get myself into? And I suffered through that for four years,

did you ever see a balance sheet or four years or an income statement or forecast,

so he relented, and I was able to see the p&l, I never could see the balance sheet or anything, it was just, it was just the p&l. And ironically, and so again, this is where misalignment and even decision making to bring that back end. So one of the goals that I had in my performance statement was to make his life better. That was literally what it said, it said, make my life better. So as a CEO, he's got kids in high school, and he's lived through it all. It's like, I just want someone to come in and take off some of the stress, right? So make my life better. And then I had a few other things. He's like, look, I want you making decisions. I don't want to be dealing with all of this. That's why I hired you. Okay, so but you know, as a CEO, you're never quite sure. So you're always over communicating, say, hey, you know, CEO, I'm gonna do this, like, Fine, go do that. You don't have to ask me that. Okay, great. And then at the same time, would walk into my office and say, pointing at a packing slip and invoice, say, why they have to do spend 875 on a ream of paper, from Staples, when I know you could have gone over to Office Max and picked it up for 675. And I'm like, what? So again, that's an example of that misalignment. And he very much still felt like this was the living room that he you know, he arranged all the furniture you wanted you to play? And

so do you have any kind of words of wisdom around that slippery slope, where you're entering this company, you don't quite know what you have, until you get there. And when you do get there, it's not exactly what you're expecting, and avoiding being pushed around.

That's definitely a conversation that we have often throughout the CEO form, in what I tell people is, look, you have to decide if you want to stay in that relationship, right? Sometimes that's just the hard, tough question, you have to ask yourself, is that relationship fixable? You know, and maybe in a tough economic environment, some people are more willing to stick out a bad relationship, what I always tell people, I often say is that the CEO is not going to fire themselves. So don't expect that the CEO is going to come around to your way of thinking it's very, very difficult to change that balance, so to speak, or that equilibrium. So you're gonna have to deal with those challenges, have a peer group where you can come and talk through them and learn how to, you know, in some cases, it's just coping, I mean, there's not going to be change, you're literally going to have to make a decision. Can I operate in this environment that the CEO has created? Can you fine tune it a bit, of course, and occasionally I have seen CEOs kind of see the light. And typically it's, it's when a business is in some very difficult situation. They even recognise that maybe they're holding organisation back, they have to change. But that's usually pretty rare. So one, it's understand, can I live in this environment? Can I continue with this relationship? There are mitigating actions you can take again, it goes back to communication, getting clarity around expectations. And as much as you can do that, I think you'll improve the situation. It may not be 100%, but it will be improved,

because it's kind of a tangent on just general leadership, hiring of leadership teams. Just because what you said kind of reminded me of it like there's the statistic that 50% of all leadership hires fail, and everybody's always trying to improve that. You know, is it around referencing is it psychometric testing, is it personality testing, you know, I've seen a lot of organisations try everything and still have a 50% fail rate. My kind of hypothesis is that leaders ship is like salespeople where they just don't transplant well or you don't know whether or not they will transplant because of it's a bunch of different situations. It's not just the person. But is it the right market? Is that the right culture? Do they have exactly the right skills in the way everything's shifting? I feel like the two reasons why people fail at a company or the company fails for the person is, their leadership style doesn't actually fit the leadership style of everybody else. And it's hard to get under the skin of what is your leadership style, and your actual values don't fit the business's values or the CEOs values. So as a CFO going into an organisation, any ideas on how you can figure out what the values truly are and yours and what the leadership style really is? Because everybody makes it leadership styles sound amazing, but it's how you actually lead that causes a lot of conflict in the business, I think, yeah,

those are great observations, I guess, to think about a statistic, most CEOs last, I think, three, three and a half years, what I think is some of the latest numbers that I've seen. So you're already going into it with an expectation that I'm probably not going to be a lifer at this organisation, you know, maybe I might help exit the company and whatnot. But I'm certainly not going to be around as long as that CEO most likely. So knowing that, in a lot of cases, we're kind of almost designed in a short term role to come in, in a certain you mentioned context, and a certain maybe where the business is at perform our duties, and then we kind of move on. I honestly think and this might be a bit of a controversial statement. But I think leadership styles and all of the assessments don't matter as as much as we want them to. And I'll put an asterix with that and come back. But honestly, it goes back to those alignment areas in what the expectations are. Because I think there's a lot of awareness to accept that you may do things differently than I do. And that's fine. And I'm trying to design this perfect leadership role where you complement my leadership strengths, and all that sort of stuff. But the end of the day, it comes down to how we're going to make decisions, how are we going to communicate? How are we going to deal with conflict? What's the speed or the work velocity? How quickly do we want to move? Are we shooting for stable growth? Are we scaling this business? Are we preparing for an exit trust, trust is another one, I've worked for CEOs that automatically trusted you? Right off the bat and I had other leaders, one that after four years, I still hadn't, I think, you know, so trust is another big area. So honestly, I'm starting to believe that assessments and all of that are part of the building a good relationship and getting that stuff aligned. But I think at some of those things that I mentioned previously, there that are actually I'm thinking more important, we actually are working on as CEO, CEO alignment index, it's a series of questions that an interview candidate would go through and rate, their desire for change and growth and those types of things, access the financials, I personally made sure that one was in there. And then we ask those same questions of the CEO, right. And so now, when an organisation is looking for a new CFO, they would fill out the questionnaire. So now they've created a profile of what they're expecting from that CFO role. So they've now have to think through some of those things that they wouldn't normally think through. And then the CEO has to sit down and say, Man, do I really want to be in a turnaround situation? Or I want to be in a high growth? Or am I? Do I want experience in exiting the company? And what is my speed of change? What am I comfortable with? What's my communication style, my my delegation style. And so an organisation can say, Wow, we like to look at this profile, bring the two together. And then we kind of use a process to see where the misalignments may be and then recommend, what the organisation may need to do to help compensate for that misalignment, whether it be maybe more strategic level projects, because while you may want a more tactical level CFO, the CFO that you're that you're most interested in is more focused on strategic level challenges, or at least that's what they enjoy most. A lot of the questions really are what do you enjoy most doing as a CIO? Because what we also find is if you're not doing what you enjoy doing in the role, you're you're not going to perform at your best so so again, so we then we marry the two and then we have this kind of a score that will help you identify how aligned or misaligned so that's coming soon, Brandon.

It's like a OKCupid for CEOs and CEOs. Like you have matchmaking. We started this conversation on coo who'd want to do it I think we've talked about a lot of this struggles and the challenges. Have you seen it? The other side? How many times were you see, oh, you kept going back for more. So there must be something about the role that you liked.

Yeah, I was clo twice officially with with a title. And then I was on the executive level teams two more times, so almost four times in the position. And so what's the rewarding bits? First off, you're gonna gain unique perspectives on how business works, because you're really on the point of executing. And so one, you have to be very adept at understanding strategy, and then also how to convert strategy into actions and results. So that's one, two, you get some amazing insights on how people work is oftentimes you're the buffer between the CEO or maybe even the rest of the executive team, and the rest of the organisation. Oftentimes CEOs have predominant amount of the rest of the organisation. So you become a very, very adept people person, I think. And that doesn't mean that it comes easy, but you become adept at it. Plus, you get it again, it goes back to understand how the business works, you get a diversity of functional level experiences from it, and perhaps HR and finance and legal and supply chain and software and manufacturing, I mean, the list goes on, right? I mean, so again, you have the opportunity to grow your own personal skill sets and capabilities by having the opportunity to manage and to lead those, if you enjoy being a problem solver, I think the CFO role provides plenty of rewards. And in that case, because oftentimes you become the chief problem solver within the organisation, I often say that no one chooses to become a COO, you kind of get chosen, because if you're working in an organisation, oftentimes maybe you're at a leader, maybe your mid level, right? But over time, you start to collect people throughout the organisation that comes to you like, you know, hey, Pat, how would you handle this situation? Or what do you think of what would you do? And then what happens next is, somebody recognises that like that you're kind of the go to problem solving person, have you thought about being CEO? Oh, it's like, no, let's, you know, and then then it all starts. If you enjoy problem solving, you'll get those rewards. And then also, too, if, if you're kind of process and systems oriented, intrinsically like I'm an engineer by schooling, then you're gonna get a tonne of opportunity to work and think in terms of processes and systems. So so that's why I think you should take the

job. Can I ask you one left field question, this goes back to the very beginning, when you describe the CEO forum, and you talked about the fact that you have CEOs from across the spectrum, not just software in tech, but every vertical you can possibly imagine. And my curiosity question to you is, I've worked in software my entire career. And it's really, as you noted, it's all people, it's people based issues, people collaboration, how you create software comes out of the minds of human beings, and how you collaborate together to make that happen, is really the trick of the trade that I work on. And Bethany works on. And my question to you is, is there any learnings from the other CEOs that deal with logistics or hardware or shipping goods? or what have you, any learnings from that spectrum that somehow would help people like Bethany and myself and the way that we think about operations in software companies? Is there any anything out there that you would think about that would be helpful to us? Yeah, for

sure. That's a great question. So the power of an organisation like ours is just that is that we have operations executives from across, you know, many different industry verticals. And if you think about it for a second, think about nonprofit, for example, very mission oriented, right, you know, they have a mission for delivering their, you know, their nonprofit services, whatever it may be. So they're very mission driven. If I'm in a tech company, and if my programmers only see problems from you know, programming perspective, and they aren't attached to a larger mission, or some broader vision within the organisation, then they're not going to be energised. We're all searching for meaning in our work. And so I think when you're sitting around a table, whether it's virtual or in person, and there's a diversity of industry there, you're going to hear how other executives are attacking that challenge from their perspective or their vertical. So if I'm a software, it SAS focused company, in my programmers aren't aligned towards a mission of what, you know, what problem are we trying to solve? What big problem are we trying to solve in this world as a company? You know, I think that's where the benefit in lies is the diversity of how businesses are run and how people are managed and led in those different environments.

Is there actually more similarity than differences? There's

more similarity for sure. Yeah, absolutely.

So Chuck, unfortunately, we're rapidly running out of time. If there was one takeaway for our listeners from our conversation today, what would that one thing be?

I would say that the CEO role is an amazingly rewarding enrol. It's worth sticking it out, communicate, communicate, communicate, get clarity with your CEO and the rest of your staff and you're going to have a blast. It's very rewarding, so stick with it. I

think we all need to just have that last little bit on permanent replay on those bad days. It is a fun role. So

thank you, Chuck, for joining us on the operations room. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe or leave us a comment and we will see you next week.