322 Leveraging the Yin and Yang: Secrets to Building a High-Performing CEO-COO Partnership with Cameron Herold, Founder of COO Alliance | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

[00:00:00] Cameron Herold: . Cameron Herald. Welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with 

[00:00:04] me. Hon, thanks for having me.

[00:00:05] Looking forward to chatting with you today. 

[00:00:07] Mahan Tavakoli: Can't wait to talk about your book. The second in command. You also have a podcast by that name. I've worked with a lot of organizations over the years. And one of the biggest challenges is the CEO, COO relationship and how that works out. But before we get to that, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, Cameron, whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact who 

[00:00:28] Cameron Herold: you've become?

[00:00:29] I grew up in Canada, grew up in Northern Ontario, about four hours North of Buffalo. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family where my father ran his own company and both sets of grandparents ran their own companies. And we were groomed, my brother, my sister and myself, we're all groomed to be entrepreneurs.

[00:00:43] We've all run our own companies for 20 to 25 years. I had my first operational business when I was 20 years old. I had 12 full time employees and ran my own company for my last three years in university. While I was in school, I had an operational business with 12 to 16 employees. So I really cut my teeth at being an entrepreneur.

[00:01:01] I ended up helping a couple of friends build their companies. I was the second in command in a franchising group for what became Boyd auto body in Canada and Gerber auto collision in the U S I was then hired as president of a friend's company. And we built that company up and sold it. It was a private currency business left there and joined my best friend.

[00:01:18] It helped him build out his rubbish company. It was called the rubbish boys. And he was just changing the name over to one 800 got junk. I joined him as his 14th employee and as his second command, and we grew that company to 106 million over six years. 3, 000 employees system wide left there 17 years ago now, which is crazy.

[00:01:36] I've since written six books on business. I've been paid to speak in 28 countries and on every single continent, including being paid to speak in Antarctica. Then three years ago, my wife and I sold everything when my youngest son was away at university. And we've been traveling the world, living as nomads for the last three years.

[00:01:53] And then I've also lived in the United States a bunch of times. I had a home in Scottsdale for 10 years and also lived in Seattle twice. I guess a bit of a citizen of the world. 

[00:02:02] Mahan Tavakoli: Both business experience, entrepreneurial experience but before we get to touch on that, you have been living on the road, for the past three years, traveling.

[00:02:11] The world getting experienced across different cultures. I wonder how has that shifted your perspective on organizational leadership? Cameron. 

[00:02:21] Cameron Herold: It's interesting. So I've done work with companies all over the world for around 17 years. I coached a monarchy in the middle East. I've worked with clients in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Dubai, Qatar Australia, Switzerland, Germany. You name it. I've actually coached clients in Columbia, Mexico. So I've had a lot of operational experience at working behind the scenes with clients. What I've really gotten to see this time in terms of living and traveling globally is more how the day to day actually works and what matters to, the normal person and how similar we are globally and yet how very different we are.

[00:02:55] One thing I've noticed that I think is a bit of a sad statement on America is everything in America tends to be very divisive currently based on politics. I could be chatting with you and say, Hey, Mahan, let's go grab a burger. And somebody would hear me go, Oh, you're such a Democrat.

[00:03:09] No, I just wanted to have a hamburger. Or let's go grab a pizza. Oh, you're so Republican. No, I just wanted a pizza. Everything is so divisive. And the rest of the world tends to have really good discussion and debate around issues. And then they remain friends and they go for dinner. And it's cool to watch the rest of the world have causes and care and still have to deal with political issues, but it hasn't divided the country.

[00:03:32] And I think it's time that we start to pull that back together because we're missing on that. The other thing I've noticed that is very powerful globally is everyone cares about their life, their friends, their family, their relationships, their hobbies. Work is not their reason for being and I think we've lost sight of that in North America, predominantly Canada and the United States, where we tend to focus on work, when we meet someone, the first thing we say is, what do you do?

[00:03:58] That's not what the discussion is in Europe or in the Middle East or in Asia. The discussion is what are you into? What have you been doing? What have you been seeing? What are you interested in? What do you do to make money doesn't even really ever come up in conversation. And it's nice that way because you realize that there's a lot more to having a real rich life than just showing up at the office and working to make money.

[00:04:18] And I think for anybody who's listening, we already know that this is just what we do to make money. It shouldn't be our reason for being 

[00:04:23] Mahan Tavakoli: it is really important to understand that Cameron. A lot of leaders are frustrated with millennials and Gen Z because they see them as having some of the purpose and aspirations that you talk about more balance, more family life.

[00:04:41] And not prioritizing work where a lot of the leaders and the CEO say, that's not the way it worked when I got into business, 

[00:04:50] Cameron Herold: yeah. And what's happening is the baby boomers and Gen X don't like having to look in the mirror.

[00:04:56] And see that they've really wasted 30 or 40 years of their life being so obsessed about something, and they realized that they could have that balance. And I think they're frustrated with being forced to look in the mirror and confront that. That's part of the issue. I think they're also quite nervous about the second half of Gen Y, so really that's the 35 down to 25 year old part of Gen Y.

[00:05:20] And then the Gen Z, which is that, 16 to 25 year olds, they realize that this cohort from 16 to 35 has a lot more technology skills, and they're able to actually leverage technology and utilize these tools to automate and to optimize processes and to get work done in a much faster way.

[00:05:38] And they realize that some of their 30 years experience is really five years experience six times in a row. And if they don't learn to automate and to optimize and to leverage AI, they're going to be put out of a job by somebody who is 20 years younger, who might only have five years of wisdom and five years of experience, but they have the technology skills to kick our ass.

[00:05:59] I'm the first or second year of gen X. I'm 58 years old. I need to stay on top of technology and AI and automations. Otherwise. My career is gonna be quite quickly lapsed by somebody much younger than I'm. 

[00:06:12] Mahan Tavakoli: I couldn't agree with you more. Half of my conversations now are on AI and the impact it's going to have on Leadership organization, society, but.

[00:06:23] I do want to focus a little bit more on your expertise. What got you so focused on the COO role? 

[00:06:30] Cameron Herold: So this is my sixth book.

[00:06:31] It's called the second in command. And my first five books were really written more for the entrepreneur or for leadership teams in entrepreneurial companies. What I noticed was there was a huge gap in the market for content around how do I go and find a second in command, whether it's a CEO or a president or a vice president operations, regardless what the title is, how does that visionary find the integrator?

[00:06:54] How does the CEO find their CEO? How does that entrepreneurial leader find the person they can really lean on, their yin and yang, to help scale up the company? So I noticed there was a gap in the market for all that content. I also had all of that content. I've run an organization for the last seven years called the COO Alliance.

[00:07:12] Which is a large global network of second in commands. I also now run a community for anybody in operations. So it's like managers, directors, and DPS. It's called the op spot. And then I've had a podcast for the last six years. It's called the second in command. And we've interviewed 350 COOs. We never interviewed the entrepreneur.

[00:07:30] We never interviewed the CEO. We only interviewed their COO. So I had all this IP and all these insights and wanted to share it. That was number one. Number two, I realized I'd played the COO role three different times. I'd been the COO for 1 800 GOT JUNK. I'd been the president for a friend of mine's company, ubarter.

[00:07:47] com. And then I'd opened the West Coast United States for College Pro Painters. So I effectively was running that whole division as an operator. And then I also was a co founder of the franchising group for an auto body chain. So I was really in that co founding second in command role there too.

[00:08:02] So I had all of these insights and these systems and just a need to share that. So that was the reason for writing the book. Of all of my six books, I'd say the second in command is the strongest content that I have for my six books for sure. 

[00:08:14] Mahan Tavakoli:  I do believe it's a missing piece in a lot of.

[00:08:19] Organizations there isn't as good of a balance between what is expected from the CEO versus the CEO. So you mentioned your experience at 1 800 GOT JUNK, where you helped grow that organization as the CEO. You talk about how that worked out well, what made the COO role function so well there.

[00:08:43] Cameron Herold: So we had an unfair advantage. Brian and I were already a part of a mastermind community for four years together. And we met every single month for four years, him watching me grow two companies, me watching him grow his business. So we got to know each other and see each other's business skills. And then three months before I joined him, he was my best man at my wedding.

[00:09:06] So we were very close personal friends. So it's almost like we had this four year interview. Which meant on day one I was able to come in and hit the ground running because he knew exactly where I was strong, he knew exactly where I was weak, I knew exactly what he needed help with, we trusted each other implicitly, I had access to the bank account and passwords and everything on day one, and I could just say, hey, Let me do all this stuff.

[00:09:28] You do that stuff. That was number one. Number two is I'd done it before. So he hired someone, me who had actually built a couple of franchise companies prior. So for the first four or five years from when we went from 2 million. Up to about 60 million. It was pretty easy for me to do all of that.

[00:09:46] It was only from the 60 million to the 106 million. Did it start to get, pretty big operating in 330 cities, four countries, 13 operating PNLs. It got pretty complicated at that size, but for the first four or five years, it was pretty simple. So in hiring someone who had done it before, really understanding that you can trust that person, having done the proper interviews.

[00:10:06] So I tried to take that unfair advantage and systemize it. So that other companies could have that same prediction in terms of who they're hiring. So it's how do you know what to look for? How do you know how to onboard them? How do you know how to build a relationship? We spent a lot of good time on building our relationship and building trust and communication protocols and making sure people were very clear on roles and responsibilities.

[00:10:29] And then he was also very good at staying out of my way and letting me do what I knew needed to get done. And I was very good at staying out of his way and making sure that I was always shining the spotlight on him and making him look good. And then internally, he would shine the spotlight on me to make me look good.

[00:10:44] So we really always had each other's backs. We were just able to scale from there. It's 

[00:10:48] Mahan Tavakoli: wonderful that you had that for your head start. As you've systematized this Cameron, I wonder when the CEO is looking for that second in command. I know you also referenced the work by Bennett and miles on the seven categories of CEOs, as the CEO is looking at that second in command, where should they start?

[00:11:08] Cameron Herold: It's really understanding yourself first before you go out and try to find the person that you're looking for, because you're not looking for someone, you're looking for someone to match you. So you need to know your strengths and your weaknesses. You need to know your behavioral traits.

[00:11:23] You need to know the stage that your company is in terms of its growth. You need to know the areas of business that fire you up and fill you with energy and the areas that drain you of energy. You need to know this stuff. Internally that you suck at and the stuff you're really good at. And then that starts to define the role and the person you're looking for.

[00:11:42] So it really starts with understanding yourself and your company first. And that's something that every company can do. 

[00:11:47] Mahan Tavakoli: So what would you recommend in terms of being able to fit that most effectively?

[00:11:52] Cameron Herold: You need to understand what their predominant role is coming into the business.

[00:11:56] So what functional areas they're running and then making sure you're hiring someone that has done it before, not someone that knows how to do it, but someone that has actually done it, which probably means that they're in a job currently and you need to poach them and recruit them away.

[00:12:09] So I even talk about a few different recruiting agencies that I introduce all of my clients to then those recruiting agencies can go help poach that COO and bring them into your organization. Secondly, it's really about understanding the kind of core overall role. Are they there to change your company?

[00:12:24] Are they there to help free up your time? Are they there to help lock in some certain client relationships, like really understanding the core. That there were there for those responsibilities to make sure that's what they're focusing on. And then it all comes down to the onboarding of the person, 

[00:12:40] not throwing them into that role too quickly because they don't really understand the key relationships, the supplier relationships, the customer relationships, all the internal players. They really need to spend time getting to know the organization and the CEO and leadership team need to recognize that all of that industry IP that you have already, it's going to take them time to get up to speed.

[00:13:04] Most of the problems happen when you put someone into the work too quickly. What I like to do is really slow that down to 30 or 60 days of slow onboarding within a very prescriptive third month to really build up the trust in the organization around that person. That's 

[00:13:19] Mahan Tavakoli: an outstanding point Cameron, I've seen organizations spend more time onboarding junior staff than they do with some senior executives, including COOs.

[00:13:29] Cameron Herold: That's because they've thought about the junior, but they assume that because the person has all the skills, they're going to be great. Probably true, but they're coming in with a lot of skills that might upset the apple cart, they come in with all these skills that might frustrate current employees or might change over the way that we're currently doing things Or they might start bringing people into the organization that they're hiring and that can frustrate some of the current people So there's a whole model of forming storming norming performing that they go through in this kind of early 30 60 90 days The next thing you have to realize is that they don't really know all of the people and the history and the why that we do things or how we do things or who's involved in decisions or who maybe has been working really hard on certain projects for a year that they now want to kill or change.

[00:14:15] So it's about understanding all of that so that you don't create all these unintended ripple effects that can happen when they start making the decisions that they're planning to make. 

[00:14:23] Mahan Tavakoli: As you do that onboarding, you compare the relationship to a marriage. So what makes some work as opposed to others not work in this kind of professional marriage?

[00:14:38] Cameron Herold: I think it comes down to actually thinking of it like a marriage. So in a traditional marriage, husband and wife, you need time away from the kids. So in this case, you need time away from the rest of the employees. Time away from the leadership team. For the two of you to connect, you need date night, time to rekindle a fire.

[00:14:54] To rekindle the spark, to spend time getting to know each other and like each other to do fun stuff that's not involved in the normal day-to-day. The CEO and the COO need to have time to do fun stuff together to hang out together, which builds trust, builds collaboration, builds the excitement of working around each other.

[00:15:12] You also need time to sit and plan, a husband and wife need time away from the kids and away from the day to think about vacations, to think about the family's core values, to think about building the home that you're thinking, to think about growing your kids or the education. But if you don't take time to plan, you tend to drift apart.

[00:15:29] The CEO and CO need time to plan so that they don't drift apart. And then it's all about dividing and conquering, right? The husband and wife divide and conquer roles. Back in the 50s or the 60s, it was very easy. You had pink jobs and you had blue jobs. She did all the house stuff.

[00:15:43] He did all the out of the house stuff. He cut the grass. She did the laundry, etc. Nowadays, those roles are all very blended. But someone needs to do all of the stuff. So there's an agreement that tends to happen in the home. My wife tends to like to do a lot of the organization. I like to tend to do laundry.

[00:16:01] She likes to clean. I love to cook. She hates going grocery shopping and hates cooking. So we decide on all the stuff that needs to happen. Who's going to do what. That needs to happen inside of the company too, because if both of you are leading marketing, if both of you are leading ops, if both of you are caring about the metrics, you're not getting any leverage and you're always stepping on each other toes.

[00:16:20] So it's all about clear roles and responsibilities, clear kind of communication protocol, and then really almost becoming partners with each other so that, one plus one equals seven. 

[00:16:31] Mahan Tavakoli: How much of that Cameron is preset and predetermined before the hiring and in the onboarding, how much of it is worked out through the relationship because you don't sit down ahead of time and decide you do these things, I do those other things.

[00:16:47] You don't have descriptions 

[00:16:48] Cameron Herold: of it. In a marriage, you tend to get to know the other person while you're dating and while you're engaged, right? While you're living together. So you do tend to have a lot of that onboarding time that you start to work stuff out. That's the interviewing and the onboarding stage of the CEO, COO, but you're right, some stuff will play itself out over time, but for sure in the early days, you have to know what 90 percent of this person's roles and responsibilities are going to be so that you can hire someone who has done it before.

[00:17:17] Last thing a CEO would want to do is to hire a COO who wants to run finance, if the CEO wants to run finance. Or the last thing you want to do is hire a COO who has to run marketing, but you have someone who's never run marketing and they suck at it, or they're a very inward facing COO. So you really do need to know the behavioral traits, the roles and responsibilities, the metrics they're responsible for, to hire someone who has done it before, Who loves doing it.

[00:17:43] It's their unique ability, and they don't want to do the stuff that you want to do. So it is quite critical to think through that part in the initial stages. And 

[00:17:51] Mahan Tavakoli: you use many examples, including the example of Shopify, Tobii, Lutke, and Harley Finkelstein. What did they get right? In their CEO 

[00:18:00] Cameron Herold: relationship.

[00:18:01] It's interesting. I met the team at Shopify when they only had 40 employees. I was doing a speaking event at their head office in Ottawa, Canada around 2008, 2009. So one of the things that they did right is they identified very early on that Tobias, the CEO was a very inward facing tech engineering kind of operational CEO, and Harley was a very outward facing business development, sales, marketing, PR.

[00:18:26] Kind of culture whereas most COOs are very inward facing. Most companies, you can't name the COO because they stay focused internally. In Shopify's case, they needed a COO who was very outward facing because Tobias tended to be, for the first 15 or so years, very inward facing. It's only in the last couple of years that we're even seeing him speak to the media.

[00:18:49] Really, for the first 14, 15 years, he was a very inward facing 

[00:18:52] Mahan Tavakoli: so there is this yin and yang, the role is not predetermined. It's a good fit for that other individual's capabilities. 

[00:19:03] Cameron Herold: And also for the stage that your company is in. So I'll give an example. The current COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK where I was. The COOI was the COO from 2 million to 106 million.

[00:19:15] They needed a very entrepreneurial COO A COO who knew exactly what to do. 'cause nobody else had any idea how to grow the business. They needed somebody who could make it up on the go. Someone very outward facing, speaking to the media, doing speaking events. Now they have a COO who's taken them from 100 million to 450 million, who is very inward facing.

[00:19:36] He would have been terrible in the first seven years. In fact, Eric and I have been friends since 1987. We started a fraternity together in Ottawa, Canada. I was president year one, he was president year two. He would have been a horrible COO for the first seven years because he didn't know how to build a franchise company, he wasn't that entrepreneurial, and he was not an outward facing COO.

[00:19:57] But for the last 13 years, he's been unbelievable. Because he's very inward facing process and engineering and operations and systems And he didn't have to know how to grow a franchise company He just knows how to scale a corporation how to scale an organization The trust and the communication was very similar with brian eric's very detail oriented I didn't need to be detail oriented back in those six years because we just need to get momentum creating momentum.

[00:20:24] So even though it's the same company and the same CEO, you then have to look at the stage that company is in, almost like growing a human. You treat a human being very differently when they're one year old, when they're 10 years old, when they're 20 years old, when they're 30 years old. Me growing my 23 year old son is very different from when I was growing him as a two year old, even though it's the same person.

[00:20:43] So you have to think of the organization that same way, which is the same. skill that the CEO and COO need to develop together. 

[00:20:50] Mahan Tavakoli: That's why there isn't a set set of skills and, or capabilities. It's part dependent on the individual you're partnering with part dependent on the organization part dependent on the cycle that organization is 

[00:21:06] Cameron Herold: in.

[00:21:07] It's also why I referenced the article, the misunderstood role of the COO that came out in Harvard Business Review about 17 years ago. They really identified the different types of COOs that companies need to bring. 

[00:21:18] Because in addition to types of roles, it's also about the stage of company. The behavioral traits, the current CEO, the roles and responsibilities. It's a very complicated role. Most heads of marketing could be the head of marketing for most companies. Most heads of HR could be the head of HR for most companies.

[00:21:36] Most heads of IT. The problem is The COO has so many other complexities built in. So it really is finding that yin and yang. And that's why I wrote the book, the second command. It's also why we have the podcast. The second command podcast is we want to get the insights from COOs on how to grow companies.

[00:21:55] Everybody interviews the entrepreneur. I want the rest of the story. If I was to talk to your mom and dad, and I said to your mom, Hey mom, how did you grow Mahan? She would tell us how she grew you as a human being and how she raised you in Corba. And then I'd ask your dad, Hey dad, how did you grow Mahan?

[00:22:10] And he'd have a very true story. They'd be very different stories. Some parts would be similar, but some parts would be vastly different. That's why I run the second command podcast is to get the rest of the story to understand the COO's role in growing these midsize and entrepreneurial organizations.

[00:22:27] Mahan Tavakoli: It is an incredible opportunity for organizations. Cameron, I worked for many years at Dale Carnegie, and I had a chance to report primarily to the COO and in some functions to the CEO, they were the most outstanding partnership they complimented each other well, but people couldn't see how they could get along.

[00:22:51] It was more that yin and yang that worked effectively in that organization. 

[00:22:56] Cameron Herold: It was the yin and yang and it was also the trust and respect that they had for each other and clarity around roles and responsibilities that they could divide and conquer, right? So it was the fact that they could trust each other, they could communicate together, they knew what each person's job was, they supported each other, and they didn't try to do the other person's job, 

[00:23:13] they had to be very different because there were very different parts of the organization to run. 

[00:23:17] Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. So I wonder how does the CEO COO role relate to how they work with the board?

[00:23:26] Cameron Herold: So we can either have a board of advisors or a board of directors, very different board of advisors tend to be very smart humans that are helping you grow the organization. Boards of directors tend to be very smart humans that are helping you to ensure that you're following rules and regulations and compliance and proper protocols and making sure that the shareholders are taken care of.

[00:23:47] So if they're more of a regulatory and compliance and oversight, let's assume we're going on the board of advisors side of things. I think the CEO and COO both showing up to all the board meetings is very powerful because you can give the board a lot more color, a lot more information, a lot more of the details that one person doesn't necessarily have all the answers or oversights for.

[00:24:09] It also allows the two of them to almost like a husband and wife showing up to counseling together. You get really good advice when the two of you can stay in sync. 

[00:24:17] It's the CEO is the one who has to stay connected with the board of advisors and board of directors more. The COO should be preparing all the board prep packages and the information packages and the followup with the board and making sure that the board is kept advised, but the CEO should be there keeping the relationships and staying in connection.

[00:24:36] You don't want to have too many people having the direct outreach and direct communication outside of the meetings with the board. Because then it gets messy, right? It starts to triangulate the discussion where it's he's told me this and she told me that. And somewhere in between is the truth.

[00:24:51] You really need one person communicating with those people. Except if you're all in the same room, which just doesn't happen outside of the board meetings. 

[00:24:58] Now there are a lot of times when CEO and the CEO have a great relationship, but there are times when there is friction and it doesn't work well.

[00:25:06] Mahan Tavakoli: Would love to get some of your thoughts of what are the biggest contributors to the relationship not working out well for the organization. 

[00:25:15] Cameron Herold: It goes right back to a husband and wife being in a traditional marriage. Not enough time spent hanging out together and doing fun stuff together and liking each other.

[00:25:24] Not enough time being able to spend away from the kids where you can talk through the tough issues. Not getting marriage counseling or coaching so somebody can help you in your relationship. My wife and I started working with a marriage coach within a week of getting married, not because we were having problems, but because we wanted to have a high performance marriage.

[00:25:41] So you need to always be working on those things. What can contribute to problems is usually communication where you don't have time on a weekly basis, staying in sync, or people are working on different parts of the business without updating the other person. Again, not staying in sync or people doing other people's jobs, when you start doing each other's jobs, you end up with problems and that ends up with frustrations.

[00:26:05] So it's around communication trust and clarity, and then timing the calendar to stay, in love with each other. Okay. 

[00:26:11] Mahan Tavakoli: I like that analogy, Cameron, because one of the organizations I'm working with right now, the CEO and the COO end up canceling their one on ones more often.

[00:26:22] And it's one of the contributors to some of the conflict that they end up having as a 

[00:26:27] Cameron Herold: result. Massive problem when the CEO and COO need to have that weekly meeting every single week without exception. I remember years ago when we were starting up what is now called Gerber Auto Collision in the U.

[00:26:39] S. and it was called Boyd Auto Body in Canada. And I said to the CEO, I need to have a weekly call with you. And he goes, I don't need a call with you. And I'm like, no, I need the call with you every week to stay in sync, to be inspired, to run problems through you, to bounce ideas off you, just to stay connected on a weekly basis.

[00:26:57] I need that time you and I. He's Oh, fine. Okay. Then we'll do the weekly call. And it just became part of our normal weekly rhythms. It's like date night. You have to put it in the calendar. If you cancel date night too many times in a row, one of the partners is going to start to get frustrated and you're going to start to drift apart.

[00:27:14] . I couldn't 

[00:27:15] Mahan Tavakoli: agree with you more. Now earlier, as you were talking about generational issues, you mentioned AI, how do you see. Technological changes and trends impacting organizational leadership.

[00:27:28] Cameron Herold: Cameron? So years ago I saw someone with a T-shirt on and it said, somewhere right now someone is practicing, and when they meet you at head-to-head competition, they'll beat you. And then I saw us saying, again, years ago that it said, if the rate of change outside your business is greater than the rate of change inside your business, you're outta business.

[00:27:47] I saw that 30 years ago. Right now, more than ever, business is changing. Now, the only employees, managers, leaders that need to be worried about losing their job to AI are the managers and leaders and employees that are not leveraging AI. It's almost like If you didn't want to use Wi Fi or didn't want to use a laptop, that was okay 23, 24 years ago.

[00:28:12] But if you're trying to run a business or be an executive now without Wi Fi and without a laptop, you're out of a job. So there's tools out there to help you be more efficient and more effective and more automated and faster at doing your role. If you don't embrace those, someone else will, and they will kick your ass.

[00:28:28] So it's important for people to learn the different AI tools, to practice the different AI tools. It's also important for companies to let employees spend one or two hours a week playing with all the different AI tools. ChatGPT is only one of around 15, 000 different AI tools that exist. There's actually a really cool dashboard called there's an AI for that and it shows all the different AI tools broken down by category That do all these different tasks We should be allowing employees to play with those tools and we should be bringing in a consultant or a coach on a monthly Basis teaching us more AI tools so that we can leverage those but yeah every executive in every company today Needs to embrace this as much as you leveraged a laptop and wifi 25 years ago.

[00:29:13] Or you will literally be put out of a job by AI or by someone who is leveraging ai. 

[00:29:19] Mahan Tavakoli: It is one of those things that has accelerated the pace of change as you were talking about. The pace of change is faster outside your organization than inside your organization. You're going to implode AI and these exponential technologies have caused there to be much more accelerated change in that external world.

[00:29:39] Cameron Herold: And it's not going to wait for you, right? It's not going to slow down just because you're not ready. So yeah, we need to actually embrace this change. If you don't embrace the change, you will die. 

[00:29:48] Mahan Tavakoli: Cameron. One other thing I would love to get your thoughts on is I've seen some lack of clarity and confusion.

[00:29:56] When CEOs have a strong chief of staff and then the role of the COO, how does that break down and relationship typically 

[00:30:06] Cameron Herold: work? Okay. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. The chief of staff is a title that came out of government. It was popularized in the movie, the West wing, where you had a very high powered executive assistant who is there to control the calendar and communication and team projects on behalf of the president of the United States.

[00:30:28] Your company is not the United States. And more often than not, your CEO is not flying at a level that they need a chief of staff. They need a very strong executive assistant or virtual assistant. So lesson number one is if you don't have an assistant, you are one. But you need a virtual assistant first, an executive assistant second, possibly even a personal assistant if you're busy running a busy household.

[00:30:49] But the chief of staff, their role is to do three things. To control all the communication, in, out, top, down, on behalf of the CEO or executive. So if you're not going to have them manage all of your communication, you don't need a chief of staff. Number two is they control your calendar. They accept and reject meetings.

[00:31:07] They control who sees you when on your calendar. They literally run your calendar for you. If you're not delegating that, you don't need a chief of staff. You need an executive assistant. And number three, they oversee all the projects and deliverables on behalf of the chief, they control all that.

[00:31:21] So if they're not managing the deliverables and managing the projects of your entire leadership team. You don't need a chief of staff. Most companies out there need an executive assistant for their CEO and their COO, but they're putting a title that was really meant to be used at a very different level.

[00:31:36] So I think it's a title. It's being very misused. 

[00:31:39] Mahan Tavakoli: Love that clarity that you just added to it, Cameron couldn't agree with you more. A lot of times rather than having a strong executive assistant, they give someone. A title of chief of staff that adds to more confusion in terms of the decision making within the organization.

[00:31:55] Cameron Herold: Totally. And it's not even what they're really hiring for in the first place, right? 

[00:31:58] Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. Now, Cameron, how can the audience find out more about you, your book and follow 

[00:32:02] Cameron Herold: your work? So all of my content you can find at Cameron herald.

[00:32:07] com and it's h e r o l d. com. My book, the second in command and all five of my other books, vivid vision, double, et cetera, are all available on Amazon audible and iTunes. And then for anybody who is in an operations role, manager, director, VP, et cetera, take a look at the op spot because the op spot is an online community.

[00:32:26] It's a mastermind community that no entrepreneurs are allowed to join. It's not for COOs. It's only for people in operations or manager roles. And then lastly, if you are a COO of a company doing at least 5 million or greater, typically 20 to 50 million, take a look at joining the COO alliance. And then lastly, the second command podcast subscribe.

[00:32:44] We have some incredible guests that you'd all benefit from listening to. 

[00:32:48] Mahan Tavakoli:  I really appreciate your insights and all the great work you're doing on one of the most critical. Pieces that I see missing and or not done well in organizations. And that is making sure the COO is also set up for success.

[00:33:04] Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. 

[00:33:06] Cameron Herold: Cameron. Thanks Mahan. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for spending the time with me today.