What COOs must do differently to lead through change

Executive overview

Most COOs are trapped doing work they should be delegating, managing weekly numbers instead of three-year vision, and building systems instead of building people. The role demands the strongest leadership in the organisation — not because COOs run the most functions, but because they lead across all of them.

Three priorities define the effective COO right now: mastering financial literacy through a period of stagflation, growing people faster than the market is changing them, and leveraging AI before competitors do.

The COO's job is to save the entrepreneur from themselves — while keeping their best qualities intact.

Leading through economic headwinds

• Any leader under 35 has never built through a downturn — stagflation (recession plus inflation simultaneously) is new territory for most.
• COOs must have a firmer grip on the P&L, gross margins, and budget ratios than was ever needed in a rising market.
• Rate of change outside the business exceeding rate of change inside means the business is already failing.
• Decisions that used to take months now need days — faster data-driven responses are non-negotiable.
• Tech COOs specifically: build for profitability, not just the next funding round. The "build or bust" model has broken.

Growing people as the core COO discipline

• Employees must grow in three dimensions simultaneously: skills, confidence, and network.
• Skills ladder and confidence ladder reinforce each other — gains on one drive gains on the other.
• Plug people into external communities relevant to their function (operations, IT, marketing) to access shared resources and peer learning.
• Develop executive-functioning skills — delegation, situational leadership, coaching, conflict resolution, project management — not just technical skills.
• Leverage training spend: record sessions, share widely, assign reading, build an internal program around the output.

Giving specific, frequent praise

• Praise must be immediate and specific — not a 90-day review mention, but caught in the moment.
• Name the exact behaviour and the exact core value it demonstrates.
• Howard Behar (Starbucks CEO) spent two hours every Friday handwriting personal thank-you notes — 5% of a 40-hour week deliberately allocated to praise.
• Block calendar time for praise as a formal working-on-the-business activity.
• Leaders who are too busy to praise are doing the wrong work.

Managing the CEO relationship

• The COO is the brakes to the CEO's accelerator — tame without removing the energy that makes entrepreneurial leaders effective.
• To shift a controlling CEO: raise the issue privately, frame it as harm to their own goals (profitability, reputation, freedom from conflict).
• Never challenge a CEO in front of the board, leadership team, or employees — they will defend, not listen.
• Build trust first; harder conversations become possible once a foundation exists.
• CEOs and COOs see the world differently by design — understand how to communicate with each other's style (data vs. one-sentence summary).

The COO-to-CEO transition

• Most COOs lack the entrepreneurial DNA to become CEO — and most don't want it. The natural progression is a bigger or better COO role.
• Roughly 5% have the traits; typically founding employees who were already operating as integrators.
• Making the leap requires releasing the old COO tasks — letting others own systems and playbooks — and taking on what previously felt frivolous (culture, energy, vision).
• CEOs ask the leadership question: "What system is missing that allowed this to break?" — not "Why is this specific thing broken?"
• COOs who can't let go of execution will cap their own careers.

Leveraging AI across the organisation

• Employees who don't learn to use AI today are at risk; those who do will win.
• Give teams one to two hours a week to explore AI tools, then share findings in a brief report or video.
• Over 12,500 AI tools now exist across roughly 10,000 task categories — the surface area is vast.
• Companies that leverage AI for real profitability — not hype — will outperform, as Amazon did with the internet.
• AI adoption is a COO-level operational priority, not just an IT question.

What the COO Alliance exists to solve

• COOs don't fit in entrepreneur-focused communities — a dedicated peer network fills the gap.
• Members from 17 countries share hiring systems, AI adoption strategies, and operational frameworks.
• COOs need communities like YPO/EO created for entrepreneurs: structured peer learning, shared resources, confidence-building outside the CEO's shadow.
• The COO role varies radically by industry and company stage — the right match between COO and CEO is more nuanced than any other function.

What actually matters

At the end of the conversation, Cameron's single takeaway: if you genuinely care about your people as humans — their fears, their home lives, their insecurities — they will go through walls to build the company. Everything else is the mechanism. The people are the point.