The core COO skill: growing people, not managing functions

Executive overview

Most COOs try to master every functional area. That's the wrong focus. The only skill that scales is growing people — their skills, their confidence, and their connections.

Think of every person on your team climbing two ladders simultaneously: one for skills, one for confidence. If either shakes, they freeze. Your job is to stabilise both so they can take more off your plate.

The COO's real job is to delegate everything except genius — and grow people until they can handle it.

The two-ladder model for growing people

• Every manager climbs two ladders at once: skills and confidence
• If the skills ladder shakes, they stop; same for confidence
• Growing skills builds confidence; growing confidence unlocks more skills
• Your to-do list should have no tasks that stay with you — delegate everything
• Delegate, then use coaching and situational leadership to build capability

Why functional expertise is not required

• COOs don't need to know the industry — they need to know people
• Cameron coached Sprint's COO (base salary $2.8M) on entrepreneurial thinking, not operations
• Coached a digital marketing agency to 2,500 people with zero digital marketing experience
• That agency became the #2 company in the US to work for on Glassdoor
• The skill transferred because execution, culture, and people are universal

What COOs must actually be good at

• Leading and caring about people
• Knowing each direct report's personal life, hopes, frustrations, and insecurities
• Communication and delegation
• Priority management and time allocation
• Getting results through others, not through personal output

The accountability trap

• "I can't hold people accountable" — wrong framing: hire accountable people
• "We can't get everything done" — wrong framing: learn priority and time management
• Lack of results usually signals missing skills, not missing effort
• Sending someone to do a job without training is like sending a kid to baseball without teaching them to catch