Outdoor Afro’s Post

The Kind of COO I Aim To Be I know it's a little random, but I've always wanted to be a COO. I remember in college I googled the title because it kept catching my attention. If I could tell college me that I'd go on to start Virtual COO and not only get to do the role but also help others do it as well, I'd be so excited! It wasn't a straight shot here, but here we are. Whether we work together on a Strategy Session, I come in as your fractional COO, or I help you find your perfect Operations Professional, here is what I believe about this role: ▪️The top priority is to help move the business forward. Not to just check tasks off. I reprioritize often based on this. ▫️Become a student of the CEO. Learn how they communicate and what their vision is. Then use my gifts to help get there. 🔹Take care of the team. There are a lot of great teachings out there about culture, but I believe if you treat others like you want to be treated you'll get most of it done. 🔸Turn the vision into an executable plan, then guide that plan forward. CEOs are often (though not always) visionaries and this is their greatest need. ▪️Use processes and systems as a way to reach goals faster. Not just to add processes and systems. Fellow Operations professionals - what did I miss here? What questions do you have about the COO role?

How to Find a Chief Operating Officer to Take Your Company to the Next Level As a business leader, you understand how having the right people in key roles can make or break your organization. This statement rings particularly true for the chief operating officer role. The COO is responsible for not only developing successful operations strategies but also driving growth in every part of the business. If you don’t clearly understand what you need, it can be easy — and costly — to hire the wrong person for the role. Discover how to know whether you’re ready to hire a COO, what you need to do before you start your search, and how to set yourself and the company up for success in the search. https://lnkd.in/gQ9cdKs3

Hiring a Fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO) can be a huge task for any business. Most of the operations lean on their shoulders, and you need to trust them. You need someone who is professional, but also personable enough to see eye to eye with employees and customers. It can be overwhelming to make a move, but it doesn’t have to be. Keep it simple. I put together a simple and easy Top 10 to reference if you decide to onboard a Fractional COO into your organization. If you base your consultation questions around these items and get positive feedback on all of them it’ll work out in the favor of you, your team, your clients, and your company. If a Fractional COO is appealing to you and your company then let’s chat. ATLATL Business Solutions is the simple way to accelerate your business. #fractionalcoo #fractionalexecutive #leadership #businessadvice #growth

Tom Hunt gave himself the CEO job title on day 1. But he wasn’t. Until last week. 4 years later. Why? Most small business CEOs aren’t CEOs. They’re: - Account managers - Salespeople - Customer service reps - HR support - Legal strategy Which is fine, in small businesses, everyone needs to chip in. He’d done all of those (and more) over the past 4 years. But not anymore. Small businesses need to mature. After all, who is supposed to steer the ship if the captain is scrubbing the decks? And the bigger the ship, the more it needs a full-time captain to stop it from running off course. It’s time for Tom to become the CEO. Shout out to the Fame leadership team for helping Tom Hunt to make this transition: - Alexandra Vivian Panait, Head of Account Management - Gemma Powell, Head of Operations - Michael Twiddy, Head of Growth If you’re leading a small business - check in to see which role you have. If you’re working for a small business - help your leader become an actual CEO. The ship will thank you.

Where are you at with your company's #successionplanning I spoke with a senior executive at a growing company yesterday just to catch up and talk about life. As all work relationships do, our conversation turned to business and how everything is progressing. He was golfing with his #CEO the other weekend and it came up that the CEO isn't going to be renewing his contract when the time comes. So in 2026, my contact with most likely become the next CEO. Woohoo for him! Great role, great company. But what scares him the most about this change is that he holds all the keys at the company. So if something happens, the company will come to a stand still. Could they survive? Possibly, but they will have a massive hole to dig out of and it would take quite a few months to find someone who can take over. What's my point to this? Before s**t hits the fan, make sure you have someone as a backup that can keep the company going. Better yet, if the company is functioning just as well or better with this person in place, you don't need to look outside for a new person to take over. You've got yours in the exact spot you need them to be. #executive #successionplanning #growth

It’s no secret that I believe in the Chief of Staff role. But I talk to CEOs every day who aren't familiar with the role and who don't yet understand how a Chief of Staff can help. Here's what I tell them: I tell them that I am a Founder, too. And here at Nova Chief of Staff, after operations and administrative support, our THIRD hire was a Chief of Staff. Why? As Nova's Founder: - I was managing too many deliverables myself. - I was chasing too many executional and follow up tasks. - I was owning too many workstreams. - I was too tied to daily operations. Instead, as Nova's Founder: - I needed more time to build relationships. - I needed more time to focus on growth and strategy. - I needed more time in the vision space. - I needed more time to dedicate to Nova content and thought leadership. If you're a CEO and you can relate, you need a Chief of Staff. I offer 10-minute pro-bono chats with Founders/CEOs who want to understand how a CoS can specifically help them. I LOVE this part of my job. LMK if I can help you, too. #chiefofstaff #CEO #leadership #generalist #founder

i fired our CEO… aka me. in the past 2.5 years, we built our company to nearly a $3M in revenue business with a small and mighty team of A++ players. literally the best team that knows no boundaries. but as we built the business of GTM Partners with the vision to be the go-to for go-to-market, i neglected the values part of it. and because we didn’t build our business with values first, everyone operated with their own values and things got out of hand. candidly, it has been the lowest point in my career as i saw this happening and had all the power as the CEO to stop it, address it, and change it but here is the brutal truth… i was scared. afraid… what if this rocks the boat? what if one of the A++ players quit? every person on the team is A++ but even the pirates need a captain to lead them and i failed. i failed to lead. because of my inability to make values-based decision, i caused the team to flounder and even with the teams best intentions, everyone rowed in a different direction. i have no one to blame but myself and i had to fire my old-self - that CEO is no good. i have to say that out loud. thankfully, in the last two weeks, everything came to an head and now the leadership team has a clear direction and energized to do things differently and better. i have a clear direction and i vowed to no longer be a by stander. it’s not going to be rosy immediately but i and the team can now call out anything that is not our values-based behavior and we can address it head on. thanks to the leadership team that they have accepted my apology and now it’s up to me to hold my side of the bargain as they agreed to hold theirs. so we defined our values they are as simple as A.B.C.D.: A - always be learning and innovating (thinking outside the box is expected) B - we work better together (heroes are teams) C - we celebrate wins (no win is too small to celebrate) D - we deliver on our promise (both internally and externally) these aren’t perfect but are memorable and practical. i know we have the right skillsets on the team and with these values, we have a winning combination to build a high-road leadership team, the way John describes in his book. if anyone can’t operate with these values, we can now help them find a new home but they can’t be on this team anymore. leadership starts with me if i have the audacity to call myself the CEO (now the new CEO) then i am ready to become a leader, coming in better and stronger than ever. Love, Sangram - Pls help me welcome the new values-based CEO of GTM Partners

To all of you who have joined the partnerships at your firms this year, big congratulations! I hope you've been able to celebrate in style and had a moment or two to breath. As you get used to your new role, the advice captured in this article might resonate: “start with the end in mind”. Sometimes our inclinations following a promotion are to put our heads down and keep doing what we’ve been doing. But new roles bring more than a title change - new (sometimes daunting) responsibilities and expectations, yes, but also, this very cool opportunity to pause and take stock. To consider the legacy we want to leave, and to decide how we want to practice, lead, and grow in this next phase of our career.

The same note to hiring managers! In my time in support, I have worked with some of the most intelligent, resourceful, and driven people I've ever met. They often are not only supporting a product technically but also building relationships with customers, learning about the customers' businesses and needs directly, developing creative solutions when the product fails to meet those needs, acting as a consultant, and coordinating with dev, product, customer success, and everything in between. Despite this they often have difficulty getting hired into other positions within the industry because they don't already have that specific role on their resume. If you want to succeed, promote and hire from support! And in the meantime, get support colleagues in your product meetings. Their insight can save you a lot of headaches down the road! Remember that far above "technically savvy" support resources are PROBLEM SOLVERS and that is going to ALWAYS be an asset.

Good leadership is hard to find, yet crucial to the long-term success of an organization. My friend Jared Skye talks about how leadership can't ignore the human impact of business decisions. #leadership #corporate #business #humanCenteredBusiness