Tell Your People "I Don't Know" | Emily Schneider

Emily Schneider (0:00)

Your people don't need you to say everything's fine. You can say, I don't know, but here's what I'm doing to try to mitigate some of this. And some of this, I'm just gonna tell you, we're gonna work through it together. I'm not gonna leave you guys or let you down.

Mickey Anderson (0:15)

Today I'm joined by Emily Schneider, strategic executive and fractional COO with 25 years experience in both B2B and B2C, from startup all the way up to 300 million in revenue. Emily is my go-to most trusted source for getting stuff done, and not just getting stuff done, getting the right stuff done. Emily, thank you so much for spending time with me.

Emily Schneider (0:37)

You are most welcome and I am super excited to be here with you.

Mickey Anderson (0:41)

One of the things you and I have chatted about at Lank is how we prioritize the standards, the systems, the people, the org structure, all those components. I'd love to hear kind of your perspective on what you're seeing.

Emily Schneider (0:52)

In general, the COO role is very confusing to most people. They think it's operations. When it's truly not an operations role, I like to call it like the conductor of an orchestra. You have to understand every facet and how those all work together. Because your COO ideally should be somebody that can both step back and look at that large strategic picture, while also being able to dive in to get to the heart of the why when there are problems that need to be solved. And I think because the COO role can present and function in quite a few different ways, it can be a challenge for anyone, CEO or otherwise, to really understand.

They hear operations because operations is in the title. And so they immediately picture somebody coming in and doing processes, and somebody coming in and doing the steps and SOPs. And it's like, no, that is so far from the role. But more importantly, it really doesn't move the needle, because a company is made up of individuals, which are always changing, always in flux. And so what you're really dealing with isn't an SOP. It's more of a strategic and cultural integration. And how do you communicate? How do you work together? You know, does everyone understand the goal?

Mickey Anderson (2:17)

You and I have both seen this trap where we've got a company that's struggling. They're having trouble with performance or hitting their objectives, or they're at a growth plateau.

And they're like, we need to streamline, we need better workflows, we need better processes. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses there. When you see a company that's wanting to focus on that or focusing on that, when they have these performance issues, how are you looking at it? How are you having the conversation? What do you see?

Emily Schneider (2:42)

They think that and they're like, and we also want to cut costs. I think it's because for CEO, they feel like, and traditionally, they don't have strong organizational skills or they don't have strong structure skills. And if things are feeling like they're going off the rails and or things aren't working the way they want or a rollout isn't happening, they think it's, oh, well, we need more processes and we need more structure because that's why everything's going off the handle. And so they come in and they're like, let's do this, and we need a COO that's going to deal with all these operational issues. And that's when you said, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses and you're like, or the great one, do you now? Is that really what they, you know, like, oh my goodness. It's one of those really, I think, cool, but also it's a beautiful thing because the CEO is, there's somebody that comes in with these amazing ideas. What I have found traditionally, especially in small business, is they know how to do the thing. They don't know how to do the business. These smaller companies where the COO, you know, and just in the private sector in general, it's such a new concept of, so wait a minute, I get to be the face, I get to be the idea machine, and essentially this person is coming in to run the company and to make things happen, not to set new processes. And where those lines cross between the CEO and the COO, they can be very adaptable based on personality and skill set.

Mickey Anderson (4:05)

You and I have both gone into companies where they know they need something. There's performance issues that are happening, and they don't necessarily tie the COO or the operations or overall how the business runs to the performance problems. And there's this disconnect between what's actually causing our poor performance or inability to hit our objectives and what's actually gonna solve the problem. And you do such a good job of connecting the dots for people between here's where we wanna go, here's where we have problems, and here's what needs to change to fix it. So when you're looking at an organization who has performance problems and you're having that conversation, what are some of the things that you're looking for or connecting to understand what actually needs to change?