In this episode we discuss the topic of: Generative AI & the Impact on the COO role. Our special guest is Aarti Samani, an experienced executive leader with a fascinating career in AI, spanning investment banking and high growth technology businesses. We discuss the following: How does a smaller, tech-enabled company get started? Who should own the quality of data ingested into a generative AI model? Is it good enough to throw a bit of policy around the use of chatGPT and how SaaS tools with generative-based features should be used? Is it realistic to think more broadly around orchestration of organisational data and insights for the business right now, given where these products are at? Are we talking about a Snowflake - Looker type solution for generative AI? What is a sensible, phased approach? How should you think about internal communications and trainingWhat would you say to the COO that is heads down on the business and feels guilty about not spending enough time thinking about how to leverage AI? References: Coral, from cohere.com, a knowledge assistant to increase productivity of strategic teams: https://txt.cohere.com/introducing-coral/Aarti Samani LI.  Reach out for complementary discovery call to discuss how to accelerate your business growth: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aartisamani/Fiverr AI Services for cost effective, on-demand experts to help you integrate Generative AI in your products or leverage Generative AI productivity services for business efficiency:  https://www.fiverr.com/cp/ai-servicesNuclia to help you harness unstructured data from various sources, to create chatbots, knowledge hubs and more:  https://nuclia.com/what-you-can-build/Runway Finance to consolidate all inputs for more precise and easier financial modelling and forecasting : https://runway.com/Biography: Aarti is an experienced executive leader with a fascinating career in AI, spanning Investment Banking and High growth technology businesses. She has successfully scaled three venture backed organizations, two of which exited to Microsoft and Medtronic. The third is a global category leader in the biometrics and identity verification sector. Aarti’s innate ability to connect disparate macro and micro data points, has allowed her to align all business functions to accelerate growth.  Founder of Shreem Growth Partners, Aarti works with visionary founders bringing innovative AI based solutions to market.Aarti’s acumen and industry success led Cranfield School of Management to name her a Woman to Watch for board positions. A meditator, traveler and cancer survivor, Aarti’s journey continues to inspire.  This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we discuss the topic of: How does a co-founder COO survive and thrive? Our special guest is Tom Mundy, is the COO of Goodlord which has scaled to over 350 employees, raising more than £50m in capital and turning over tens of millions of pounds.How did you end up being COO? Why was that the right title? What were the inflection points for your growth? How did you manage to survive for the last 8 years given the ups and downs? What is your view on mentorship? What is a good investor and what does it matter? What is the role of the COO when it comes to unit economics? How have you dealt with burnout? Given you were learning on the job, how did you think about ownership of functions? What happened in that first conversation when the new CEO entered the business? Biography: Tom started his first business when he was 14 selling fudge at a market stall. He carried on starting businesses throughout university and finally found his calling in tech at the age of 24 where he co-founded Goodlord. During his time at Goodlord as COO he helped the business scale to over 350 employees, raising more than £50m in capital and turning over tens of millions of pounds.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we discuss the topic of: How does a COO work effectively with the board? Our special guest is Keith Wallington, the former COO of Mimecast and currently Chairperson working across five B2B SaaS organisations. Keith lays out “what good looks like” in board stewardship for growth stage businesses. He also lifts the hood on expectations for the COO.What do you know now that you wish you had known as a COO?What do you want from a COO in board meetingsHow much do you tow the line if you are disagreeing with your CEO when in front of the board?If you see a CEO and COO always agreeing in board meetings is that a red flag or do you assume they are simply well aligned.What's the role of the board in the hiring process for a COO?Should the entire exec team be a part of the board and what role should the COO play?How should the COO prepare for a board meeting, without killing themselves in the process?Do you feel like COOs should have a close relationship with the chairperson?What's your advice to the COO’s dealing with an old skool board?To minimise board reporting effort can you simply re-purpose reporting you already do with the exec team and wider company? References: 10 tips for running board meetings as efficiently as Hanno Renner, CEO of PersonioBiography: Keith has led strategy and execution in technology businesses since the 1990’s, driving growth in Europe, the USA and Africa: His experience in driving online business models spans Retail Banking, Telecommunications, Online Live Broadcasting, Software and Software as a Service (SaaS): he has led online initiatives at businesses including Microsoft, Standard Bank, Omnicom/TBWA, MTN Group, Truphone and Mimecast.From 2008 – 2014 Keith spent 6 years driving growth at Mimecast, best in class and global leader in SaaS based email security, archiving and continuity: Here he assumed a number of C Level roles, including COO, spanning most of the business from Marketing to Customer Experience to Technical Operations as he championed scalable, efficient growth during this phase of hyper growth (from $6m to over $110m Annual Recurring Revenue) and global expansion from the UK base. After preparing Mimecast for IPO Keith refocused his attention to support businesses on their growth journey. Keith invests in and assumes board roles with Series A to Growth stage companies. He engages directly and also collaborates with Venture Capital and Private Equity teams to co-invest and add depth to portfolio company boards.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we discuss the topic of a growth mindset and how that informs the COO role. Our special guest is David Norris, a three time COO for venture-backed organisations. David talks about managing critical feedback, personal growth and the transition to Chief Growth Officer.How has studying theology informed the type of COO you are? Is there a playbook for COO’s? What does the transition from COO to Chief Growth Officer look like in an 800-person company? What does the transition from a 16 person company to an 800 person company look like as COO? What is the connection between personal growth and organisational growth? How do you manage critical feedback? Biography: David is a seasoned internet leader, having worked in online operational, product, marketing and strategy roles since the turn of the century, mainly in travel and hospitality, including 4 stints as Chief Operating Officer, 3 of which were scaling fast growth venture capital (VC) backed scaleups. He was later a venture capital investor at Forward Partners incubating idea stage startups and now focuses on strategy and marketing in his role as Chief Growth Officer at Holiday Extras. David is also Non-Executive Director at The Sports Trust and mentors startup founders. He is a fellow of the COO roundtable, a community for startup and scaleups to come together and learn. He has a degree in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Manchester and a Diploma in Company Direction from The Institute of Directors.   He lives with his family in Deal, Kent, UK.Follow David at: Blog https://www.norrisnode.com  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidnorris Substack https://norrisnode.substack.com/p/the-size-of-your-team-determines This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we discuss a topic that is one everyone’s agenda: Efficiency vs. Growth: What does the new world look like? Our special guest is Reece Howe, CFO at C TWO. Reece tells it like it is when it comes to efficiency, ownership and organisational impact. How do you shift the culture of a company used to “growth at all costs” to one of capital efficiency and prudence? How should one think about the value and risks attached to sharing the cash burn and cash runway with the organisation?What does it mean to get “more from less?” and does this make sense? What is the best approach to budget ownership and responsibility?What do you expect from the COO in driving efficiency? Does it make sense for the COO to own operations across the organisation? How do you approach ownership of SaaS software spend across functions? References: A company replaced all of its managers with coaches. Employees became 20% more productive–and much happierBiography: Reece Howe qualified as an accountant and started his career at Deloitte, working in Audit and Corporate Finance. After a move to Innocent Drinks, where he assisted with the exit to Coca Cola, he founded two of his own startups, in elderly care and digital marketing, seeing them through to exit.Prior to his current role as CFO at C TWO, an Enterprise B2B SaaS company that develops an Automation Management Platform, he led finance at Signal AI (another Enterprise B2B SaaS startup) from Series A to Series D. Reece has a degree in Astrophysics from University College London and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.Follow Reece on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/reecekhowe/This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we address the elephant in the room: Do OKRs work? Our special guest is Jenny Herald, Vice President of Product Evangelism at Quantive which delivers better business outcomes for companies providing a strategy execution platform based on the OKR methodology.In this episode we get her experiences on the following questions: What are we doing wrong and how can we do it better? (we sneakily asked this twice!) If you have a good strategy, a series of solid plans and well understood KPI’s, what is the incremental value of OKRs? How do you avoid the conflation of business as usual KPI’s and change with OKRs when a lot of organisations simply transpose their ARR target as the topline OKR.  If OKRs are simply a framework to help you do the right stuff, why not use any number of other goal frameworks? Should OKRs involve all functions in the organisation? Should OKRs be cascaded down to every level?  We’ve all read Measure What Matters and Radical Focus and are still rolling it out wrong. If you want to make it work in practice, where do you start? Speaker notes and references:OKR Program Failure Prevention GuideIBM’s CEO expects A.I. to be so good at back office work that he plans to pause hiring humans for those jobsWhat is the Modern Operating Model?The Global State of OKRs Trends Report 2023OKR vs KPIs, What is the Difference?AMA with Christina Wodtke: Encouraging Autonomy and Writing Awesome OKRsFelipe Castro: The Intersection of OKRs and AgileUse OKRs to Set Goals for Teams, Not IndividualsThe difficulties of cascading OKRsOKRs Field Book Preview: 10 Universal ParametersAs Vice President of product evangelism, Jenny Herald champions Quantive's vision and shares how customers achieve better business outcomes with the world's most powerful Strategy Execution Platform based on the OKR methodology. Jenny also hosts the Dreams with Deadlines podcast where she interviews business leaders on aligning teams and organisations around a common purpose, the ups-and-downs of goal management, strategy execution, and everything in between.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we tackle the question of: How do you scale from 50 to 500 employees? Our special guest is Kristen Shannon, founder and CEO of Highliner a consultancy that helps high-growth businesses scale across people, systems and processes. In this episode we get her experiences on the following questions: What was the lesson in hiring 800 people in one year? How do you get out of your own way when it comes to structure and process?What are the scaling inflection points? How do you fight against the silos that develop in organisations? What are those hires that you're just like, oh my god, how did we survive without it?How do you minimise the mini-celebrity status you have as COO in an organisation, where employees massively read things into what you say and do? How much of your time is spent on rolling out processes versus helping people become better leaders and managing change? How do you make an organisation more accountable? How do you hold a team to account in an OKR check-in? Speaker notes and references:Rocket Fuel - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rocket-Fuel-Essential-Combination-Business/dp/1941631150Blitzscaling - https://amzn.eu/d/5J6EyBPKristen is a results-driven executive with over 10 years of experience in strategy development, operational execution, and organisational scaling. Her career focus has been working in high-pressure companies going through periods of significant and fast-paced growth.She has worked for ambitious organisations that have doubled in size year on year, leading both recruitment of over 800 FTE a year as well as leading and scaling teams in multiple functional areas. Kristen is the founder and CEO of Highliner. At Highliner, we are passionate about helping companies design and implement practical, scalable solutions that are the highest leverage to the organisations. We work with companies both on codifying their organisational culture and strategy to support growth as well as auditing and designing the operational systems, processes and tools needed to accomplish their key business objectives at scale. Some of our clients have included iProov (raised £70m growth round), Oxford Ionics (raise £30m Series A), Cisco Meraki (post acquisition) and Sonantic (acquired by Spotify).https://www.linkedin.com/company/highliner-technology/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristen-shannon/https://highlinertechnology.com/This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy