The Operations Room: A Podcast for COO’s

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: Podcorn - https://podcorn.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: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy

A deep dive into scaling a company from 50 to 500 employees with insights on hiring challenges, breaking silos, and minimizing celebrity status. The importance of processes, leadership development, and accountability in navigating growth. Special guest shares her experiences and strategies for success.

James Mitra, Founder of JBM, shares insights on hiring a COO, discussing salary equity, advice for women in negotiations, back channel references, and the importance of transparency in the hiring process.

Divinia Knowles, founder of the London COO Roundtable, shares her wisdom on the role of a COO, the differences between COO, Chief of Staff and Operations Lead, and measuring the success of a COO. She also provides advice for COOs struggling with their CEO. The podcast delves into the relationship between the COO and CEO, emphasizing trust and open communication.

We are the COO coaches to help you successfully scale in this new world where efficiency is as important as growth. Remember when valuations were 3-10x ARR and money wasn’t free? We do. Each week we share our experiences and bring in scale up experts and operational leaders to help you navigate both the burning operational issues and the larger existential challenges. Beth Ayers is a seasoned Chief Operating Officer and has helped raise over $200m from top funds - Softbank, Bessemer, TCV, MCC, Notion and Oxx. She’s built the GTM engines at Peak AI, NewVoiceMedia and Codility. Brandon Mensinga is a veteran Chief Operating Officer and has successfully ramped four VC-backed startups, two of which successfully exited; one to Nuance Communications and the other to Microsoft. Between us, we have over 30 years of experience building SaaS businesses with extensive FP&A, HR and operating model experience. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/operations-room/ Podcast website: https://operationsroom.co/ Brandon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonmensinga/ Bethany's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanyayers/ This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy