Succeeding as a Chief Operating Officer

“It’s not about providing customers what they want, but about providing them what they need.” This week, our Chief Operating Officer, Chad Mead, shared how he’s found success as a COO from 30 years of experience within the IT industry.

Learn more about Chad and our executive team here.

Transcript

Good afternoon, good evening, and good night, depending upon where you're watching this and when you're watching this. I'm Chad Mead. I'm the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer here at Acuative. "Why is that relevant?" you may ask yourself. Well, first, let me start off by telling you a little bit about myself and my background.

Background

I've actually been in the business for well over 30 years, and back when I started, there really weren't MIS degrees and CIS degrees. So I actually happened to go to school from a liberal arts standpoint. But I really first found my interest in IT and IS and the technology based services primarily because I grew up in a household which we would call the home of a nerd nowadays, or maybe even a geek. My father was an audiophile, but he also was one of the first people to have a computer in his home. He was in the construction business and needed to be able to do a lot of number crunching. So I was fortunate enough to fall in love with computers from a very young age.

From a career standpoint, when it came time to start looking at a way of earning a living, I actually started working at CompuServe. Some of you may remember that, some of you may not. But at the end of the day, CompuServe happened to be one of the first places where you could really have a technology experience, especially if you were in Columbus, Ohio and not on the West Coast. After CompuServe and through the career at CompuServe, I actually ended up working at JP Morgan, eventually Cargill, SuperValue, Acuative, Ensono and many other places.

I had the opportunity to serve in a variety of roles, everything from a network engineer through operations, eventually a Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, as well as a CTO and a CIO. I've been blessed as part of that career to serve on both sides of the desk as both a recipient of services and somebody who actually provided services to customers. And because of that, I really am excited about being back at Acuative and the opportunity to take Acuative on into the future and continue to grow our business and provide great support for our customers.

How have you found success as a COO?

Oftentimes I get asked this question as far as how I became successful or found success as a COO. And the answer, as with any role at the end of the day, is I had great leaders that I was able to watch, learn from and be able to tailor my own style afterwards. I had an incredible COO at Cargill as well as at SuperValue. Individuals who taught me that the role of a COO isn't just about cost control.

Oftentimes people think about having to manage costs and guarantee and ensure delivery of services and make sure things happen efficiently and effectively. But at the end of the day, one of the things they taught me was being a COO effectively is about balance, about balancing cost control versus value creation and value delivery. So see, it's not always about making sure you can reduce your cost to the lowest possible amount, but it's about providing value to your end customers, whether those are internal customers or external customers, ensuring that not only are you creating value for them, but you're also delivering value for them. Everything else is really table stakes from an operational standpoint.

And it doesn't matter whether you're in technology, whether you're in supply chain, manufacturing, retail, you name it, all of the things as far as ensuring product A gets to location A on time and on budget, whether it's electronically or physically, that's all table stakes. That's all things that we make sure we find good leaders, good people to help ensure that that delivery occurs. At the end of the day though, it's about that delivery being valued and going above and beyond, just doing just enough to be able to provide additional value add services and quality to your customers.

How have you found success as an IT leader?

Similar question gets asked as far as being an IT leader. And obviously the majority of my career, as I mentioned previously, has been in the IT space, whether that's an internally facing IT organization or an IT services company.

A lot of the times though, I had a great leader when I was at JP Morgan who told me it's not about providing them what they want, but about providing them what they need. And as an IT leader that really resonated with me because oftentimes I considered that our job was to ensure that we gave them what they want, what they asked for. And the reality is, as a business leader, we don't always know what we want, we know what we have in mind, we know the outcome we are trying to achieve, but we can't necessarily put a solution to that. And it's our job as It leaders to help interpret that.

Much like an architect interprets a buyer or customers' dreams into reality on paper, an IT leader has to take what the goals of the business are and translate them into IT delivery and IT services. That also all starts with listening to the customer at the end of the day and speaking in their language and understanding what their business is. Because if you make suggestions for them that are not relevant because not all business is the same, you may make a suggestion for a financial or insurance business that is going to be different than retail because how they operate, the margins they base on, the services they provide are all different.

The other thing is listening as I mentioned. And listening means not just listening to what they're asking about, what their goals are, but also listening to them when they have problems with service and taking accountability for that service and more importantly, delivering on the expectations you set with them. All of these at the end of the day is what I've been fortunate enough and what I've modeled my career after and has led to where I am and hopefully being considered to be a successful IT leader.

But one thing I do want to talk about that's not necessarily called out specifically, but is a theme that runs both through a COO and an IT leader. And quite honestly, it doesn't matter what kind of leader you're talking about, at the end of the day. All of those roles require a whole organization. It requires a lot of people doing their job every day, day in and day out, all times of the day, all around the world.

Those individuals ultimately are what have helped me be successful as a COO, as a CISO, as a CAO. Use whatever title or analogy you want to use in this, but it's the people who make it successful. And your role, as a leader, regardless of title, is to help grow those individuals, to empower them, to retain them, and to lift them up to be successful. Without that, you will not be successful as a leader regardless, because you can do a lot of things as an individual contributor. But as any type of leader, that involves leading people. And the way to do that is to ensure you've provided them with the right environment, the right coaching, the right support, and the right opportunity.

So ultimately, my success as whether a COO or an IT leader has all been incumbent upon the wonderful people that I've had the privilege of leading throughout the years.