Right person right seat decisions determine whether a leadership team can operate without the founder. The process requires clear expectations, honest feedback, and a practical way to assess whether each leader gets the role, wants it, and has the capacity to succeed. Avoiding the conversation protects neither the employee nor the business.
In this episode of The COO Solution Podcast, host Derek Fredrickson talks with Expert EOS Implementer Megan Piper about building a healthy, accountable leadership team that can run without the founder constantly stepping in.
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About This Episode
Building a successful business is not just about having talented people. It is about putting the right people in the right seats, setting clear expectations, and building a leadership team that can operate without the founder constantly stepping in.
Megan has facilitated more than 500 EOS sessions and previously helped scale Planson International from $3 million to $52 million in revenue while serving as CFO and COO.
Together, Derek and Megan explore what makes the Visionary-Integrator relationship successful, how to build accountability across an organization, and why avoiding difficult conversations about team performance can hold a business back.
Megan also explains how EOS tools such as GWC, which stands for Gets It, Wants It, and Capacity to Do It, and LMA, which stands for Leadership plus Management equals Accountability, help founders build stronger teams, including distributed and hybrid teams.
In This Episode
[01:48] From CFO and COO to EOS Implementer
How Megan helped scale a company from $3 million to $52 million and discovered the value of a structured operating system.
[06:12] The Visionary-Integrator Relationship
Why a COO must protect the company’s priorities instead of constantly responding to the founder’s latest ideas.
[10:40] The Leadership Conversations Founders Avoid
Why honest feedback, clear expectations, and compassionate conversations are essential to building a healthy team.
[16:29] Right Person, Right Seat: Understanding GWC
How to determine whether someone gets their role, wants it, and has the capacity to succeed.
[22:09] Building Accountability Through LMA
Why effective leadership and management are the foundation of an accountable organization.
[26:00] Leading Distributed Teams Successfully
How intentional communication, consistent meeting rhythms, and outcome-based accountability help remote teams thrive.
Why This Matters
Many founders recognize when someone is not the right fit for a role but delay addressing it, hoping the situation will improve.
As Megan explains, avoiding these conversations does not protect the employee or the business.
Building a healthy leadership team means setting clear expectations, providing honest feedback, and making decisions that support both the individual and the organization.
The goal is not simply to delegate more. It is to build a team that takes ownership, makes decisions, and delivers results without depending on the founder for everything.
Action Steps for Listeners
- Evaluate your team using GWC. Ask whether each person truly Gets It, Wants It, and has the Capacity to succeed in the role.
- Have the difficult conversations. Address performance concerns early with clear expectations, honest feedback, and compassion.
- Strengthen the Visionary-Integrator relationship. Make sure the COO executes agreed priorities instead of reacting to every new idea.
- Build accountability at every level. Ensure leaders understand their responsibility to lead, manage, and hold their teams accountable.
- Be intentional with communication. Establish consistent meeting rhythms, clear ownership, and outcome-based expectations, especially for distributed teams.
Resources & Links
Questions We’re Asked About Right Person Right Seat
What does right person right seat mean in EOS?
Right person right seat means that an employee fits the organization and is well matched to the responsibilities of the role. EOS evaluates the seat through GWC: whether the person Gets It, Wants It, and has the Capacity to do it.
How does the GWC framework help evaluate a leadership role?
GWC separates role fit into three questions: does the person understand the role, genuinely want it, and have the time, skill, and emotional capacity to succeed? A clear no in any area gives the leadership team a specific issue to discuss instead of relying on a vague performance judgment.
How should a founder tell someone they are in the wrong seat?
The conversation should begin with expectations, specific evidence, and direct but compassionate feedback. The goal is to give the person clarity and a real opportunity to improve, move into a better-fitting role, or choose another path without being surprised.
What makes the Visionary-Integrator relationship work?
The Visionary needs room to create ideas while the Integrator protects the priorities the leadership team has already agreed to execute. A strong Integrator neither follows every new idea nor shuts down creativity; the Integrator captures ideas, filters them, and keeps the organization focused.
How can distributed leadership teams build accountability?
Distributed teams need intentional communication, consistent meeting rhythms, clear ownership, and accountability based on outcomes rather than visible activity. Video conversations are especially important when an issue is emotional, complex, or too easy to misunderstand in written messages.
New episodes drop soon. Subscribe to The COO Solution Podcast so you don’t miss one, and share this conversation with a founder or CEO who has been avoiding a difficult leadership-team conversation.
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Full Transcript
[00:13] Derek Fredrickson: I’m excited to welcome today’s guest Megan Piper to the COO Solution podcast. Megan is an expert EOS implementer from the Entrepreneurial Operating System and she specializes in helping distributed and hybrid leadership teams get healthy, aligned and accountable. Before EOS she was part of a successful visionary and integrator duo as CFO and COO helping scale plants and international from 3 million to 52 million in revenue. Megan leads from experience, not theory. She has facilitated more than 500 EOS sessions with leadership teams across industries and brings a direct no-fluff style to helping entrepreneurs build self managing companies that drive profitability, great culture and sustainable success for everyone in the organization. What I really love about Megan’s work is the combination of her operational background and her EOS expertise.
[01:23] Derek Fredrickson: She has been in the seat that most implementers from EOS only advise on and she knows what the visionary and integrator dynamic feels like from the inside as the operator who was actually in it and that lived experience shows up and how she works with founders and their leadership teams every day. And today we are talking about what it actually takes to build a leadership team that runs without the founder constantly in the middle of it, including the conversation most founders are avoiding. Let’s get into it.
[00:51] Megan Piper: Thanks so much for having me, Derek. I’m honored to be here.
[00:54] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. So, as I shared in our intro earlier, we’re going to dive into a lot of things about EOS today. We’re going to talk a lot about the visionary integrator dynamic and what makes that successful. Megan, you’ve been in the EOS space for quite some time. You’ve done, as I shared in the intro, I think over 500 sessions you’ve led, as a part of your role as an EOS implementer. So we’re going to dive into some really juicy content and conversation, I think, for our audience today. So I’m really looking forward to it. I’d love to start off, Megan, for our audience, founders, CEOs, business owners, they may not know exactly what EOS is. Perhaps they’ve heard of it. Maybe they’ve heard of the book Traction or Rocket Fuel. From your vantage point as an EOS expert implementer, what is EOS? How does it work?
[01:36] Derek Fredrickson: And particularly for you, why do you like being in the lane as an EOS implementer?
[01:42] Megan Piper: Yeah. Is it okay if I answer that question, Derek, by kind of sharing my background and how I discovered EOS? Because I think it answers it best.
[01:47] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, that would be great.
[01:48] Megan Piper: Yeah. Once upon a time, I was actually a high school French teacher, but I was good friends with a visionary founder, and she’s like, you know what? I don’t think you’re cut out for this teaching thing. Why don’t you just quit your teaching job? And come be my finance person. Like, classic visionary. This is what she decides on Saturday morning. And I thought, what do I have to lose? I’ll say yes. And so it turns out I’m a classic integrator. And I didn’t even know what that was. And Connie and I didn’t have a word for that for many years. But she was about five employees when I started back in the early 2000s with her. And we ran a technology company. We delivered technology solutions to humanitarian organizations.
[02:22] Megan Piper: So really cool organization working with the UN And Connie was that big idea person, focused externally on clients. And I love to take her ideas and make them happen. And so, as we say in the US, that that’s Rocket Fuel. It makes you start to grow. So we started adding people, we started adding complexity. And within a few years, from the outside, it looks so successful. We were profitable. We’d open an office in Europe as well. And Connie and I were exhausted. And so we went on this quest for outside perspective, because I think a lot of us know entrepreneurs have been there, done this before. Like, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. And we joined industry peer groups, got executive coaches.
[02:58] Derek Fredrickson: Sure.
[02:58] Megan Piper: And along this journey, I discovered this concept of an operating system. And it was a game changer, because suddenly I wasn’t the system. Like as a COO. I was. My job was to keep the mess out of Connie’s office so she could keep growing us externally. And I was carrying more and more. And suddenly I had a system to help people understand where they fit, what was expected? What does success look like? How do you help us achieve that success? So, you know, in EOS speak, we call it, you know, we get aligned on where we want to go, how we want to get there. That’s clarity on vision. Then we help people to execute on it. That’s where EOS really shines. And full disclosure, at my former business, I didn’t use EOS. I used another system that was not as good at execution.
[03:39] Megan Piper: And so that’s what I really appreciate about EOS. So good on the execution front. And then we need to do this in a way that we really enjoy working together. We enjoy building a culture and a great company. So Connie and I took the business from 3 million to 52 million. We executed on the largest IT contract ever awarded by the United Nations. And most important for me, I helped her to have her succession plan come to fruition, which was her five kids. So I kind of thought, well, what do I want to do with my life now? I want my own adventure. And I’d read Rocket Fuel in some of the EOS books by then and I thought like that was actually the system I needed. Like having an operating system, you’ve got to have one.
[04:15] Megan Piper: Sure, that was a game changer for us. But EOS really shines in execution. So you know, that actually frees the COO up to focus more on really optimizing the business as a well oiled machine. Not having to make sure you’re running that operating system constantly. Like that should be part of your job and not your full job. So that’s where EOS really shines. And now I’ve been teaching it since 2019 and I pinch myself every day that I get to do this. It is such a blast. And I, I particularly specialize in distributed teams. So a lot of my days are on screens like this, helping distributed teams to get clear and to grow.
[04:53] Derek Fredrickson: Amazing. Thank you for that. We’re going to definitely dive into that because what we do here, our model is virtual and remote. And I know sometimes there’s might be resistance for some companies or some founders that are. I need touch somebody, I need somebody to be in my office, I need to be in the conference room and how can this work Remote. We’ll dive into that and unpack that in a bit. I want to thank you for your story. I love, I love the journey. I want to kind of dive into a little bit about that kind of transition or that progression from, you know, 3 million to 52 million is not a that’s a pretty steep increase over a period of time. And you wore a couple different hats as I understand it.
[05:27] Derek Fredrickson: So you were that COO and I think you also kind of wore a CFO hat if I’m not mistaken.
[05:28] Megan Piper: Yeah, I was CFO, COO. Yes, both of them. Correct.
[05:29] Derek Fredrickson: Okay. And then Connie, you said was like that she was the visionary, she was more kind of like external focus. So, either in that example with that company or in the other sessions that you’ve led, I’d love to dive into a little bit more about… and EOS makes this a core pillar of how it can be successful in a company is the visionary integrator dynamic. And I think you have a unique perspective of kind of wearing both hats in some cases in both times, but also working with companies, you know, what do you see about that dynamic that makes it successful and how does that success cascade into the leadership team?
[06:05] Derek Fredrickson: So it starts to build what I like to call a culture of accountability. Talk to us a little bit about that if you could.
[06:12] Megan Piper: Yeah, I have a really strong opinion on the key to unlocking all this.
[06:15] Derek Fredrickson: Okay.
[06:16] Megan Piper: Like, as you said, I’ve had so many different angles that I’ve seen it from. And coos may not love my answer.
[06:22] Derek Fredrickson: Okay.
[06:23] Megan Piper: But the visionary is going to be the visionary. Like, you have to free them up to do their thing. I love how sometimes in EOS, we describe it as, like, they’re a Mustang out on the planes. Like, we need some you know, fencing, like, miles apart. But, like, the fencing’s really loose.
[06:36] Derek Fredrickson: Sure.
[06:36] Megan Piper: So let the visionary do what they need to do. And then you as COO, your job is not to make that visionary happy. I see so many of them that just spend their day catering to what the visionary wants that day, which I’m visionary in my business now. Gosh, what I want changes every day. Yeah. So I have an amazing integrator. Like, I teach this stuff, and I have an integrator. And she’s like, no, Megan, this is what the V/TO said. This is what we said is important this quarter, this year and three years and 10 years. Like, is this decision that you suddenly want to make today on a whim, is that actually getting us towards that?
[07:10] Megan Piper: So your job as COO is to execute on every word of that V/TO, make sure it’s accurate, and to do it with kindness and compassion towards the visionary and everyone on the leadership team. But it is not to go change with the shifting winds of the CEO every day. So many COOs model catering to what the visionary whims are, and then the team follows it and everybody’s just got whiplash over time and you don’t achieve what you want. So focus on the V/TO, not what the visionary says is the flavor of the day. They’re not going to like it. That’s part of your job, is to push back and to be the no person. And it’s a really important buffer for the growth of the business.
[07:52] Derek Fredrickson: Said so. Well, and I agree 100%. And I say this to all of the COOs that we work with, you know, on my team and all the clients that we work with. We are not a yes machine and we’re not a no machine. I have to say, not a yes machine to the same point that you made because of the 10 ideas a day, one might stick. And if we’re jumping into all 10, nothing’s going to get done. And you don’t get results from things you don’t finish. So I always say, listen, let the visionary throw the spaghetti at the wall. And when they see what sticks, then the job of the COO is to execute on the plan and make it happen.
[08:19] Derek Fredrickson: But they’re also not the no machine, because I often feel, and maybe your thought on this, you want to give the visionary, like you said, the guardrails. So anything that does come up, I always say, you don’t want to say no, we can’t do this because, no, we don’t have the time. No, we don’t have the resources. Because what you’re doing is you’re stifling that ideation, which is a huge energy boost for the CEO. So sometimes we’ll say yes and yes or but at least sometimes we’ve captured it. Oftentimes my experience is the visionary just wants somebody to capture the idea, just to land it. They don’t necessarily want it to be implemented right away, but otherwise it’s going to feel like if we always say no, it’s going to kind of stifle that creativity, that ideation.
[08:56] Derek Fredrickson: How do you describe that a little bit in terms of you’re not the yes machine, but you’re also not the no machine because you want to give them the space to capture what might be a good idea, even though they’re coming up with 10 to 15 new ones every single day.
[09:08] Megan Piper: Yeah. You know, I actually saw this in a team last week. The visionary has a million ideas a day, and he hadn’t learned that when you go out to, you can’t just go into the company and say it to anyone. You can say those million ideas to your COO, sometimes to the leadership team, choose carefully. It’s that they have that safe space to ideate and that, yeah, it’s free. Like, don’t shut it down. Sometimes, I also see teams turn the visionary into a villain. Like, oh, it’s the idea of the day.
[09:34] Derek Fredrickson: You got it.
[09:35] Megan Piper: Like, encourage all that. It is the unique gift that they have to grow the business. So let it happen, but buffer it and filter what actually hits the leadership team and every one of the companies.
[09:46] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. Great. So one of the six components, as you know, you’re the expert in EOS, is people. And one of the things that we’re always doing with our clients is always talking about right person, right seat. So I’d love for you to unpack that a little bit again from your perspective, because oftentimes what we’ve experienced is that when we get to the core of asking the question, and I always say putting the issue on the table, which is, do we have the right person in the right seat, sometimes that might be a difficult conversation to have, or it’s going to uncover some things that maybe have been pushed down in the organization because some team members don’t want to rock the boat.
[10:18] Derek Fredrickson: The team members don’t want to flag something up to the CEO or the COO that, you know, calls out somebody that may not be the right seat. They’re not owning what they’re doing. There may not be that culture of responsibility. Talk to us a little bit about what your thoughts are on right person, right seat, and what it means to have it if it is a difficult conversation, to ensure that conversation is being had because we can’t necessarily just push it under the rug.
[10:40] Megan Piper: Yeah. I’ll first share a quick story about when I was a CEO, one of the biggest mistakes I made is I was firing someone who legitimately wasn’t right person, right seat. But as I watched his face in that moment, I thought, this is a surprise. Like, his manager had not been uh setting expectations and explaining how they weren’t being met. And I had been told he was but he wasn’t. And so you realize that in that moment. So when someone’s fired, it should never be a surprise. That’s a leadership failure when that happens. Yeah. So I learned from that that people are very selfish about giving direct and honest feedback. And so it’s too much that the manager sitting there thinking, oh, it’s gonna be uncomfortable to give them that feedback, or I don’t know how to say it in a clear way. And so they’re really protecting themselves.
[11:31] Megan Piper: I find if you can get the leader to think about, you know, how would they want to receive that feedback? Like they’d want that feedback. They want it clear and kind. And then they get the opportunity to say, do I want to change or do I want to go work somewhere else? And people have that autonomy, and how great is that? But you’ve got to give them the clarity of the expectations so they can choose what’s best for them.
[11:52] Megan Piper: And a trick I’ve learned from colleagues is to maybe even get that leader to say, you know, imagine this employee that you’re about to give feedback to is, say, your sister or your brother, someone you really care about in your life, that you want them to thrive at work, to fit with the culture, to grow in their role and to GWC the heck out of their seat and contribute and feel valued and like they belong. If you’re imagining that family member across from you, suddenly you’re going to help them succeed, whether it’s with you or not, because you bring out that care and compassion and empathy with the directness that helps them make an individual choice.
[12:27] Megan Piper: So it’s often that we’re being selfish and we don’t give the person the clarity they need to actually make a decision for themselves about whether they want to step up or step out. Yeah. And it’s our job to do that. And that’s what we want for the people we love in our life. And so that has to happen in that employee relationship.
[12:43] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. So well said. You know, I think it doesn’t have to be a difficult conversation, but it’s often a conversation that needs to be had. And sometimes it’s the conversation under the surface in terms of, you know, what’s really going on. I’ll share a quick story that I think kind of highlights the same sort of thing. I remember this was years ago when I was doing CEO work in my wife’s business coaching company. That’s how I got started. We were doing a lot of marketing campaigns, a lot of marketing launches, a lot of marketing, you know, deliverables. And I was running things very much as the integrator, like, very process driven, very structured, like, here’s the checklist, here’s the project management system, here’s the steps to go through. And I remember vividly the marketing manager.
[13:19] Derek Fredrickson: There was another example of, like, not following the checklist, meaning there were a certain number of steps and things got missed, things got overlooked, and as a result, you know, wrong emails got sent or the wrong links got sent, which may not sound like a big deal, but these are, you know, big big marketing events with hundreds, if not thousands of people. Exactly. There’s a lot of money on the table. And it was repeated. Right. So it’s always like, you catch it. I would say fix the process, not the person. So we checked. The process needed to be fixed and great. But after a couple other iterations, it was like, okay, something’s going on. And we knew that the marketing role in terms of the seat and the responsibilities is going by the checklist. It’s not to reinvent the wheel.
[13:58] Derek Fredrickson: We’re not going to just, you know, jump out of bed and be like, let’s redo how we do a marketing campaign. No, it’s a system, it’s a process, It’s a structure. So I brought her in and I said, name, fill in the blank. It’s the third time that this, like, launch kind of had some challenges. There was this missed email, this wrong link was used, et cetera. We have the checklist. Is there something going on? She said it almost kind of gave her the space to admit, yeah, you know what? I don’t really like checklists. I’m not really a checklist person. And I said to myself, great, that just means that you’re not the right person for this right seat. And it will allow you to be freed up to go and do things at another organization that doesn’t value using a checklist.
[14:40] Derek Fredrickson: And you can be in a role to be the right person where they don’t need to have a checklist in that way. But it was almost like giving them the freedom, giving them the permission to release them back into something that wouldn’t feel like a square peg in a round hole. So I love that example and the one that you shared as well. It’s just the idea here is to have the conversation. Get the clarity. Sometimes it’s just important for the organization as it is for the team member. And if it works out great, go team, go. And if it doesn’t work out great, it wasn’t meant to be probably in the first place and it was going to feel like struggle. What’s your thought on that?
[15:11] Megan Piper: Yeah, well, I love that you did the right, like you looked in the mirror first. Like, how do we contribute to this potentially? Like, is the process right? Have we set the right expectations? Have we trained well? Okay, check, check, check. And we’re still seeing a pattern. It’s not a one off like you did the classic EOS series of how we want people to approach it. And then I find when you do that well, there is that relief on the side of the other person and that you can actually have a great relationship with them after they leave. Sometimes they come back and they thank you. And that’s so much better than the resentment and frustration and surprise when someone wasn’t given that step by step, like it’s. You approach it with integrity.
[15:50] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[15:51] Megan Piper: And that’s what employees deserve for sure.
[15:53] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. Great. I want to dive into this a little bit more. So you mentioned GWC. I know what it means. Our audience that knows EOS knows what it means. We use it all the time with our own team, with our clients. I’m sure use it significantly more for our audience that doesn’t know what GWC means or really what it represents and what it kind of means in the organization and how you use it almost like as a precursor a little bit for right person. Right. See, talk to us a little bit from your perspective. What is GWC? What does it mean? What does it look like, how do you use it, et cetera.
[16:29] Megan Piper: Yeah, there’s so there’s three distinct pieces there. G, W, and C. People tend to be like, oh, yeah. They’re G W and C. Like, no. Like, let’s go through each one. So the G is gets it. And that’s your DNA, we say batteries included. You were born with that natural talent or you weren’t. I’m gonna come back to that because it’s an important one.
[16:46] Derek Fredrickson: Sure.
[16:47] Megan Piper: And then the wants it. Do they look like they want to be doing that job, even if it’s sometimes sacrificing for the short term, like, they’ll want it good enough. That’s not ideal. We want someone who’s passionate about it, really wants to do it for the next 6 to 12 months. It’s not a forever commitment. Just like in the coming needs of the business. Do I want that role? And then the C is a whole bunch of things around capacity. It can be time capacity, intellectual capacity, emotional capacity. If you’re dealing with customers, you gotta be able to deal with certain emotional capacity. So there’s a whole bunch packed in there. And that’s coachable stuff. So we always think people have to get yes, yes yes on the G, the W and the C. And so we can’t pay them to want it.
[17:26] Megan Piper: If they don’t want it. Like, you got to accept that you can’t change it to a yes. On the C. If they’re temporarily a no, we can coach them to a yes. I’m okay with that. As long as, you know you can’t turn a bookkeeper into a CFO in 2 weeks, right?
[17:38] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[17:39] Megan Piper: But the G is where I really see the unlock for people. Like the W and the C is usually pretty obvious whether it’s working or not. The G I tend to see over time. It’s like that pattern you’re talking about in some way. Maybe that individual didn’t really get, like, in their bones why it mattered to have a checklist in that role. And so they’re gonna always be creative. Like, they’re not getting the fundamental requirement of what makes that role. Or yesterday I was with a team that the sales leader just doesn’t get it. He’s like, why do I need a funnel and to push things through it. I’m like, okay, this is like, I don’t. If you don’t get that, I’m not sure how to coach that in. Yeah.
[18:16] Megan Piper: So the gets-it sometimes is that you’ve done everything you can, you’ve coached people, and they’re still not working. Like, you have to accept we’ve got a gets it issue and we can’t turn a no one gets it to a yes. Yeah. So it’s really the performance side of the equation. We also talk about core values, like people have to be a culture fit organization. So it’s both sides of that equation. But usually the culture fit, we can see that pretty well, too, because we’ve defined the core values. It’s that G in the GWC where people often get blocked and they keep working to change it to a yes, and it’s not going to happen.
[18:49] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[18:50] Megan Piper: Free up that person’s future and let them go do a job they do get.
[18:53] Derek Fredrickson: Sure. So true. The way that we sometimes use it, I know it may not be EOS pure or by the book, but we do that GWC on core values, which is really. Do we have the culture fit for that individual or in the organization? And then we do the GWC against their core responsibilities, which is really more for what they own and what they’re responsible for. And I think you’re so right, Megan, that the W and the C, it’s coachable, it’s figureoutable. There’s things that we can do to bring a bookkeeper to be a CFO. Like you said, it may not happen a couple of weeks, but there’s a runway for that to be there. The DNA is the G, which I really really appreciate. It’s kind of like you said, it’s in your bones. It’s innate. It’s kind of like, already part of you.
[19:28] Derek Fredrickson: We use a lot of assessments. I’m curious if you use assessments as well. Like, we use Kolbe, we use StrengthsFinder to kind of line. Okay. If your StrengthsFinder, your number one StrengthsFinder is, say, you know, consistency. If you’re in a role that doesn’t value consistency, you’re not going to get it because it’s going to feel like you’re going against the grain. Do you guys use assessments around that as well as part of, like, evaluating, like, the DNA to the core? Like, are you wired to do this? Do you have the strength to do it? Do you jump out of bed and want to do more and more of it?
[19:55] Megan Piper: Yeah, yeah. We teach. We always teach everyone the Kolbe look, I think all the assessments are great. They all measure something slightly different. It’s learning how do I communicate and what’s natural to me and my teammates, and then how do we coordinate better and whether it’s the DISC, working Genius. Yeah. They all do a great job with those sorts of concepts. And yes, it matters because it’s helping you realize the G that somebody just naturally comes to the table with. Like, I saw a delivery leader who was in the working genius it showed that he’s really great at the beginning of a process and like the ideation. Yeah. And he’s really good at getting things over the finish line, but he sucked at the middle.
[20:31] Megan Piper: And so therefore he’s never going to plan the project, keep people on track in the project, and things weren’t getting delivered on time, on budget. Yeah. Well, just look at his working genius. You’re asking him to be somebody he’s not.
[20:42] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[20:43] Megan Piper: And so it helps you to just have a jump start on what’s somebody’s natural talent.
[20:47] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, I agree. It’s kind of. I use the example, although it never really probably would be applicable, but it’s like you’re not going to try to get a bookkeeper to then jump up and become a salesperson. Right. Those are two natural ways of thinking and operating and dealing with the situation and vice versa. Like, that salesperson is not going to function well in a bookkeeping position. It’s very much like it’s going to feel like this. So I think the G part is really essential. So I think for our audience, if you’re listening and evaluating, do you have the right person, right seat? And some of these tools are available, I know through EOS, you know, online you can see what the tool looks like, etcetera.
[21:20] Derek Fredrickson: But it’s really interesting to say, you know, do they get these responsibilities to their core, the DNA? Do they want it? Do they have the capacities to do it? And if the answer is across the board, yes. Great. But if there’s an N in there one of those columns, it’s going to be a challenge. And you have to have the conversation to see if it’s something that can be resolved. So yeah.
[21:40] Megan Piper: Yeah, absolutely. And I love how you did it against the core values. I think the whole V/TO, if you’re on the leadership team and you don’t GWC that V/TO. Yeah, that could be LMA very well.
[21:48] Derek Fredrickson: Yes, exactly. Well, then that leads to another acronym that I wanted to dive into, LMA. So again, for the audience, I know what LMA is. You use it. I use it all the time. Talk to us about what LMA represents. How do you use it? How does that cascade in the organization? And then I want to then kind of pack into especially when it comes to distributed teams.
[22:09] Megan Piper: Yeah, yeah. LMA is one of the most Important things in EOS and it’s sometimes undervalued.
[23:06] Megan Piper: If they lead and manage well and create that environment of accountability and their whole team that reports to them, then all those people are more effective. And then the people that they LMA can be more effective. And so it’s very powerful in the effectiveness of the business and delegating and elevating and helping people move to new roles over time. Like it is the unlock. And I find when you’re with a team and you’re going through this GWC stuff, often people, oh yeah, they GWC the job. I’m like, what about that little LMA bullet there? How are they doing on that one? So if you’re a CFO, you’re the finance leader and you understand how to do reporting and to talk to the board and explain the financials, but you don’t know how to lead your team. Sorry, you don’t GWC that job.
[23:53] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, yeah, so true. It’s been a while since I remembered the idea of it being a formula, an equation. You know, leading plus managing equals accountability. I love that because people say like, how do you create accountability? Well, it’s not something you just kind of plug in like a system. I mean it’s a system of how we do things, but it’s something that’s built based on how you’re leading, how you’re managing, how you’re creating that culture of, you know, this is how we do things around here and I love that in the EOS accountability chart, two things I want to comment especially like LMA is definitely in the integrator COO Box. Right. That’s a big part of what they do. Exactly. But each of the functions. Right.
[24:30] Derek Fredrickson: If it’s, you know, marketing, sales, operations and finance, you know, the very first bullet in each one of those, if you own marketing, the first bullet is LMA. So if you have a team, which you do because you’re leading and owning marketing, the accountability cascades down, including yourself in terms of ownership, what you’re responsible for. I always kind of take that a step further to when we’re looking at a scorecard and tracking numbers, Right. If that number’s on track, great. Who owns the fact that it’s on track and how can we do more of what we’re doing to get it even further on track? But then, conversely, if it’s off track, who owns the fact that it’s off track and what are we doing and when and how to get that back on track? That owns.
[25:09] Derek Fredrickson: That creates the ownership, which implies the accountability, as opposed to, you know, somebody leading and managing, but not cascading that culture down into whether you’re owning lead gen or you’re owning pay per click or you’re owning whatever activities are in marketing. Great. So this is a real interesting question. So a lot of the clients and companies that you work with as an EOS implementer, distributed teams, which means you’re virtual, you said it earlier, you’re on a screen, you’re remote. How do you do that? And what I mean by that is, I know that some EOS implementers prefer to do it in person and you know, they’re not resistant, but they like the idea of being in the room to facilitate, to have the conversations, to be able to kind of have traction, no pun intended, while the people are in the room.
[25:51] Derek Fredrickson: Talk to us about how you do that from a distance. How do you do that remotely? What are some pros? What are some cons? I’d love to just get your feedback on that.
[26:00] Megan Piper: Yeah. Let’s say in an ideal world, with an endless budget and the ability to fly people somewhere. Yes, of course. I encourage a distributed team to get together in person. That isn’t always something they can do. Like, I have some teams in the Middle east right now that they just can’t happen to get a visa into the us and so, you know, there can be real challenges. Plus, I always say to teams, if your world is distributed every day, that’s where you need to learn vision, execution and team health. So, yes, it’s amazing and it builds some trust to be able to meet in person, but sometimes that luxury isn’t there. And we have to know how to build trust in a virtual environment if that’s how we work every day.
[26:42] Megan Piper: And so I always say, you know, there’s not something different about how you run a distributed team well, other than that, you don’t get any passes in terms of it’s easier when you’re in person. Like, you’re gonna bump into that person at the water cooler and have that organic conversation. And so you have to be so much more intentional in your leadership. And all the EOS tools are built to help you do that, but, like, you have to use them twice as well as a team that’s in person.
[27:07] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[27:07] Megan Piper: And so one of my favorite concepts in EOS is keeping the circles connected. You have two individuals. You want them to communicate and overlap, like a Venn diagram or two different departments, sales and marketing. Sometimes they need to keep the circles connected. And so the EOS meeting cadence, quarterly conversations, Level 10s, the Quarterly State of the companies. Like, if you do all those things, it helps to keep the circles connected. And that’s what happens in a distributed team, is sometimes people are working in silos or the opposite. People think, well, because I can’t see the employee like, I better be looking at their work output even more. Well, no. Yes. I mean, I do love in a distributed environment, it’s much more, did you produce the outcome rather than how long did you work?
[27:50] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[27:50] Megan Piper: Comes much more outcomes focused, which is healthy. But you still can’t micromanage those outcomes. If you’re micromanaging, you have a people issue.
[27:57] Derek Fredrickson: Sure.
[27:58] Megan Piper: And sometimes that’s you.
[27:59] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
[28:01] Megan Piper: So let’s keep the circles connected. Let’s use the bare minimum that EOS teaches in terms of the healthy meeting cadence. Be super intentional in your communication. And like EOS makes distributed teams healthy, where sometimes they’re lost and they don’t quite know how to get there.
[28:17] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[28:17] Megan Piper: So it’s not that different than what another team should do. They just have to be even better at it.
[28:23] Derek Fredrickson: Oh, it’s very well said. Yeah, I agree. I’ll just expand on that because I’ve had a number of conversations with the companies that we work with. A majority of them are distributed, meaning our model is remote, Their teams are remote, virtual. It’s obviously more and more, I would say, common these days, but there are some where there’s an office, there’s a strong, heavy in person, on site presence. And that might because of the nature of the business or just the way that it’s always been run in that way. And I always get the question. I’ll never forget this one conversation with this company. The guy owned a construction company in Oklahoma, building pools. That was the business they were doing, about 10 million, which was great. Classic case. Founder was involved in the day to day. The team was not aligned.
[29:02] Derek Fredrickson: He’s too bogged down in the details. You’ve heard this, I’m sure, a million times. And I had the conversation and he said, Derek, I’m in. But how the hell do you guys do this remote? How does it work virtually? And I always say two things. One, well, two things in one and then another one. The two things are, I actually think, I think it’s better because it makes it more effective and more efficient. Of course there’s some value to be there in person and have the ability to tap Bob in operations or bring in Susan from accounting and jump in and have a conversation. But without that luxury, it levels up how the COO has to do things more efficiently and do things more effectively.
[29:38] Derek Fredrickson: So it’s really going to dial in how we’re collaborating, how we’re communicating, because we don’t have the luxury to default to just walk into somebody’s office and have an impromptu conversation. And then the other part, I always say is, listen, if you’re going to not subscribe to the model that virtual works better for you where you’re in Oklahoma and maybe your COO is in Chicago and your default is, I’m going to get a local COO. You may not get the best COO for your business when you’re looking in your zip code. Right. And there’s no knock to Oklahoma or anything else in that regard.
[30:09] Derek Fredrickson: But it’s kind of like, look at it through the filter of we’re going to change how you are doing what you’re doing in your company and how you’re operationally working and you don’t need to be in person to do that. Yes, there might be a value to do some on site quarterly trainings or run an EOS, you know, et cetera. But I think it’s, I think at the end of the day it works better in a remote model.
[30:29] Megan Piper: Yeah, I agree. And I think people make fewer assumptions and assumptions are one of the dangerous things in business. Like we fill in the blanks to keep moving forward and we make an assumption around what did Derek’s body language mean. Yeah, and people make fewer assumptions in virtual. Like they just know they have to communicate. You know, many years ago when I was leading Planson International, we had the office in Europe and yes, I did fly there once or twice a year, but every time I needed to have a conversation with my counterpart over there, if it was going to be emotional or high stakes, I got on a video call.
[31:00] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[31:00] Megan Piper: So like, human to human. So much of the communication is not just words, so it’s also tone and body language. And we need to really use video a lot when we’re in a distributed environment because you’ve got to be able to read each other. We’re doing that in this conversation, so that’s important. And I think people make the assumption they’ve communicated when they work down the hall from each other. They actually haven’t. And so we end up going that extra mile virtually, like, okay, I gotta go get on Zoom with Derek and actually talk about this because if I send in an email or a teams message, like it’s not going to come out the right way.
[31:33] Derek Fredrickson: Exactly.
[31:34] Megan Piper: Yeah. That’s not there.
[31:35] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, so well said. Yeah. I think especially there are things that are meant for, you know, a Slack message. There are things that are meant for what you’re doing in a project management system. There are things that are meant for an email, but at the end of the day, if none of those forums are going to really resolve the issue or move things forward, where a conversation needs to be had, have the conversation, but don’t default to having the conversation in all cases when things can be done. That could have been an email, that could have been a Slack message, that could have been an Asana project update as an example. We’re all busy, we’ve got a lot going on.
[32:06] Derek Fredrickson: But I think at the end of the day, if it needs to have a personable type of conversation, have the conversation, whether it’s a GWC or whether it’s an accountability issue or. Right person, right seat. Amazing. Thank you, Megan. This has been incredibly helpful. I would love for you to share a little bit about where people can find out more about EOS. EOS with you if they’re interested in exploring what you do as an implementer. Talk to us a little bit and share some resources and of course, we’ll include all of that in our show links as well. But yeah, where can people find more about you and EOS and how you could possibly help them?
[32:39] Megan Piper: Thanks so much, Derek.
[32:41] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[32:42] Megan Piper: So one of our core values in EOS is help first, I love to help. My colleagues love to help. So you can find me on LinkedIn if you just look up Megan Piper and then we all have microsites. So if you Google Megan Piper EOS. You’ll get my microsite that has a little bit about my background and some videos and speaking engagements that you can see. And what’s really important in EOS is you get the right coach, like who’s going to be the right cultural fit and context fit for your team. So, like if a team reaches out to me and they’re not distributed, like, oh my gosh, let me introduce you to one of my local. To one of my local colleagues so that you can do EOS locally face to face with the right person.
[33:16] Megan Piper: So people can always reach out to me electronically. LinkedIn and the microsite. I’m assuming my email will be in the show notes.
[33:23] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, we’ll put that in there, of course.
[33:24] Megan Piper: megan@eosworldwide.com and I love to help people, so reach out, ask me questions. I will help you find the right EOS resources and I don’t send an invoice for doing that. Be in touch.
[33:36] Derek Fredrickson: Wonderful. Thank you. Megan, will you be. I’m assuming you’ll be at the EOS conference in Kansas City next in April of 2027.
[33:45] Megan Piper: I haven’t decided yet.
[33:46] Derek Fredrickson: Okay.
[33:46] Megan Piper: Okay. I’m still seeing how many clients are going to go. I make it a client experience. Yeah.
[33:52] Derek Fredrickson: Oh, good.
[33:53] Megan Piper: Everything’s about my clients. I love the learning there. I highly recommend the conference. Yeah. If I have enough clients that want to go, then I make a big deal out of it.
[34:01] Derek Fredrickson: Okay, cool. Well, I’m planning ahead to try to get there. I’m going to be at the one that’s happening in October in the UK in a couple weeks. So that would be an interesting experience. But. Well, thank you, Megan. Really enjoyed the conversation. Enjoy diving into your skill set, your expertise, your experience, some of your stories. Really, really valuable. And just thank you so much again for your time and being on the show.
[34:22] Megan Piper: I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Derek.
[34:24] Derek Fredrickson: Thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time on the COO Solution podcast. Take care. Great.
[00:00] Derek Fredrickson: Right person, right seat. Those three words sound simple. And yet for most founders that I know, myself included at various points, acting on them is one of the hardest things in business. And what I keep coming back to from this conversation is Megan’s point about GWC Get it-Want it-Capacity to do it. Most leadership team problems go unaddressed for so long, not because founders don’t see them. It is that they are waiting for certainty before having the conversation. And certainty rarely comes. What comes instead is a business that has quietly outgrown the people that are running it, and a founder who kept hoping the situation would resolve itself.
[01:01] Derek Fredrickson: The conversation does not have to blow up the relationship, but it does have to happen. If today’s conversation gave you something to sit with, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you know a founder who suspects someone on their team is in the wrong seat but has been avoiding it, share this with them. And lastly, take my free quiz at thecoosolution.com to find out where your business stands operationally. Five minutes real clarity on where to focus. I will see you next time on the COO Solution podcast.
