Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, sat down with Ed Kopko, CEO of Bold Business and former 24-year chairman and CEO of Butler International, to ask what he’d change about his own scaling decisions. Kopko’s answer: he waited too long to act on his own read of an inherited leader. When you already know a leader is wrong for the role, Kopko holds that immediate change beats a wait-and-see approach. He learned this the hard way at Butler International, where giving underperforming leaders “a shot” instead of acting on his first instinct cost the company time and momentum.
This episode is for CEOs who inherited a leadership team during a transition, acquisition, or turnaround, and are wondering whether to act on their gut now or give someone more runway.
Key Takeaways
- CEOs who delay people changes in transformation scenarios, giving inherited leaders “a shot” instead of acting on first instinct, pay with company time and performance, not just morale.
- Kopko identifies calendar overload, not lack of ideas, as the top reason CEOs fail to scale: packed agendas across shareholder meetings, earnings reporting, and operational reviews leave no room for strategic thinking.
- Some CEOs solve the time problem by hiring coaches specifically to carve out strategic thinking time and to reframe routine meetings, like customer reviews and earnings calls, as sources of strategic insight rather than pure operational check-ins.
- At Butler International, Kopko built a vision around benchmarking client satisfaction directly, asking over a thousand clients to name their best supplier, and getting 60 to 70 percent to name Butler.
- PE-backed turnarounds often move faster than founder-led transitions because aggressive investors replace management quickly to force buy-in, a pattern Kopko contrasts with his own slower approach at Butler.
How CEOs Can Avoid the Cost of Delayed Leadership Changes
You already know the moment. A leader isn’t performing the way you need, and some part of you decided that six months ago. You give them a shot anyway. You tell yourself it’s fair. You wait to see if they grow into the role.
Kopko made that exact call while taking Butler International private after leading a leveraged buyout. He inherited an organization and its existing leaders, and rather than replacing the people he had doubts about immediately, he gave them time to prove themselves. It didn’t work.
“I would say the biggest mistake I made was going a little too slow with organizational change of people,” Kopko said. “I want to give this guy a shot or this woman a shot and let’s see how it happens.” The result: the company lost time and performance waiting on a decision Kopko had already made in his own mind. “My first instinct was the right one,” he said.
This is why some PE-backed turnarounds move faster than founder-led transitions. Kopko has watched investors take a more aggressive posture on management change specifically to force buy-in across the organization. When a new direction requires people to abandon what they were doing before, waiting to make that clear only extends the period where the team doesn’t know which direction is real. If your instinct on a leader has already told you the answer, Kopko’s experience says act on it now, not after a grace period that costs you the outcome you were trying to protect.
How CEOs Can Find Time for Strategic Thinking Amid Packed Schedules
You didn’t stop thinking strategically because you got worse at it. You stopped because your calendar filled up with the obligations of running a scaling company.
Kopko saw this firsthand across the Fortune 500 and 1000 CEOs he interacted with while running Chief Executive Magazine for two decades. These were leaders with staff built specifically to protect their time, and they still couldn’t find enough of it. “Their biggest problem to scale is to find enough time,” Kopko said, pointing to shareholder meetings, earnings reporting, employee events, customer visits, operational reviews, and audit committee meetings as the obligations that consume a CEO’s calendar.
Some of the CEOs Kopko observed solved this by hiring coaches specifically to force them to set aside time for strategic thinking. Others took a different route: they changed how they approached the meetings they already had. Instead of treating a shareholder review or a customer visit as a pure operational check-in, they asked a different question going in. “Where can I get strategic value from a customer meeting, from a shareholder review, et cetera?” Kopko said.
Kopko applied this same instinct to his own earnings calls at Butler. Analysts on those calls weren’t always kind, and rather than treating that pressure as something to survive, he treated it as a forcing function to benchmark himself against every competitor in his industry. The meeting didn’t change. What he extracted from it did.
Why Benchmarking Against Competitors Sharpens CEO Decision-Making
If you’re not measuring yourself against your competitors on the metric that matters most to your customers, you’re running your company on assumptions.
Kopko built this into Butler International’s vision directly. Rather than relying on internal quality metrics alone, he adopted an ISO 9000-based quality system in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then went a step further: he asked more than a thousand clients who they considered their best supplier. Butler was named the best supplier by 60 to 70 percent of respondents, a result Kopko treats as the clearest evidence that the strategy worked.
“It was critical to benchmark,” Kopko said, explaining that without measuring Butler against its peers and competitors, he had no way to know if the company’s strategy was actually working. That discipline shaped his stated goals directly. “I want to have the highest rated company,” Kopko said. “I want to have the highest return on equities.”
The lesson for scaling CEOs: growth metrics tell you what’s happening inside your company. Benchmarking against named competitors and named customer outcomes tells you whether that growth is winning the market or just spending it.
What CEOs Should Take From Ed Kopko’s Scaling Lessons
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Trust your first instinct on people | When your gut has already told you a leader isn’t right for the role, act on that read immediately instead of extending a trial period | At Butler International, delaying a people change Kopko had already decided on cost the company time and performance |
| Extract strategic value from existing meetings | Reframe routine obligations, like earnings calls and customer reviews, by asking what strategic insight the meeting can produce, rather than treating them as pure operational check-ins | Kopko used earnings call pressure from analysts as a forcing function to benchmark Butler against its competitors |
| Benchmark against named competitors, not internal metrics alone | Ask your customers directly who they consider the best supplier in your category, and use that answer as your primary quality metric | Butler International was named the best supplier by 60 to 70 percent of more than a thousand clients surveyed |
Quotes from This Episode
- “My first instinct was the right one.” — Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business
- “Their biggest problem to scale is to find enough time.” — Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business
- “Where can I get strategic value from a customer meeting, from a shareholder review, et cetera?” — Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business
- “I want to have the highest rated company. I want to have the highest return on equities.” — Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business
Frequently Asked Questions
When should a CEO replace a leader they inherited during a transition?
Ed Kopko, CEO of Bold Business, holds that a CEO should act on their first instinct about an inherited leader immediately rather than granting an extended trial period. At Butler International, Kopko waited to see if underperforming leaders would improve, and the delay cost the company time and performance he later confirmed his original instinct had already predicted correctly.
How can a CEO find time for strategic thinking when their calendar is full?
Kopko observed that Fortune 500 and 1000 CEOs solve this by either hiring coaches to force dedicated strategic time onto the calendar or by reframing meetings they already attend. Instead of treating shareholder reviews, customer visits, and earnings calls as purely operational, CEOs extract strategic value from them by asking what the meeting can teach them about their competitive position.
Why does benchmarking against competitors matter for CEO decision-making?
Kopko built Butler International’s growth strategy around benchmarking client satisfaction directly against competitors, surveying more than a thousand clients on who they considered the best supplier. Butler earned that ranking from 60 to 70 percent of respondents, giving Kopko a specific, verifiable measure of whether the company’s strategy was working rather than relying on internal metrics alone.
Executives Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Careers
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach, he coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits. With 25 years as a CEO and 5 years in venture capital, Glenn helps leaders scale their companies by scaling themselves first. If this conversation was useful, you can apply for executive coaching with Glenn Gow or apply to be a guest on The Scaling Executive Podcast.
