I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach and host of The Scaling Executive Podcast. I talked with Ed Kopko, CEO of Bold Business and the former 24-year chairman and CEO of Butler International, about the mistake he calls his clearest scaling lesson: moving too slowly on people.
When a CEO senses immediately that an inherited leader is the wrong fit, Ed Kopko holds that acting on that first instinct without delay protects company time and results. That is the lesson he draws from giving underperforming leaders extra time during Butler International’s transition to private ownership, a decision that cost the company both.
Kopko has the track record to back the lesson up. He took Butler International private off the New York Stock Exchange and spent 24 years building it into a $400 million global engineering and technical services provider operating in 60 countries with 6,000 employees. He later led Chief Executive Magazine as CEO and publisher for more than two decades, and today runs Bold Business, a global BPO and talent solutions provider that has delivered more than $7 billion in projects across the US, India, Colombia, and the Philippines.
This episode is for CEOs leading a turnaround, take-private, or leadership transition who are deciding how quickly to act on underperforming leaders.
Key Takeaways
- When a CEO inherits underperforming leaders during a turnaround or take-private, acting on the first instinct to replace them immediately preserves company time and results more reliably than giving them an extended chance to improve, the lesson Ed Kopko draws from his clearest mistake while leading Butler International’s $400 million global expansion.
- Kopko has observed that private equity-style rapid management replacement creates faster organizational buy-in than incremental change, because slow change repeatedly signals to the team that their prior direction was wrong without resolving the uncertainty.
- Butler International proved its “best supplier” positioning by surveying more than 1,000 clients directly, with 60 to 70 percent naming Butler the best supplier in the industry, turning a quality-system investment built around the ISO 9000 standard into a measurable competitive claim.
- Kopko defines “AI-first” as AI performing most of the work currently done by humans, not simply helping humans work faster, freeing Bold Business’s people to scale “beyond imagination” through fully autonomous agents already operating inside the company.
- CEOs with packed calendars regain strategic thinking time by hiring coaches who force dedicated time blocks and help convert routine obligations, like operational reviews and customer meetings, into sources of strategic insight.
How CEOs Decide When to Act Fast on Leadership Change
When Ed Kopko took Butler International private, he inherited an existing organization and brought in outside help to build strategy. His instinct told him some leaders were not the right fit. He overrode that instinct. “I want to give this guy a shot or this woman a shot and let’s see how it happens,” he recalled thinking. The shot did not pay off. “My first instinct was the right one,” Kopko told me.
Kopko contrasts his own slower approach with how private equity firms now handle the same moment.
| Approach | Speed | Effect on buy-in |
| Incremental, “give them a shot” | Slow, repeated chances over months | Repeatedly signals the prior direction was wrong without resolving it, costing time and performance |
| PE-style rapid replacement | Fast, often within the first weeks of a deal | Creates faster buy-in around the new direction by removing ambiguity early |
Kopko says the resistance to fast change is rarely about competence. It is personal. Telling someone their approach is not correct, even indirectly through a leadership change, gets taken personally, which is exactly why many companies delay the change and pay for the delay later.
How CEOs Reclaim Strategic Time on a Packed Calendar
Kopko spent more than two decades leading Chief Executive Magazine as CEO and publisher, working primarily with Fortune 500 and 1000 CEOs. The recurring problem he saw was not strategy. It was time. “So their biggest problem to scale is to find enough time,” he said.
Kopko ran his own public company against what he called a process matrix covering every stakeholder obligation: shareholder meetings, earnings reporting, employee events, customer visits, operational reviews, and audit committee meetings. The calendar, not the strategy, became the constraint.
The CEOs Kopko observed solving this did not simply block more time. They hired coaches who helped them extract strategic value from obligations they already had:
- Shareholder reviews, reframed as a chance to surface strategic concerns rather than just report results
- Customer meetings, used to gather competitive and strategic insight, not only relationship management
- Operational reviews, treated as a source of strategic signal instead of a status update
How CEOs Use Benchmarking to Build a Measurable Quality Reputation
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kopko adopted a quality system at Butler International built around what became the ISO 9000 standard in the engineering and technical services industry. The achievement he is proudest of from that era is not the certification itself. It is what the certification let him prove.
Kopko built a vision around being the best supplier in the industry, then tested it directly. Butler surveyed more than 1,000 clients, asking who their best supplier was. “We had over a thousand clients” respond, and 60 to 70 percent named Butler the best supplier in the industry.
That same instinct for external proof carried into earnings calls, where analysts pushed Kopko to defend Butler’s performance against peers. “I learned also that it was critical to benchmark,” he said. The discipline became a standing part of his strategy: “I want to have the highest rated company. I want to have the highest return on equities.”
How CEOs Build an AI-First Company with Autonomous Agents
About two and a half years before our conversation, Kopko assembled a team to study where AI was heading, and concluded the labor market, including his own BPO and talent solutions industry, was about to change significantly. Rather than treat that as a threat, he decided to compete on it directly: “I came to the conclusion that my only solution or only choice was to embrace it wholeheartedly, grab it by the throat and say, you’re going to be my friend here.”
Kopko draws a sharp line around what “AI-first” actually means. For most companies, he says, it means using a chatbot to do research faster. For Bold Business, AI-first means AI performing most of the work currently done by humans, freeing employees “to be scaled beyond imagination,” not simply helping them complete existing tasks more quickly.
Bold Business now runs fully autonomous agents internally, ahead of the agentic capabilities Kopko sees most companies using today. He has not released the agent product suite externally yet, but uses one himself daily. “We’re talking about one of the most massive scaling opportunities, I think, for CEOs and companies in our lifetimes,” he said.
How to Scale a Company: The Framework
| Principle | What it means in practice | Named evidence from this interview |
| Act on your first instinct with people | When a leader isn’t the right fit, make the change immediately rather than giving extended time to prove themselves | At Butler International, delaying organizational change after taking the company private cost time and performance; Kopko says his first instinct, which he initially overrode, was correct |
| Convert mandatory meetings into strategic time | Treat shareholder reviews, customer visits, and operational reviews as sources of strategic insight, not purely administrative obligations | Coaches Kopko observed among Fortune 500 and 1000 CEOs at Chief Executive Magazine helped leaders reframe these meetings rather than simply add more to the calendar |
| Make quality measurable through client benchmarking | Build a quality system and validate it directly with clients, not internal metrics alone | Butler International’s ISO 9000-aligned quality system was validated when 60 to 70 percent of more than 1,000 surveyed clients named Butler the best supplier in the industry |
| Define “AI-first” as work replacement, not work assistance | True AI-first means AI performing most of the work humans currently do, not just helping them do it faster | Bold Business runs fully autonomous agents internally, including one Kopko uses personally every day, built ahead of the agentic capabilities most companies are using today |
Quotes from This Episode
- “My first instinct was the right one.” (Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business)
- “So their biggest problem to scale is to find enough time.” (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)
- “I came to the conclusion that my only solution or only choice was to embrace it wholeheartedly, grab it by the throat and say, you’re going to be my friend here.” (Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business)
- “We’re talking about one of the most massive scaling opportunities, I think, for CEOs and companies in our lifetimes.” (Ed Kopko, CEO, Bold Business)
Frequently Asked Questions
How fast should a CEO replace an underperforming leader?
Ed Kopko, CEO of Bold Business, says a CEO should act on their first instinct immediately rather than giving an underperforming leader extended time to prove themselves. After taking Butler International private off the New York Stock Exchange, Kopko gave several inherited leaders “a shot” instead of acting right away, a delay he says cost the company time and performance. He notes that private equity firms increasingly replace management quickly after a deal closes because rapid change creates faster organizational buy-in than incremental change does.
How can a CEO find time to think strategically with a packed calendar?
Ed Kopko, former CEO and publisher of Chief Executive Magazine, observed that the biggest obstacle to scaling for Fortune 500 and 1000 CEOs was not having enough time to think about strategic priorities because their calendars were filled with shareholder meetings, earnings reporting, customer visits, and operational reviews. Kopko says the CEOs who solved this hired coaches who forced dedicated thinking time and helped them extract strategic value from meetings they were already required to attend, rather than simply adding more meetings to an already packed schedule.
What does it mean for a company to be AI-first?
Ed Kopko, CEO of Bold Business, defines AI-first as AI performing most of the work currently done by humans, not simply helping employees complete tasks faster. Kopko began this transformation roughly two and a half years ago after concluding that AI would significantly change the labor market and his own BPO industry. Bold Business now runs fully autonomous agents internally, including one Kopko uses personally every day, ahead of the agentic capabilities most companies have deployed so far.
CEOs Work with Glenn Gow to Scale Their Companies and Themselves
Glenn Gow is The Scaling Executive Coach. He coaches ambitious executives into the CEO seat and CEOs into successful exits, drawing on 25 years as a CEO and five years in venture capital. 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.
