A COO is a Master tactician of a diverse organization managing complex operations on a day-to-day basis, with multiple stakeholders (and potentially Unions), that supports and oversees all organizational functions, but still not directly responsible for any product or solutions development, or sales and marketing.
On a daily basis, the COO:
- Develops, implements and monitors key operational and performance metrics (and KPIs) of the organization to achieve desired and optimal outcomes and results, and also prepares key forecasting reports.
- Manages projects, resources and risks.
- Manages all the support functions like program office, HR, Legal, recruitment, and procurement managers.
- If it is an NGO, startup or a government organization, leads the fundraising efforts by securing funding rounds and carefully manages capital.
Ideally, he always reports into the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or President and is an integral part of Executive Leadership Team (ELT). He collaborates with the President/CEO in setting and driving organizational vision, operations strategy, and achieving organizational results. Some organizations (mostly Government and a few education institutions) use Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) as an equivalent role, with very similar responsibilities.
List of Responsibilities – a Cumulative collection of many Cs:
- Compliance: Maintains full compliance to local and state laws, regulatory bodies and industry standards by establishing robust policies, procedures and controls, and by staying updated on any regulatory changes. Risk management and mitigation is an integral part of this exercise for the entire organization. One must be aware of all political, social, economic, environmental and technological risks and effectively manage them. In some organizations, this role is exclusive to a Chief Compliance officer who may or may not report into the COO.
- Commercials: Manages all end-to-end commercial engagements, with all customers and stakeholders
- Capital Management: Oversees and manages all local and global facilities and fleets (if any), plans and manage all capital projects, and leads all procurement and logistics support.
- Commitment to Operations Excellence: Upholds commitment to OpEx by adhering to financial targets, driving operational strategy, enhancing brand reputation and ensuring prudent resource allocation and cost control. Aggressively manages the investment and expenses to ensure company achieves intended budgeted revenue targets and margin– this includes ensuring revenue and cash flow by negotiating contracts and meeting all settlement and collection targets (Business Development activities). Develops budget forecasts and operations plans, assesses, and analyses operation capabilities, variances and ensures adherence to budget.
- Change management – Develops and implements appropriate systems, identifies areas of process optimization and implements necessary changes to maximise efficiency (and productivity) and minimize costs.
- Communications: Oversees all Corporate Communications through professional presentation, facilitations and interpersonal skills, thus delivering a consistent and clear messaging for the organization, both for internal and external audience.
- Customer: Creates and executes the customer experience framework and is also responsible for the customer relationships and customer service delivery. A key metric (s)he drives is the CSS – Customer Satisfaction Survey.
- Culture: Fosters a culture of employee engagements, continuous improvement, transparency and teamwork, thus building a corporate lifestyle of high performance and core values, accountability and employee growth
- Community: Fosters community relationships by establishing grievance redress mechanisms and social safeguards for the organization’s work with local communities, if any.
- Care and Confidence: Facilitates and respects the employees and cares about the infrastructure of the organization. Inspires confidence to the internal and external stakeholders, including partner relationships and vendor management.
- (Working) Conditions: Accountable for the Occupational, health and safety (OHS) of the organization by assuring safe working conditions for all teams globally, including emergency/disaster planning and response, first-aid and emergency-response training and employee safe-behaviour training.
So, what is role is NOT?
- Not a Chief Financial officer who analyses and reports everything financial, but a COO supports financial monitoring, planning, forecasting and budgeting, by receiving key inputs from CFO on a regular basis.
- Not a Chief Marketing officer, but a COO does monitor all the key customer metrics including the Satisfaction scores. IN some organizations, CMO reports into the COO.
Not a Chief Product (development) officer and not responsible for actual delivery of product or solutions to customers, but a COO does monitor all the programs that run within the organizations and ensures compliance to resource and cost budgets.
