The role of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) has changed drastically in recent years, becoming an essential part of the corporate structure. As technology and data-driven development have become a reality in the business world, the COO is now responsible for overseeing the daily administrative and operational functions of a company. This means not only maintaining operations as usual (BAU), but also driving new strategic innovations in operational efficiency, improving the customer experience, and leading various transformation initiatives. The COO must be firmly focused on people as well as processes.
Providing a pleasant working environment, meeting the needs of employees, ensuring diversity and equity in the workplace, and creating an attractive corporate culture are just some of the many challenges that the COO of the future will face. Systems that focus on people help free them up to perform more meaningful tasks. Give them the time they need to help customers and innovate by eliminating all mundane and unnecessary tasks that stand in their way. Performance factors such as strategic approach, clarity of objectives and execution plan with relevant systems, processes and technology, information flow and reports are essential for the role of the COO.
The director of operations or COO must also have a current and accurate view of objectives and progress of strategic initiatives and KPIs in an organization. Renewing business continuity planning may require greater interaction with the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) or whoever has that responsibility. Rob is a director of Deloitte Consulting LLP and leads the market offering of transforming operating models for operations transformation. He emphasizes that mastering goal-setting frameworks such as OKR, 4DX, SMART and KPIs is essential for COOs, in addition to mastering project execution methodologies such as Agile.
Providing your organization with the tools it needs to succeed in the coming months may require focusing more on cybersecurity, so you can spend more time with the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for a while. The role of the COO has become increasingly important as companies struggle to meet their strategic priorities through the use of systems and processes based on best practices. It's been a long time since operating environments were stable and companies could carry out biweekly operational plans. The COO is one of the most important C-level hires in companies today.
