Mindset of a COO – leadership book (e-book)

If the CEO decides where the company is going, the COO makes sure it actually gets there. The COO role is the engine room of the company: operations, delivery, processes, quality and the people who do the work every day. This book explains how great COOs think: the mindset shifts from operator to enterprise leader, how they spend their week, the decisions that matter most, how to partner with the CEO and the rest of the leadership team, building an operating rhythm, the metrics that matter, leading change and continuous improvement, the traps that derail new COOs, and a 90-day plan. For new and aspiring COOs, operations leaders and anyone who works closely with one.

• The mindset shifts from operator to enterprise leader
• Building an operating rhythm that turns strategy into results
• Processes, quality, capacity and continuous improvement from the COO's chair
• A 90-day plan and a self-assessment for new and aspiring COOs
• Approx. 21 pages
• EPUB for e-readers and PDF for phone, tablet or print

The Engine Room

Every company has a strategy. Far fewer have the ability to execute it. Studies of strategy execution consistently find that most strategies fail not because they were wrong, but because they were never properly carried out. That gap between plan and reality is where the COO lives.

The Chief Operating Officer is often described as the CEO's right hand. That's true, but incomplete. The COO is responsible for making the company work: delivering products and services to customers, running the processes that make that possible, and making sure the organization gets better at it every year.

A role that varies

No C-suite role varies as much from company to company as the COO. In some companies, the COO runs all of operations: production, supply chain, logistics, customer service. In others, the COO is effectively the president of the company, with most business units reporting to them. In fast-growing companies, the COO often builds the systems and structures the company needs to scale. In some, the COO is the CEO's designated successor.

Whatever the version, three things are almost always true:

• The COO owns execution: turning strategy into results.
• The COO owns how the work gets done: processes, systems, quality, capacity.
• The COO complements the CEO: covering their blind spots and freeing them to focus on the things only a CEO can do.

Agree on the job first

Because the role varies so much, the first thing a new COO must do is agree clearly with the CEO on what the job is. Which areas report to you? Which decisions are yours? How will you divide external and internal work? What does success look like in a year? Write it down. Revisit it every six months. Many COO failures start with an unclear mandate.

… The excerpt continues in the book.

1. The Engine Room
2. The Seven Mindset Shifts
3. How a COO Spends the Week
4. The Decisions That Matter Most
5. Building the Operating Rhythm
6. The Metrics That Matter
7. Continuous Improvement
8. Relationships
9. Leading Change
10. Scaling the Company
11. Building Your Leadership Team
12. When Things Break
13. Communicating as COO
14. Seeing It Through the Customer's Eyes
15. The Traps
16. Your First 90 Days
17. Self-Assessment

Format: E-book as EPUB (Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, Kindle via “Send to Kindle”) and PDF.. Made with the help of AI and tested by our quality control. Not tax, accounting or legal advice. Terms and right of withdrawal