Chief Operating Officer
An operations leader who owns delivery.
For growing companies where volume has outrun the way the company delivers, and promises made in sales are broken in operations.
The result it owns
Delivery on time and in quality, and the cost of serving each customer.
Agreed before the work starts, reviewed regularly.
You probably need this seat if
Volume grows faster than the company can deliver.
- Orders ship late, and customers hear about it before you do.
- Revenue grows, but margin does not, and nobody can say where the cost goes.
- Every operational problem still ends on the owner's desk.
- Sales promises what operations cannot deliver, and the two teams blame each other.
- A new site, a new system or the next size of company is coming, and nobody owns it end to end.
What the seat decides
Decision rights, written down before day one.
- The operating plan and budget, inside the direction you set.
- Priorities in production, delivery and customer service.
- Suppliers and logistics partners: who works for you, and on what terms, within agreed limits.
- What sales can promise on delivery, agreed with whoever owns sales.
- Processes and systems in operations, and the order in which they change.
- The shape of the operations team and its priorities.
What stays with you is written on the first page, before day one. A seat that decides nothing is advice with a bigger invoice.
The first 90 days (Example)
What happens in the first quarter.
| When | What happens | What you can show |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 2: Listen | Conversations with you, the operations team, sales, a few customers and key suppliers. | A one-page read of where delivery really breaks |
| Weeks 3 to 4: Map | Orders followed from promise to delivery: where time, quality and cost are lost, and which decisions still wait for you. | A map of where delivery breaks, and the first three decisions that move from you to the seat |
| Weeks 5 to 8: First result | The biggest bottleneck fixed first, and a weekly operations review that sales and operations read together. One visible result by week six. | On-time delivery measured weekly, and the first bottleneck removed |
| Weeks 9 to 13: Hand to rhythm | The team runs the weekly operations rhythm with the leader out of the room. | The first review: the result against the plan |
The exact goals are agreed with you before the seat starts.
AI in this seat
Planning, reporting and routine coordination may go to AI. The judgment on trade-offs stays here.
The leader in this seat usually uses AI for demand forecasts, capacity planning and reports, and checks everything before it reaches a customer, a supplier or the board. Safety, people decisions and anything the leader answers for personally stay with a person.
Questions companies ask
Before the first conversation.
- Why not a full-time Chief Operating Officer?
- Sometimes that is the right answer, and we will tell you. A full-time leader makes sense when the seat needs five days a week and the company can carry the cost. Many seats need one experienced leader for one or two days a week, especially when the need is tied to one task, such as a new market, a turnaround or a funding round. Often it is also the step before a full-time hire: the fractional leader builds the function, and when it needs five days, helps you hire the person who takes it over.
- Why not an operations consultant?
- A consultant recommends changes and leaves. This seat owns the result, delivery, quality and cost, and stays to see the changes work.
- What if the result does not move?
- We look at it together regularly. If it does not move, we help to change what needs changing, including the seat itself.
- What do we decide first?
- Which decisions move from you to the seat, in writing, before day one.
Talk to us
Tell us what is not moving, and what result the seat should own.
One of us replies within two working days.