At the end of the day, COO and CEO work hand in hand. The COO is basically the right-hand to a CEO. Below you will learn what the COO owes the CEO and what the CEO owes the COO.

As reported by HBR on May 2006 by Nate Bennett and Stephen A. Miles.

Second in Command: The Misunderstood Role of the Chief Operating Officer

4 Keys to COO/CEO Effectiveness

True Respect

Because a chief executive relies so heavily on the second in command to accomplish mission-critical goals, it’s essential that the Chief Operating Officer wholeheartedly believes in the Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO) strategic leadership. COO’s by virtue of their inherent talents and their organizational position, are highly visible and powerful. If the COO is not aligned with the CEO’s vision, or not convinced that the CEO can find the best path forward, then that lieutenant is capable of real mischief. Dan Rosensweig, COO at Yahoo, described for us the hours he spent talking with CEO Terry Semel before joining the company. Rosensweig invested the time because, in his words, “you have to get in sync with the CEO. If you have an agenda that is different than his or hers, you will absolutely fail the company.”

An Ego in Check

In the interviews we conducted—particularly those with COOs—we heard repeatedly how critical it is for seconds in command to check their egos at the door. It’s a tricky balance to achieve, given that COOs must obviously be self-confident leaders. “You have to lead while serving,” stressed eBay COO Maynard Webb, immediately adding, “It has been the hardest job that I have ever done.” Interestingly, he then followed up with another reason why the job is hard: “It is not as immediate with gratification as any of the line jobs that I had. When you are solving technology issues, such as is the site up or not, it is very black-and-white, and you see some of the results quickly. But you are working on things through a lot more layers as COO, and the results come much slower.” These sound like two very different reasons for a job to be hard, but we suspect they may be intertwined. Often, the results do come more slowly—and often they come in a way that makes their proper attribution more difficult to discern. Regardless, the COO is not necessarily in line to receive the kudos for a job well done.

An Eye on Execution

Back in the 1990s, people in organizations jokingly picked up on a phrase from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. In it, starship captain Jean-Luc Picard, having settled on a course of action, would simply instruct his crew to “make it so.” CEOs in general can’t quite get away with that, but to the extent that they are focused on strategy, they rely on COOs to oversee much of the implementation. They must be able to trust that they can afford to address longer-term and bigger-picture issues because their second in command will maintain a focus on the here and now. Even COOs who are not primarily playing the executor role should have an execution mindset and a bias toward action.

Coaching and Coordination Skills

A COO must be able to direct and coach others throughout the business. Steven Reinemund, now chairman and CEO at PepsiCo, gave us his thoughts on the challenge. He was promoted to COO after having led a business unit and, he told us, “I had to think long and hard about whether I really wanted to move out of running the day-to-day business into a role where I coach and coordinate.” Being a division president, he explained, “is a hands-on job. You get to mold the strategy; you get to direct the efforts every day. You have the functional people that you work with, and that team performs against a mission, and it is an exciting experience.” The COO job, by contrast, requires an individual who “can step out of doing day-to-day, hands-on directing and leading of a business, and direct and teach and coach others.” Again, regardless of which of the seven roles a COO plays, the CEO must be able to trust that these skills are in place.

4 Keys to CEO/COO Effectiveness

Communication

The COOs we spoke with understood that the onus was on them to embrace the CEO’s strategy and work to make it real. But no one can execute against a plan that’s not being communicated clearly and directly. CEOs constantly have fresh thoughts with operational implications; they must be in the habit of discussing those with their COOs without delay. Ken Freeman told us how he and Surya Mohapatra kept the lines of communication active at Quest Diagnostics. “Sunday at 4:00 PM became the time for us to have lengthy discussions. We would see each other at the office, too, of course, but there we would be scurrying around working on the integration of the [merged] companies, driving the company’s performance, and making things go. We had each other’s undivided attention via telephone starting at 4:00, virtually every single Sunday for five years.” Another CEO we interviewed admitted an early mistake: locating his new COO’s office in a separate building, thereby failing to capitalize on the rich communication afforded by physical proximity.

Clear Decision Rights

The executives we interviewed stressed the need for explicit and reasonable lines of demarcation between CEO and COO responsibilities. While there was no consensus on what exactly should be part of each job, everyone agreed that the matter had to be sorted out at the start of the relationship. It’s far easier to delineate boundaries when the two individuals clearly have complementary competencies and each naturally gravitates to different areas of expertise. The greater the overlap in competencies, the greater the likelihood that the COO might feel (perhaps accurately) that the CEO is micromanaging and second-guessing decisions. Such behavior on the part of the CEO communicates to the COO a lack of trust that is likely to engender friction in the relationship. When we raised this point with Bob Herbold, another former COO at Microsoft, he responded: “To me, this is a key issue. The way it gets worked out is the individuals—through trial and error, as well as through discussions—figure out who is going to be doing what and who needs to check with who on key decisions. How the pair will make that happen needs to be agreed to very early in the relationship.”

A Lock on the Back Door

Obviously, the creation of the COO role adds a layer of management; executives who previously had direct access to the CEO now have an intermediary to address. One of the COO’s first challenges is to develop relationships with direct reports that discourage them from seeking backdoor access to the CEO. At the same time, the COO must depend on the CEO to block efforts by those who might want to circumvent the position. This is not to say that restricting access to the CEO is the goal. Ed Zander, now CEO of Motorola, previously served as COO of Sun Microsystems under Scott McNealy. Zander says the two made it clear that any of the COO’s direct reports was entitled to go to McNealy to talk about things. But the lines of responsibility were still respected. “One thing that Scott did very well was to never undermine me,” Zander told us. “He always backed all my decisions. He would hear people out but then send them to me.”

CEOs constantly have fresh thoughts with operational implications; they must be in the habit of discussing those with their COOs without delay.

A number of the people we interviewed noted how much personal discipline is required on the CEO’s part to maintain this kind of line. “I have been working on nailing that back door shut for a while,” eBay COO Webb told us. “I think it is a tough, tough thing to do, especially when you have a CEO that actually loves to get involved in problem-solving and wants to help. I think what you have to do in that case is to enable, not control, communication and be transparent.”

A Shared Spotlight

Without exception, the COOs we interviewed accepted the fact that their job was to make the CEO successful—and that in doing so they in many ways rendered their own contributions less visible. But, especially for COOs who aspire to the top job, that creates a dilemma. Jim Donald, President and CEO of Starbucks, noted that what gets executives to the role of President and COO “won’t necessarily earn them a CEO role. Once you are in the COO role, you have to broaden the network of things you do. You need to work with the board, work with the CEO, and work to lead others to be successful.”

It falls upon the CEO’s shoulders to make sure that this development takes place and to share the spotlight whenever appropriate. If the CEO is not deliberate about this, then the board will have no reason to be impressed by the number two, who may then prove ultimately unpromotable. Kevin Sharer, who was COO at Amgen before he became CEO, lays heavy emphasis on this point. He told us that the success of the CEO-COO relationship is “75% dependent on a few things that the CEO does.” He framed those things for us as a series of important questions:

• Does the CEO give the number two real authority, real operating responsibility, power that is real, power that is seen by the rest of the company as real?
• Second, does the number one actually encourage and let the number two person have his or her own voice in board meetings and operating reviews?
• Third, does the CEO give coaching, counseling, and really see the success of the number two as part of the company’s success?

Now that you see what COOs and CEOs owe each other, is there anything you would add to this list to make these two positions more effective?