Helping CEOs Drive Value: The Role of the Chief Operating Officer

The role of the chief operating officer (COO) can be a valuable addition to the executive team. For many organizations, the COO adds value in a number of ways, including leveraging and executing aspects of CEO workload, enabling efficient decision-making, providing unifying oversight of multiple lines of business, and developing a potential CEO successor.

This briefing examines the often misunderstood role of the COO. Several themes are explored, including the scope of the role; reasons why the role of the COO is used in some organizations and not in others; the benefits and challenges of the role of COO; key drivers of success for the role; and implications and risks associated with the role of the COO. Research for this briefing involved a combination of interviews with 12 chief human resources officers about the role of a COO and a literature review.