Chief working officers are confronted with two foremost units of priorities: protecting the enterprise buzzing and getting ready it for the longer term, based on New Steadiness chief working officer Dave Wheeler.
“Run the business; transform the business,” Wheeler stated throughout an on-stage interview at Fortune’s COO Summit convention in Middleburg, Va. on Monday.
Because the pandemic, COOs have needed to remodel their organizations for a brand new set of circumstances—some may say crises—that nearly nobody within the enterprise world had anticipated. This created unprecedented pressures for COOs. They needed to take care of a worldwide pandemic that shuttered places of work, ensnarled provide chains, and brought on gargantuan issues with no clear timeline for decision. Whereas all these points unfolded, COOs nonetheless needed to maintain their companies buzzing alongside.
“During COVID, you had to solve COVID, but you were still operating a business,” COO and personal fairness agency TPG companion Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri stated from the convention’s main-stage occasion.
Wheeler agreed. “It’s been not only managing through geopolitical issues, but also scaling up at a significant rate and innovating at the same time,” he stated.
Proving themselves throughout these notably tumultuous occasions has catapulted some COOs as front-running candidates to step into the highest job. Lately, boards appointed former COOs like Netflix’s Greg Peters and Costco’s Ron Vachris into CEO positions.
Whereas he says he’s blissful along with his present function, Wheeler advised Fortune COOs make for good CEOs, notably in product-focused corporations.
“Just knowing how a product is made and having overall purview of that is something that not all executives have in the various C-suite roles,” he stated. ”I simply assume it takes a sure mindset and a character to make it profitable. And in the event you’re profitable as a COO, you might be a profitable CEO.”
Why COOs make good CEOs
One of many causes COOs make for good CEOs is that they’re adept at recognizing the place the following main ache level may crop up, based on Vazquez-Ubarri.
“Because you’re involved in so much, you can probably see a crisis coming,” she stated.
As soon as that disaster hits, COOs typically know who within the firm to faucet to assist clear up it, Vazquez-Ubarri added. “You understand who you need to pull in,” she stated. “You need to be the connector to make sure everyone that needs to help has their marching orders.”
Whereas COOs are recognized for his or her operational chops, each Wheeler and Vazquez-Ubarri sought to dispel the stereotype that COOs aren’t as well-suited to technique. To not point out, the pandemic pressured them to be nearer to their agency’s long-term planning, which modified their roles.
“We’re all closer to where the business strategy is being created and ideated, it just has to actually be able to be executed on,” Vazquez-Ubarri stated.
However because the function modifications, COOs know they’ll’t do it alone. Leaders want buy-in from their groups. Vazquez-Ubarri advised Fortune she expects her crew to give you options to issues that may nonetheless work 5 years down the street, not simply on the present second. COOs additionally must set an instance for the corporate, Wheeler added.
“Role-modeling is the most important,” he stated. “I make sure that all my direct reports and everybody in the team really reflects that we have integrity, teamwork, and total customer satisfaction. Everybody gets that, and it’s part of the role also to help people in other functions understand the complexity of operations.”
The necessity for operational rigor doesn’t go away when, and if, an organization sees its enterprise increase, as New Steadiness did after hitting $6.5 billion in income in 2023, Wheeler famous.
“Expanding is just as challenging as shrinking,” Wheeler stated. “It’s just more fun.”
