Educate your COO To Keep Them On Top of Their Game

Business owners are normally the people in the company who establish the vision that will be the basis for all growth and success. Where will the company be in five or 10 years? What will the company look like at that time? Will the company grow organically or through acquisitions? What is the right fit product line for the company?

To make the company vision real, the owner must hire a team of people whose job, in part, is to bring this picture to life and filter it through the organization. Most business owners do well with those big picture items, but some do not do well with the day-to-day minutiae. One of their hires is a great Chief Operating Officer (who may go by a variety of titles depending on the type and size of your business). This person will run all the daily tasks. The business owner expects that the COO has certain talents and skills, but many times they forget that the skills need to be updated and added to so the COO learns new ways to manage things that can make the operations more efficient, and the team work together better.

In these tumultuous times, the COO must deal with all sorts of issues that were not as imperative in the past. These range from a higher importance on culture and employee care to technology and supply chain issues. Let’s look at a couple here:

1. There have not been problems in the past with finding or sourcing parts or products that the company needs to be used in manufacturing process to provide products for their customers. There once were alternate sources, but over the last 25 years, companies have offshored the supply chain to China or other parts of Asia. This process is now starting to change to onshoring at least part of the company’s needs in the United States to solve this issue, however that will take time. How will the company manage during that transition and what other options are available?

2. One of the other issues is finding great employees, and training and motivating them during a time where statistics state that we are at full employment. A companion issue is how to manage the team, so that the schedule can be depended on and there is not too much overtime, because the company is short staffed. Recently, the pilots of American Airlines were picketing over the fact that there were too few pilots, which created a need for them to work more hours – taking away their control over their own schedules. This has created a lot of conflict within the team, which may exacerbate the shortage of pilots, cause financial loses, as well as diminish the public view of the company. This can be the case in a manufacturing setting as well, as the company may need to use overtime more than in the past or change the times of shifts in the plant, due to worker shortages. This can further slow production, cause customer service issues, and dampen morale in the company culture. How does the COO find solutions in this case? How are they keeping and attracting employees to alleviate these issues?

The issues business leaders must address and find solutions to during this time of much upheaval and competing priorities are constantly changing. The COO needs to have constant relevant and frequent training to stay on top of handling all of these issues as they come up and be able to manage the team well. They need to hear from other COO’s on how they have managed different situations or solved problems. They need to upgrade their skillset so that they will not only know how to handle various situations that arise, but also so they know how to upgrade the skillset of those that report to them. This includes leadership, communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, analysis, interpersonal skills, computer/technology literacy, and of course, making sure they not only understand the vision for the company, but are passionate about it as well.

Just like a business owner would make sure that the team manufacturing the product has the right tools for the job, they need to make sure that the COO has the tools and capabilities that they need, so they can make the company’s vision real and successful. Support your top staff by providing them the resources they need to bring your vivid vision to life.

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Denice Gierach

Gierach Law Firm

Denice Gierach is an attorney, CPA, Northwestern University business master's graduate, and has owned several businesses from real estate to manufacturing. She is the lead attorney at Gierach Law Firm in the Chicago area. With more than 30 years of experience, she has been a respected and sought-after resource for businesses looking to grow, sell, solve problems, and succeed long term. Her insights across business areas gives a fuller lens to business issues and solutions, and helps businesses grow and succeed with less time spent on legal issues and other time-consuming problems.

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