Return of the COO – The lord of the things
With great uncertainty comes great responsibility. Uncertainty causes a drop in demand, which causes a drop in revenue. In diminishing returns, companies need to adapt their business to survive. They need resilience. Cutting costs and improving efficiency are needed. A role uniquely suited to this challenge is now making its way back to leadership teams – the COO.
COOs, short for Chief Operating Officers, are rarely the flashiest individuals. Their work isn’t often as visible as sales or marketing, but their importance can’t be ignored. Especially during hard times. Companies cannot influence the external environment that causes the demand to fall. What they can change is how they themselves operate. COOs cut down the unit costs by improving productivity and cost efficiency.
The COO leads the daily operation and executes top management’s strategic projects. In recent years, the job title has evolved to new aspects. According to McKinsey, COOs also care for technology-driven growth, strategic expansion and employee empowerment.
Efficiency in collaboration
Most waste happens in inefficient communication and collaboration. Microsoft’s Work Trend Index highlighted that up to 57% of working time is spent communicating instead of completing work tasks. The first task on the COO work queue is ensuring efficiency of collaboration.
Standardizing knowledge work operations improves efficiency and reduces waste. Digital platforms that bring people and knowledge together are the COOs best friends. They collect the fruits of collaboration, while helping discover and get rid of waste. Transparent collaboration in channels sheds light on the issues that cripple productivity.
Productivity up from waste down
Technology happens to be also the key to productivity gains. Knowledge work productivity is one aspect of modern work that has not improved much in recent years. Enterprise leadership systems, like Fingertip, enhance existing leadership and collaboration. Fingertip empowers people with simple ways to lead their own work and collaborate with others.
When work is visible, the COO also has the required knowledge to pinpoint wasteful processes and cut down hard on them. Digital leadership with Fingertip improves speed and quality, resulting in less mistakes and thus less waste. It helps COOs deliver their expectations.
With well oiled operations and minimal waste, the company becomes resilient to turbulences in its environment. The COO ensures their company can thrive not only during growing economy, but in recession as well. Fingertip improves leadership processes from meetings to decisions, increasing organizations’ clockspeed tremendously.
Fingertip is an essential tool for COOs and entire leadership teams to implement modern technology and unleash knowledge work productivity. To see how it works, see the demo where our experts explain it using a real scenario.
