Let’s cut right to it: the COO role is one of the most exhilarating and simultaneously precarious seats in business. When it’s good, it can feel effortless - that rare professional moment where everything clicks. You step into the role, make immediate improvements, the CEO can’t stop praising your impact, and you feel like the strategic operator you always knew you were.

And then something changes. Not loudly, not overnight  -  almost silently. A widening gap, a subtle drift. Suddenly, you find yourself left out of key decisions, disconnected from your CEO, and questioning how the person they hired became the person they now seem unsure about. It’s disorienting and deeply frustrating, and nearly every COO has felt it at some point. It's not a reflection of your skill - it’s a reflection of alignment.

The truth is that the COO role is uniquely vulnerable to shifts in trust, communication, and expectations. High turnover is common, not because COOs lack capability, but because the role is so entangled with the CEO’s leadership style, psychology, and operating tempo. Nate Bennett and Stephen A. Miles captured this reality perfectly in their Harvard Business Review classic, Second in Command, noting that a COO’s success depends as much on the CEO as on the COO. Almost twenty years ago, in You’re Not the Person I Hired!, Janet Boydell, Barry Deutsch, and Brad Remillard reinforced this dynamic by warning that nearly half of executives flame out within their first 18 months.

This isn’t ancient history. It’s the operating environment COOs still live in. And if that weren’t enough, COO Forum partner Rachel Lebowitz reminds us in Empowered COO that even structurally sound COO roles can implode when COOs ignore their internal boundaries, diminish their own authority, or operate from a place of burnout instead of empowerment.

Put all of this together and the message is unavoidable: alignment isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the lifeline of the COO role. Ignore it, and the clock starts ticking.

Interviewing for Alignment Before You Take the Job

Too many COOs accept an offer because the role looks compelling, the compensation is solid, and the company seems exciting. They assume chemistry will work itself out later. But chemistry, even when it develops, doesn’t fix misalignment - it only hides it until things get messy.

Finding alignment begins even before you sign the offer letter. The first step is understanding why the CEO is hiring a COO in the first place. Every COO role has a different origin story - executor, change agent, heir apparent, stabilizer - and if their reasons don’t match your aspirations or strengths, you’re stepping into a mismatch from day one.

The second step is clarity. One of the fastest ways for a COO to fail is by accepting a role with vague expectations. You need to know, in explicit terms, what you own, where you have decision rights, and how disagreements will be resolved. If the CEO can’t articulate these boundaries, you won’t be operating - you’ll be guessing.

Next, test the CEO’s comfort with challenge. The most successful COO/CEO partnerships embrace productive friction. If you ask a CEO how they’ve handled being challenged in the past and they respond with irritation, defensiveness, or dismissive humor, that’s not a quirk -  that’s a billboard-sized warning sign.

Finally, listen closely for the difference between empowerment and permission. Lebowitz often says that some CEOs want a partner, while others want a helper. Helpers wait to be deputized. Partners move with authority. If the CEO expects you to ask for permission before taking a step, you’re already walking into a future where you will feel diminished rather than empowered.

Building Early Alignment Once You’re in the Role

Landing the COO role isn’t the victory. Maintaining alignment is.

During your first several months, communication is your greatest currency. Over-communicating early isn’t about micromanaging upward - it’s about showing your thought process, your rhythm, your decision patterns. When a CEO understands how you think, they trust you faster and rely on you more deeply.

This is also the phase where you define your “Leadership Avatar”, a concept Rachel Lebowitz champions. This is your chance to articulate how you operate: the boundaries you maintain, the cadence you prefer, how you respond under pressure, and how you want the CEO to engage with you. Sharing this openly may feel unusual at first, but it’s one of the fastest ways to prevent misunderstandings and resentment later.

Assertive communication is essential at this stage. COOs often soften their language to maintain harmony, but excessive softening erodes clarity. Clarity isn’t combative - it communicates intent, direction, and risk. When you speak directly, you establish yourself not merely as an operator, but as a true partner.

And you must pay attention to resentment. Resentment is the COO’s early-warning system. When you start feeling sidelined, overloaded, or excluded, it may seem easier to push through and be a "team player”. But unresolved resentment never gets smaller. It grows quietly until it becomes a wedge between you and the CEO. Bringing these feelings into your 1:1s isn’t weakness - it’s discipline.

Sustaining Alignment Over the Years

The real test of a COO isn’t performance in year one - its relevance in year three. Even healthy CEO/COO partnerships drift over time. The company evolves, priorities shift, the CEO matures, the board applies new pressure, and suddenly the partnership that once felt effortless becomes strained without either party realizing why.

This is where veteran COOs stand out. They revisit alignment regularly. They reclarify their mandate annually instead of assuming their scope will remain constant. They watch for small signs of drift - the CEO shortening conversations, bypassing them on decisions, or engaging differently with other executives. These aren’t random behaviors. They’re signals.

At the same time, COOs must stay aligned with themselves. As Lebowitz often warns, many COOs slip into a form of martyrdom, over-working, over-owning, and over-functioning until their identity becomes tied to being indispensable. But martyrdom is the opposite of empowerment. And a COO operating from martyrdom is a COO drifting out of alignment with both the CEO and their own values.

Another area where long-term alignment erodes is ambition. If your long-term future within the company is hazy, the partnership becomes unstable. Succession conversations don’t have to be promises, but they must be explicit. COOs who quietly hope for a future shift into the CEO’s chair - or assume their role will expand with scale - often become misaligned with CEOs who have no such vision. Clear conversations prevent unnecessary disappointment.

Why Alignment Matters More Than Anything Else

The cost of losing a COO is enormous. When a COO fails, the organization suffers operational disruption, cultural fragmentation, and leadership instability. Most of these failures don’t happen because the COO wasn’t skilled enough - they happen because expectations, communication, psychological fit, and authority drifted out of sync.

Alignment creates longevity. Alignment creates trust. Alignment creates the space where a COO can actually perform at their highest level instead of spending emotional energy deciphering invisible expectations.

And alignment creates empowerment - the internal grounding that allows COOs to push back, take risks, make decisions independently, and operate with strength rather than caution.

Final Word: The Real Job of the COO

At its core, the job of the COO is not just to run operations. It’s to build and protect the partnership that makes execution possible. Alignment with your CEO is foundational. Alignment with yourself is non-negotiable. Alignment with the organization gives your work meaning.

Operational excellence only matters when you stay in the role long enough for people to see the impact. Alignment is what keeps you in the seat, keeps you in your power, and keeps the CEO/COO partnership strong enough to carry the organization forward.

Stay aligned. Stay empowered. Protect the partnership.
Your tenure - and your impact - depend on it.