COO Role
When the COO Becomes Part of the Process
Most operations executives can point to work they know they should no longer be doing.
A recurring decision still comes through them. A cross-functional issue gets resolved only when they step in. A leader waits for confirmation before moving. None of this necessarily looks dysfunctional. In fact, the organization may be performing well precisely because the COO is filling those gaps.
That is what makes executive dependency difficult to see.
Earlier in his career, COO Forum® CEO Chuck Orzechowski encountered a similar pattern during recurring customer escalations. When an issue crossed sales, operations, and finance, the teams would gather the facts, talk through the options, and then look to Chuck to make the final call. He has described this kind of role as becoming the organization’s “camp counselor” – the person everyone turns to when there is a problem, disagreement, or decision that needs to be resolved. At first, stepping in seemed like the most efficient way to keep things moving. Over time, however, he began to see that increasingly routine issues were still making their way to him – not because the teams lacked information, but because the organization had learned that waiting for his decision was the easiest path. What began as helpful executive involvement had gradually become part of how the work got done.
When senior involvement produces good outcomes, the habit reinforces itself. The issue gets resolved, the work moves forward, and the organization continues to operate. But over time, the question shifts from whether the COO is helping to whether the business has become too accustomed to being helped.
The problem is not that the COO is involved. The problem is when involvement becomes part of the operating design.
When Help Becomes Dependency
There are legitimate reasons for a COO to become deeply involved in a function, decision, or initiative. The concern is not the involvement itself, but what happens when it never recedes. Temporary support can gradually become expected support, and the organization begins adapting around the COO’s presence without ever formally deciding that it should.
This can be difficult to recognize because the COO is often genuinely adding value. Experienced operations leaders are good at seeing across functions, identifying tradeoffs, resolving ambiguity, and bringing structure to situations that others find difficult. Their involvement often improves the quality and speed of the outcome, which makes the arrangement feel efficient.
But that very effectiveness can hide the underlying issue.
If the business only works well when one executive repeatedly supplies judgment, context, or coordination, then the organization may not yet own the capability itself.
The Question Is Not “Can I Do This Faster?”
Once that pattern becomes visible, the more useful question is not whether the COO can resolve the issue faster. It is whether the organization should still need the COO to resolve that kind of issue at all.
Looking at recurring involvement this way shifts the focus from individual requests to the capability behind them. If the same decisions, ambiguities, or conflicts continue moving upward, the issue may no longer be the problem itself. It may be that the organization has not yet developed the judgment, ownership, or structure needed to handle it elsewhere.
It may be a capability the organization has not yet built.
That is a more useful way to think about scale. The goal is not simply to reduce the COO’s workload. It is to increase the organization’s ability to operate without depending on the same executive judgment every time complexity appears.
Organizational Maturity Shows Up in What No Longer Requires You
One way to think about organizational maturity is to look at how the nature of executive work changes over time.
In a growing business, senior leaders will naturally be involved in more areas because the organization is still building structure, leadership depth, and operating discipline. What matters is whether that dependence decreases as the business develops.
A mature operating environment does not eliminate complexity. It distributes the ability to handle it. That may mean clearer decision rights, stronger leadership, better information, more disciplined processes, or a shared understanding of how tradeoffs should be made. The specific mechanism matters less than the outcome: work that once had to travel upward can increasingly be handled where it belongs.
This is different from delegation in the narrow sense. Delegation can move a task while leaving the underlying dependence intact. The work is technically assigned elsewhere, but the moment something becomes unusual or ambiguous, it returns to the COO.
Building capability goes further. It means the organization develops enough judgment, structure, and ownership that the work no longer needs to return upward every time conditions become more complicated.
That is a more meaningful form of scale.
The COO Can Become an Unwritten Control
Executive dependency is not always visible on an org chart or process map. Sometimes it exists simply because everyone knows that certain work is not really finished until the COO has weighed in. Over time, that expectation becomes part of how the business operates.
This creates a subtle risk. The organization may appear scalable because the work is getting done, while much of the consistency actually depends on one person’s involvement. If that executive is unavailable, changes roles, or simply reaches the limits of what they can personally absorb, the weakness becomes much more visible.
The issue is not only workload. It is organizational durability.
A business that relies heavily on one executive’s judgment may perform very well and still be less mature than it appears. Designing the COO out of certain work is not about reducing the value of the role. It is about increasing the strength of the organization.
Designing Yourself Out Without Disappearing
There is an important difference between withdrawing from work and designing the work so it no longer depends on you.
Pulling back before the organization is ready can simply expose the same weakness in a different way. The more useful approach is to understand what the COO is contributing that the organization does not yet have on its own.
Sometimes that contribution is context. Sometimes it is judgment, authority, coordination, or confidence. Once that becomes clear, the leadership task changes from repeatedly supplying the missing piece to figuring out how the organization can develop it.
For Chuck, that meant shifting out of “camp counselor” mode and into more of a coaching role. Instead of immediately solving the problem brought to him, he began asking more probing questions: What do you think is happening? What options have you considered? What do you recommend? The objective was not simply to push decisions back down the organization, but to help people strengthen the problem-solving skills and judgment they would need to handle similar situations themselves. Over time, that changed the dynamic. Rather than relying on a single company problem solver, more people began stepping forward to work through their own challenges and take greater ownership of the decisions in front of them.
That kind of shift does not happen immediately. Judgment is not transferred through a single conversation, and capability is not created by changing a box on an org chart. But the direction matters.
The goal should be that, over time, fewer decisions and operating issues require the same level of executive involvement. If nothing has moved after six or twelve months, that is worth examining. The question is no longer whether the COO is busy. It is whether the organization is becoming more capable.
What Should the Business Need From You Next?
The COO role should evolve as the organization evolves.
There will always be work that belongs at the executive level. The objective is not to eliminate dependence on the COO altogether. It is to change what the organization depends on the COO for.
A growing business should not need the same executive involvement year after year. Some of yesterday’s work should become today’s organizational capability, creating room for the COO to spend more time on the strategic work that only becomes visible when they are not continually pulled back into execution – shaping priorities, anticipating constraints, strengthening leadership capacity, and helping the organization prepare for what comes next.
That is one of the clearest signs of maturity.
The question, then, is not simply whether the business needs you. It is what the business still needs you for – and whether your time is being spent where your contribution matters most.
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