The right time to hire a chief operating officer (COO) is just before trouble appears in your company.
The reality is that most businesses realize they need a COO way too late.
Hindsight is ___________? You know the answer.
So how do you know when you need a COO???
Just imagine this…
• You are spending too much time working in your business and not on your business aka “firefighting.”
• You are feeling constantly overwhelmed and struggling daily in your company. What I like to call “treading water” or “uphill, loose gravel.”
• You know you need to strengthen and solidify your leadership team.
• Your company needs to grow in scale operations.
These are the tell tale signs that you need some help.
There is a solution so keep reading.
A COO, most especially your first one, should come from outside your company. I have found it better to promote internally after your team members have worked with an outside COO. It sets the pace and the expectation.
The leader of a company is almost always a visionary. As the visionary, you operate best when you are thinking long-term, generating big ideas, fanning a fabulous culture and cultivating strategic relationships.
Without a COO, you become stuck in the day-to-day operations with no time for the creation of big ideas OR the big ideas just remain big ideas that were never put into action which can cause your business to stagnate, wither and eventually die.
Consider a Fractional COO.
Well, Jason, what is that?
A Fractional COO is a business professional with many years of experience who is willing to work in a temporary capacity, part-time, for an hourly rate.
If you cannot afford the likes of what your company needs, then how do you move forward? You cannot keep struggling in your visionary role while being the full-time integrator. (EOS jargon)
There are many benefits to contracting with a fractional COO such as
• A fractional COO creates a “try before you buy” experience, allowing you to determine what you need from a full-time COO.
• The fractional COO is there to work themselves out of a job. They focus on building your company so you can truly afford a full-time COO in the future, and they can and will even help you find and hire their replacement.
• Typically, a fractional COO works remotely with your company.
• Fractional COOs do not require an elaborate executive hiring process so you do not have to navigate separate HR processes for just one position.
• Being a contract employee, a fractional COO does not require executive benefits, bonuses or perks.
If any of this post spoke to you then you may need to look at bringing a COO into the equation.