RUTENDO CHRISTACHEL GWEKWERERE

21204240222
BA212
TOPIC INTERVIEW OF COO
ASSIGNMENT 1

COO duties and responsibilities

The purpose of the COO is to create several strategic plans with
tangible deliverables that bring the organization closer to achieving its
corporate goals. Every organization is different, which means that the
COO has different responsibilities depending on the size of the
company and its industry. Universally, though, the COO works very
closely with the chief executive officer (CEO) to make important
business decisions and works on scheduling a plan of execution. The
COO is tasked with also working closely with the chief financial officer
(CFO) and the chief information officer (CIO) to ensure that every
department is on track to reach organizational goals and is supporting
the company’s vision. While the COO reports to the CEO, typically other
C-level executives report to the COO.

1Behavioral intelligence
Behavioural intelligence is an important competency for any leadership
role, and especially for the COO. Behavioural intelligence refers to an
individual’s ability to understand or explain behaviours in the
workplace, predict future behaviours, influence employees’ behaviours,
and also control their own behaviour. Interview questions relating to
behavioural intelligence are important because they will give insight as
to how the candidate has handled certain situations in the past and also
reveal how and if the candidate is able to stay strategically focused.
Moreover, these questions demonstrate how leaders deal with conflict,
and shed light on their ability to listen to opposing views, how they
support opinions with evidence, and how they create effective
solutions.

 In your previous role, how did you keep yourself accountable to

individual and organizational goals?
 Sometimes there won’t be time to evaluate multiple options. How
do you act in the face of ultra-tight deadlines?
 In the past, how have you resolved any fundamental
disagreements in strategy or direction with the CEO or others in
the C-suite or on the executive team?
 Do you feel you align with our company values? Tell me more.
 How has empathy helped you become successful in your career?
Can you provide an example of this?
 Can you share an example of how you might appease an unhappy
employee—without undermining company

2General and background

General questions are those which focus on gaining an overall view of
the background of a candidate’s previous experiences, industry
knowledge, people management abilities and which highlight the
person’s overall suitability for the position. Executive positions like the
COO role require a senior level of experience and knowledge, which is
why these questions are important for gaining an in-depth impression
of the candidate’s skills, experiences, competencies, and personality.

 What is your leadership philosophy? How do you put it into

practice?
 What is the most challenging part of your current job? Describe
your relationship with your previous CEO.
  What are some examples of efficiencies you’ve found for your
current organization?
 Have you ever sacrificed efficiency for cost? Have you sacrificed
cost for efficiency?
 What are some successful initiatives you’ve overseen?
 How do you effectively motivate a team?
 What high-level programs and tools do you work with to organize
large budgets?
 How has your experience in this industry prepared you to be our
COO?

3Operational and situational

Operational and situational questions help interviewers to gain an
understanding of the candidate’s knowledge of the role they are
interviewing for and give them some insight as to how the potential
COO would manage real-life situations. Importantly, one of the
fundamental responsibilities of the COO is to make sure the business
operates within its budget. These questions are important for
emphasizing the candidate’s ability to manage both the business
requirements and the workforce simultaneously.

 What are the first three things you would do in the new role to
understand the industry, company performance, and operational
priorities?
 What do you think is the most effective way to delegate tasks to
others?
 How do you assess project costs to prepare accurate operational
budgets?
 What would you want to know in your first 30 days as a COO?
 Tell me about a time you made a mistake at work while in a
management role. How did you go about addressing it?
 What are ways to reduce operational costs that most executives
miss?
  What would you do in a situation where you were lacking
resources but had to deliver a project on time?
 In your opinion, what counts more toward a COO’s overall
success: people or profits?
 How do you ensure the board is aware of key operational
metrics?

1How do you motivate employees to achieve their full potential?

Response: In my current role, I noticed from my own observations and
the feedback from managers that employees were lacking motivation.
In order to get to the root of the problem, I decided to implement a
company-wide pulse survey to generate feedback from employees
about what would motivate them at work, among other important
metrics. From the monthly reports and with the option for anonymous
feedback, I gathered that employees wanted to have more recognition
and more background context on the projects they were working on.

As such, we implemented a formal recognition and rewards framework

for the company so that we could ensure that employees were being
recognized at every level. I also began to facilitate a monthly meeting
where the head of each project within each team would give a rundown
of the project purpose and desired outcome. As such, the feedback on
the pulse surveys began to improve and we saw employees taking a lot
more initiative in asking questions, completing training and tracking for
promotions. I think to motivate employees, you need to have
relationships with them. They need to be seen and heard so that they
know that their work matters.

2What is your decision-making style?

Response: I believe that my decision-making style may change based
on the particular situation or scenario. That said, for the most part, I’m
a conceptual decision maker, because it’s in my nature to theorize and
philosophize the “why” behind a potential decision. I tend to question
why problems exist in the first place and then consider what kind of
problem solving is required to overcome challenges in unique ways.
While I am more than capable of making independent decisions, I do
like to collaborate on big decisions because I’ve found that some of the
best ideas and solutions have come from working with other executives
and employees. Not only do brainstorming sessions help us come to the
most effective and feasible decision, but I believe brainstorming
empowers employees by giving them a voice and true say on the
decisions that are made. Ultimately, I think that working as a team
creates an innovative, fun place to work where everyone is recognized
and heard.

A Chief Operating Officer (COO) is typically tasked with the daily

operations of a business, supervising all or most aspects of the
organization's plans. Depending on the company, the COO may be
responsible for managing issues including financial growth and
development, sales, marketing, research, and personnel.
Challenges of COO and how to overcome them

Chief operating officers face the challenges of teams duplicating work,

working against each other unintentionally, or working on the wrong
priorities.
At best, redundancies cause operations to take longer than needed and
cost the organization more resources (time, budget, energy). At worst,
they cause priorities to be missed or forgotten, putting the
organization’s security in danger.
Poor engagement
Engagement impacts every part of the organization, from operational
efficiency to retention and employee experience.
Poor engagement plagues every organization, impacting the morale
and consistency of the business. Chief operating officers are challenged
with building an operations process that doesn’t disengage teams in the
pursuit of higher output.
Reactive with data
As a chief operating officer, measuring results is an essential
component of operations. However, a rigid focus on traditional data
measures (KPIs, for example) limits the ability to adapt operations and
drive what really matters — impact.
Since traditional data is often backward-looking, chief operating officers
get a limited, lagging perspective on how operations are performing
and, more importantly, what needs to change. A reactive focus is a
major inhibitor for chief operating officers.
Complex or outdated operating frameworks
The modern business world demands a focus on cross-functionality,
growth, and agility in operations. Yet, chief operating officers are often
equipped with outdated frameworks or models for managing
operations. These frameworks fail to align company vision, strategy,
and execution, or complicate the strategy execution process to the
point of paralysis by analysis. The chief operating officer is challenged in
implementing a framework for the way businesses operate now, not 20
years ago.
Here’s how chief operating officer can overcome their main challenges
to improve operations, connect strategy with execution, and align
teams within a company.
Alignment
Focus on the middle. Department strategy sits between company
strategy and functional strategy in the hierarchy. With this in mind,
department strategy may be neglected as the functional, day-to-day
strategy is critical for execution, while company strategy is prioritized
for most executive leaders.
Using the department level to bridge company and functional strategies
will break alignment silos and fill in the strategy execution gap.
Reduce hierarchy. For each person that strategy must go through, the
execution of that strategy becomes more unclear — people down the
line become increasingly disconnected through communication chains.
Simplifying the strategy execution process and reducing hierarchical
decision-making is critical for consistent alignment.

Make strategy accessible. Teams may fail to align to strategy simply

because they don’t know what the strategy is.
Ensuring your operations framework clearly states the strategy, who is
responsible for what, and what success looks like goes a long way in
aligning your teams.
Efficiency
Transparency first. Use a strategic framework that prioritizes
transparency and the goals needed to achieve that strategy.
This is the easiest way to eliminate redundancies, allowing individuals
to easily connect to the outcomes that need to be achieved (versus
working in silos and hoping they’re doing the right things).
Set clear priorities. Once a system of transparency has been
established, teams need direction on where to go.
Priorities bring focus and unity to team execution, building effective
operations centered on outcomes, not busy work.
Review structure. Organizational hierarchies are inevitable, but as chief
operating officer, you must consistently review and improve structures
at each level of the organization.
Are there unnecessary dependencies causing delays? Which areas of
the business are lagging in development? As your business matures and
transforms, needs will shift, making structural reviews a fundamental
practice for any chief operating officer.
As chief operating officer, it’s important not to let your teams conflate
the idea of “more” work equating to “better” work.
Engagement
Identify areas for collaboration. For example, when teams are involved
in creating their own goals and tactics, they’re more likely to stay
engaged with the work. Chief operating officers should support open
collaboration, whether it’s setting priorities, determining the path of
execution, or assigning responsibility.
Your teams will generate more ideas, enhance collective buy-in to
strategy on the functional level, and reduce the number of
dependencies, delays, and defects.
Target people inhibitors. Inefficiency has more consequences for the
business than simple outputs. Employee morale suffers when their
work is inevitably wasted due to a poor management process.
As chief operating officer, you must ensure any management you have
in place are necessary decision makers not complicating execution.
Push for autonomy. Research has shown that employees who feel
responsible and accountable for the way they work are more engaged.
With this in mind, chief operating officers should instill a framework
enabling autonomy to give employees more power over when and how
they work. Not only does this help employees be more fulfilled with
their work, but it also leads to greater happiness which impacts
employee engagement.
Proactive decision making
Stay growth minded. A growth mentality as chief operating officer is
about demonstrating the benefits of both success and failure, as well as
encouraging both.
With a growth-minded leader, teams won’t operate from a stance of
fear and risk aversion, exponentially raising the ceiling for potential
outcomes. Combined with future-thinking goals, a growth mentality is
key to enabling proactive decision making.
Keep vision at the center. Corporate strategy isn’t meant to be a set-
and-forget checklist item — it should guide the chief operating officer
when working with departmental and functional decision making.
The minutiae of day-to-day operations can cause even the best chief
operating officer to lose focus and think reactively. The strategic vision
of the organization, when informed by the right data, puts the power of
alignment and proactivity back into operations.
Use future-thinking goal setting. Retrospective data measurements, like
KPIs, have their place. As a chief operating officer, however, they
should not be at the core of strategic decision making because they are
backward-looking.
KPIs inform what has happened, but to take control of operations, what
will happen is more important. This only occurs when goals are
structured around desired, measurable outcomes.
The modern operating model
Focus on outcomes. While traditional frameworks focus on optimizing
quantity and production, modern frameworks prioritize outcomes.
With chief operating officers responsible for pushing operations
strategy into the new era, evolving beyond outdated frameworks
means redefining success. It’s no longer based on bureaucracy and
volume of work, but on the measurable impact supported by real-time
data.
Connect strategy and execution. Modern businesses are plagued with a
this-or-that dilemma — create a data-driven and informed strategy, or
focus on perfecting complex day-to-day operations.
The chief operating officer is strategically positioned to close
the strategy execution gap. By using a goal-setting framework to
accomplish this, strategic objectives guide your teams while
measurable results inform progress.
Empowerment over control. In an outdated system, leadership has the
tendency to micromanage each team’s decision-making process. The
chief operating officer must fight against these tendencies in the macro
strategy and empower teams to make their own decisions.
By aligning teams through corporate strategy and flattening the
decision-making hierarchy, chief operating officers are primed to shift
their organizations to a modern operating model.
How to achieve better operations as chief operating officer
The core challenge as a chief operating officer is bridging strategy and
execution in your organization. This can be solved by fixing alignment
issues, reducing operational inefficiency, and engaging teams with data-
driven decision making.
While balancing strategy execution, managing operations, and driving
outcomes without help is possible, the right platform assists with
managing this work more effectively.
A platform accomplishes this by targeting the core challenges as chief
operating officer — efficiency, alignment, and driving outcomes. By
focusing operating culture on open communication, trust, and the free
flow of information, you can successfully modernize your operations.