Chief Operating Officer - COO

  

CEO, CFO, CMO, COO...there’s a real alphabet soup of the titles for the top brass in any medium to large size company. The CEO or Chief Executive Officer generally sets the strategic direction for the company while the Chief Operating Officer (COO) carries out these plans with the day-to-day operation of the business. The purchasing, human resources, manufacturing and distribution departments would all report to the COO, while marketing and sales might report to the Vice President of Sales or the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The finance crowd would work for the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

A COO has a lot of responsibility to make things happen. He or she has to execute the company's business plan (hopefully they have one) and make sure the company goals are reached...like the number of units produced per day, the introduction of new products, inventory maintained at a certain level and the cost per unit of raw materials and finished goods reaching a target price.

A good CEO will choose a COO who perhaps has a skill set that the CEO lacks, so they complement each other on abilities and experience. The COO can be seen as the right-hand man (or woman) and might even be the heir apparent to become the next CEO. Usually the COO has at least 15 years of experience in their chosen field and has worked in a variety of functions within a company. It’s a very busy job with lots of responsibility, so it is not for the faint of heart.

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Finance: What are CEOs, CFOs, and COOs?41 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop... what are CEOs, CFOs and COOs lots of C's you know sort of

00:11

like most of our high school report cards but it's a different story [Girl given a school report card with list of C grades]

00:15

all right so the C here for all of these stands for chief not the C in

00:20

big cheese and the O here for all of these stands for officer...

00:28

But sort of in that vein cop ish like when you are one of these

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officers it's your watch your beat your patrol and all that the delimiter here

00:40

is the middle letter so let's start at the top there E the E in CEO stands for

00:47

executive and distinctively the CEO is hired by the board of directors who in

00:53

turn is elected by the common shareholders the CEO is in charge of and [Woman CEO standing in her office]

01:00

well pretty much everything basically executing on the mandate which is to

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make money over the long term for shareholders the CEO deals with both

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internal operational and financial issues as well as dealing directly with

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shareholders externally you know on the outside people ie those Wall Street folk [People working in Wall Street]

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and she is generally you know where the buck stop...okay

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moving on and that'll make some nice venison....Okay the CFO is

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hired by the CEO and while on bad days the F might stand for something else

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on a normal day the F stands for financial, the chief financial officer

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deals with the dollar numbers the bean-counting [CFO counting beans]

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from hiring and paying people usually via the head of human resources hired by

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the CFO to tracking profitability of divisions which the CFO usually does in

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concert with others in the company to you know dealing with Wall Street people [CFO holding a chicken wing]

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as the wing man to the CEO at rubber chicken lunches

02:05

well if the company is

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gonna raise debt to go buy a competitor or sell equity from insiders in a

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secondary offering or use stock to acquire a tools company which will let

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it operate more efficiently well all of that goes through the CFOs highly [A cluttered desk of beans]

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cluttered desk all right so moving on then there's the COO and if you say

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it all together it sounds like a bird but it's not the middle O there stands

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for operating well other than in a company which just does surgery all day [a heart monitor in a surgery room]

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the operating officer doesn't actually do surgery rather she operates the

02:44

company and usually that involves asking a thousand questions hopefully not all

02:49

at once like that Fed Ex guy who had too much caffeine are we getting the best

02:53

prices on the raw plastic we're ordering from war-torn New Zealand, are we making

02:58

enough selfie helmets, and is your dad still disappointed with you for getting

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a C in accounting 101 back in high school

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mm-hmm? just keeping it real there pal... well we can't answer the first two

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and as for the last one well you're a COO oh you can probably afford a nice

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shrink now so go work out your issues [COO laying on sofa talking with psychiatrist]

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