The four kinds of COO
| Kind | What the seat owns | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| The operator | Everything the founder hands over: people, finance oversight, the rhythm | A founder-led company past fifty people |
| The delivery leader | Production, supply chain, service delivery | Manufacturing, logistics, professional services |
| The commercial engine | Sales, marketing and customer operations together | Software companies where the founder owns product |
| The successor | Increasingly, the company | A board planning a transition, said out loud |
What the fully loaded number is
A UK scale-up COO at £130,000 base costs around £150,000 a year with employer National Insurance and pension, before a bonus of twenty to thirty per cent and before equity.
A retained search at roughly a third of first-year earnings takes the first year to about £195,000 before the option grant.
How to test the founder relationship before the offer
- Write the handover list first: the functions, decisions and meetings the chief executive will give up. Share it with the final candidates and watch what they push back on.
- Run a working session on a live problem with the founder and each finalist, observed by a board member. The point is to see how disagreement goes.
- Reference a chief executive the candidate has worked under. Ask how they disagreed in private and whether they backed the decision in public.
- If succession is part of the intention, say so to the finalists and to the founder. A successor who was never told, or a founder who never agreed, is a resignation waiting to happen.
When a fractional COO is the better answer
A founder who needs the operating rhythm built, the hiring plan run and the board pack produced two or three days a week does not yet have a full-time chief operating officer's job. A fractional COO builds the machine and hands it over when the company is large enough to need somebody all week.
Where the handover list is short, the honest answer is often to hire those functions directly rather than create a title to carry the founder's workload.
Common questions
How long does it take to hire a COO?
Twelve to sixteen weeks to an accepted offer, longer than most seats because the definition work takes time and candidates do more diligence on the founder than for any other role. Notice periods for sitting UK COOs run three to six months.
What is the difference between a COO and a general manager?
A general manager runs a business unit end to end with its own P&L. A COO runs several functions across the whole company and shares its running with the chief executive. Companies with one product and one market rarely need both.
Does the COO need experience in our sector?
For a delivery-leader COO in manufacturing, logistics or services, yes, because operations means something different in each. For an operator COO in a software company, the operating model matters more than the sector.
More of them, on hiring, contracts and what a fractional engagement costs, on the fractional executive FAQ.