A job for those who do not need the limelight
You may not be altogether surprised to learn that a book co-authored by a headhunter discusses at length how and why companies should go about creating the new role of chief operating officer. Never mind the organisational chart, you might say, just count the fees.
Such cynicism would be unwarranted. And before rejecting the very idea that a COO should ever be necessary in a well-run business, readers ought first to engage with the impressive range of witnesses - current and former COOs - brought together in this new book.
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Authors Stephen Miles - he is the headhunter, a partner at Heidrick and Struggles - and Nathan Bennett, professor at Georgia Tech's college of management, have conjured up a remarkable cast list. It includes Ed Zander, chief executive of Motorola and former COO at Sun Microsystems, Jim Donald, chief executive of Starbucks and formerly its effective COO, and Mort Topfer, now managing director of his own Castletop Capital investment firm, but formerly COO at Dell. Al???-together, 22 senior executives with COO experience are featured. Their first-hand accounts are supported by the authors' useful analysis.
What is the case for bringing in a COO between the chief executive and his or her existing senior staff? Miles and Bennett offer seven reasons.
First, to provide daily leadership in an "operationally intensive" business. Second, to lead a specific strategic move - a turnround or rapid expansion in a dynamic environment. Third, to bring in a COO as a mentor to a young or inexperienced chief executive, often an entre???-preneurial founder (as was the case with Topfer at Dell). Fourth, to balance the skills of the chief executive. Fifth, to build a "two-in-a-box" leadership model (think of Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer). Sixth, to blood an heir apparent to the current chief executive. And, last, to retain a talented executive who might otherwise leave.
So much for the strategy. How does the CEO/COO partnership work in practice? This is where the evidence of interviewees is instructive. Several themes emerge. All former and current COOs declare that the job requires the suppression, as far as possible, of ego. The COO is not there to hog the limelight. It is to a great extent an internally focused role. Leave to the CEO the time-consuming external world: analysts, customers, regulators, media.
Ed Zander was COO to Scott McNealy as CEO at Sun Microsystems. "To me, it was very simple," he says. "I had to make the quarters, get the products out the door, hire the right people and organise according to the business plan." For Zander the COO role is all about operations. The clue is in the job title.
Trust, needless to say, is vital, and mentioned by almost every COO interviewed here. The CEO should not undermine the COO by disowning the latter's actions. Overlapping of the two roles may be un???-avoidable, but there should be no futile second-guessing of each other's motives and deeds. The organisation should feel there is a healthy partnership at work at the head of the company.
Who gets this COO business right, and who has got it wrong? IBM and Intel are both held up as masters of the succession plan route, with Lou Gerstner bringing Sam Palmisano on as COO several years ahead of his eventual promotion to chief executive. Intel, too, has a tradition of growing its own leaders in a transparent and well-understood way.
However, the same high-tech sector also provides the recent classic example of where a COO could have avoided a lot of grief. Carly Fiorina's refusal to appoint a COO, in the face of all the advice she was getting from the board, only added to her difficulties at Hewlett-Packard inthe wake of the Compaq acquisition.
There is room for scepticism here. As the authors concede, academic research on businesses that appoint COOs tends to suggest that they underperform com???-panies that do not. Gamely, the authors argue that poor execution, rather than strategy, may explain this.
A 2002 survey in the US found that only 17 per cent of companies replaced their COO when he or she moved up to become chief executive. And several former COOs, now CEOs, say that their priority on being promoted was to get stuck into the business, without having a COO in the way - a situation Jack Welch described as wearing too many sweaters and thus failing to register the true temperature.
Still, the book makes a persuasive case for the COO role, especially in large, dynamic organisations. The most human and down-to-earth analysis is provided by Mort Topfer, who sums it up this way:
"There are some visible recent examples of CEO failure that result from one person trying to do the whole thing. When you travel 70 per cent of the time, that has to lead to periods of indecision and people waiting for a decision. I just think those jobs are too big and complex and challenging for any normal human being to do it."
谁需要COO?
你
可能不会对这样的事情很吃惊：一位猎头与他人合著了一本书，详细探讨了企业应该着手创造“首席运营官”这一新角色的方法和原因。你也许会说，别管组织结构，先算算这么做的成本吧。
这种嘲讽是没道理的。运作良好的企业永远需要首席运营官――在抵制这样一种观点之前，读者应该先熟悉一下那些给人留下深刻印象的证人：这本新书中写到的现任及前任首席运营官们。
本书由斯蒂芬?迈尔斯(Stephen Miles)和内森?班尼特(Nathan Bennett)合作完成。前者是一位猎头，是海德思哲国际咨询公司(Heidrick and Struggles)合伙人；后者是美国乔治亚理工学院(Georgia Tech)管理学院教授。他们勾画出一份强大的演员阵容，其中包括曾任Sun电子计算机(Sun Microsystems)首席运营官的摩托罗拉(Motorola)首席执行官埃德?桑德尔(Ed Zander)；星巴克(Starbucks)首席执行官、事实上的前首席运营官吉姆?唐纳德(Jim Donald)；以及曾任戴尔(Dell)首席运营官、现任自创投资公司Castletop Capital董事总经理的莫特?托普夫(Mort Topfer)等。书中共有22名有过首席运营官经历的高管出场，作者对来自他们的第一手资料进行了精彩的分析。
为什么要在首席执行官及现有的高层职员之间引入首席运营官一职呢？迈尔斯和班尼特给出了七个理由。
首先，在“运营密集型”企业发挥日常领导作用；其次，领导一项特殊的战略举措――在动态环境中实现扭亏为盈或快速扩张；第三，引入首席运营官，作为年轻或缺乏经验的首席执行官（通常是企业创始人）的导师（如托普夫在戴尔就是这样）；第四，平衡首席执行官的技能。第五，建立“双首长制”(two-in-a-box)领导模式――如微软(Microsoft)的比尔?盖茨(Bill Gates)和史蒂夫?鲍尔默(Steve Ballmer)；第六，让现任首席执行官的确定继任者先行获取经验；最后，留住某位有才能的高管，以免人才流失。
既然有这么多理由支持这一战略，那么，首席执行官/首席运营官的合作在实践中是如何发挥作用的呢？书中受访者案例的启发意义正在于此，并且展开了好几个主题。所有前任及现任首席运营官均宣称，该职位要求尽可能克制自我。首席运营官不是要吸引人们的注意力，它在很大程度上是一个关注内部的角色。让首席执行官去应对耗时的外部世界吧，比如分析人士、消费者、监管机构、媒体等。
埃德?桑德尔是Sun电子计算机首席执行官斯科特?麦克尼利(Scott McNealy)手下的首席运营官。“对我来说，非常简单，”他表示，“我必须让季度业绩实现目标，把产品运出大门，根据业务计划招聘合适人选并加以组织。”在桑德尔看来，首席运营官的作用就是处理与业务运营相关的一切。职位名称就说明了这一点。
不用说，信任是至关重要的，书中采访的所有首席运营官几乎都提到了这点。首席执行官不应该否定首席运营官的行为，削弱首席运营官的地位。两者角色的重合也许是不可避免的，但不应对彼此的动机和行为进行无谓的事后批评。整个机构应该感到，公司领导层在工作上有健康的合作关系。
在任用首席运营官这件事上，谁做对了，谁又做错了？书中举了IBM和英特尔(Intel)的例子，它们被视为制定继任者规划方面的大师。郭士纳(Lou Gerstner)首先让彭明盛(Sam Palmisano)出任IBM的首席运营官，几年后，彭明盛升任首席执行官。英特尔也有以人们充分了解的透明方式培养领导人的传统。
然而，同样是在高科技行业，近来也出现了一个经典案例，证明如果有首席运营官，或许可以减轻很多痛苦。卡莉?菲奥莉娜(Carly Fiorina)不顾董事会的所有提议，始终拒绝任命首席运营官。在惠普(Hewlett-Packard)收购康柏(Compaq)后，这种做法徒然增加了她工作的难度。
这里也有可质疑之处。正如作者所承认的，对任命有首席运营官的企业进行的学术研究似乎表明，这些企业的表现还不如那些没有首席运营官的企业。作者并不认可这个观点，他们认为，能够解释这个现象的，也许是执行的不力，而不是战略问题。
美国2002年进行的一项调查发现，在首席运营官升任首席执行官后，只有17%的公司任命了继任者。几位曾出任首席运营官的现任首席执行官表示，他们在升职时优先考虑的是要深入了解企业，不希望首席运营官插在中间――杰克?韦尔奇(Jack Welch)是这样描述后面那种情况的：就好像穿了太多件毛衣，无法测出真正的体温。
不过，本书还是对首席运营官的作用提出了有说服力的理由，特别是在不断变化的大型组织中。其中最富人性色彩、最实际的分析是由莫特?托普夫提供的。他这样总结道：
“近来出现了一些很明显的首席执行官失败案例，而它们都是因为一个人试图包揽一切所导致的。当你有70%的时间都花在旅途上时，必然会不时出现优柔寡断、让人们等待决策的情况。我想，对任何普通人来说，那些工作都太庞杂、太有挑战性了。”
