The COO Is the Translation Layer Between the Owner and the Team
What does a COO do in a small company? My main job as COO was to be the translation layer between the owner's vision and the team. I turned the owner's ideas into real plans. Then I made sure people executed them and understood where they are, why, and where we're going.
From marketing assistant to COO
I spent eight years at a home-services company where I ran operations. I started there as a marketing assistant. By the end I was COO over about 300 people.
It was B2C, and B2C changes every day: the weather, the stock market, people's mood. It's stressful. Plans had to hold up anyway.
The owner had the ideas. The team did the work. My job sat in between. That's the translation layer, as I call it: how to translate whatever is happening in the owner's head.
It's not enough just to extract the information. It's also important to explain it the right way to your teams. That's where a lot of the work goes for executives and managers: breaking it down to the next level, and the next one.
When nobody knows where they work
We rebuilt each department. The biggest problem was still there: no single goal.
People didn't know where they worked. The company was several legal entities. The call center, for example, was its own company. The owner saw the whole thing as a holding. The staff said, "I work at the main company."
Nobody was wrong. Everyone was looking at a different picture. And a team that can't agree on where it works can't agree on where it's going.
The four questions every person needs answered
Every person in a company needs answers to four questions:
- Where am I?
- What do I do?
- Why do I do it?
- Where are we going?
Answering them is the day-to-day work of leadership. It never ends, because people join, roles change and goals move.
The translation goes both ways. I've worked with owners who only cared about results. Then people came back with: "I couldn't log in to the tool you make me report in. It eats five hours of my week and hurts my work." You have to listen. You gotta listen. Care about how your team makes your company stronger. The CEO's job is to guide and mentor, hire good people and help them. I believe that wholeheartedly.
This is the translation layer in practice. The owner's ideas become real plans. People execute them. And everyone understands where they are, why, and where we're going. When that works, the whole organization is breathing the same air, working like a clock.
Org chart first, goals second, then measure everything
My first move was the org chart. Which department belongs to which legal entity, and what each one owns. Every person got a job description and responsibilities. We standardized every role title. If you want to see what that looks like at a smaller size, start with an org chart for a 50-person company.
The order matters:
- The right people in the right places.
- Goals that match the company's goals.
- Measure everything.
We measured channels and funnels against each other: paid, organic, retention. How customers stick, how they come back, what it costs. Every month we decided which channel to push.
People were part of it too. We went from about 250 people to 300 and back to about 250. I've seen the same pattern in other companies since: expand, then contract. You grow headcount for a while, so the old team's knowledge transfers to new people without a threat. If budget allows, you give two to four months of onboarding overlap. You find the edge of efficiency. Then you decide by data: tracking, goals and evaluations show who moves to the next stage of the company.
Not everyone accepts the new mindset. Old mindsets are the hardest to change.
Do you need a COO?
Ask your people the four questions. If the answers depend on who you ask, someone has to do the translation work, full-time or fractional.
I do this work now at Efficiency Sprint. Efficiency Sprint makes companies operationally ready for AI. The four questions come first there too.
Take the AI readiness quiz to see where your company stands.