The Truth Behind CEO COO Pairing and CEO Pairs - Aditya Yadav

1. *
“Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76

2. * A Typical Global Company
* Fortune 500/1000
* 200 Divisions
* 40 Countries
* 25000 Employees
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3. *
@ Acme Inc.

4. * Original Question “If we Pair our CEO with
another CEO or hire a COO, it would reduce his
workload and we will have more strategic focus
and probable success?”
* The Correct Question - “Workloads can by
shared by assistants; personal or even SVP’s
sharing a CEO’s workload. That’s not the reason
behind CEO Pairing. Lets reexamine the
intrinsic reasons behind using pairing
successfully. Shall we?”
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5. *
And The Philosophy Behind The Answer

6. * Most companies experiment w/ having a COO
* He is the CEO’s right arm man
* Most of those companies report better success
* Is it because of sharing of work of an
overworked CEO?
* Some companies also have pairs of CEO’s. They
also report better success
*

7. * Most companies are “Over Managed and Under Led”
* Most CEO’s are just the topmost tactical managers,
mis-quoted as a Leader because of their seniority
* Due to the different constructs you cannot Manage and
Lead at the Same time and one person cannot do both
* To Summarize: Managers avoid Risk and maintain the
Status Quo while Leaders deliver Change and
Innovation that requires Reasonable Risks
* The focus is completely different
* It’s a completely different mindset
* Unless you have a Split Personality Disorder you won’t
be able to do both
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8. * Companies report better success
* But that’s not solely because of Work Sharing
* The COO is the Top Most Manager in the company and takes care of Management and Operations.
* The COO keeps things running, efficient and productive
* The CEO then takes care of Leadership, Change, Innovation, Strategy, Vision, Risk
* When the CEO + COO Pair structure their jobs like above it leads to success.
* Ofcourse two people share the workload but that’s not the reason behind success of CEO+COO Pairing
* If you choose to call the COO a second CEO as long as the above role and responsibility structure is
maintained you should succeed in comparison to
* A Single CEO spending most of his time managing and keeping things running with barely anytime
for strategy and leadership
* Or CEO+COO without the above segregation who are just relying on sharing work, step on each
other’s shoes and provide each other feedback or fight.
* Also the CIO should report into the COO
* And the CTO should report into the CEO
* Refer: To my other deck on Solving The IT Conundrum
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9. Aditya!!!
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