Chief Operations Officer (COO)

Role Summary

The COO oversees daily operations, turning strategic plans into execution across departments like supply chain, HR, facilities, and service delivery. The role bridges strategic intent with tactical performance.

Required Education, Certifications, and Experience

Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Industrial Engineering, or Operations Management (required)

MBA (preferred, particularly for organizations in growth or transition phases)

Certifications:

  • Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
  • Certified Operations Manager (COM)
  • PMP – Project Management Professional
  • SHRM-SCP (if HR oversight included)

Experience:

10–20 years in operations, logistics, or general management roles; at least 5 years in executive operations leadership.

Experience scaling teams, driving efficiency, or integrating acquisitions is a strong plus.

Core Skills

  • Strategic planning and operational scaling
  • KPI development and process optimization
  • Cross-functional leadership and coordination
  • Workforce management and org design
  • Quality control and compliance systems
  • Vendor and facilities management
  • Cost reduction and margin enhancemen
  • Technology-enabled process improvement
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A Hypothetical Day in the Life of a Chief Operations Officer

5:00am – Performance Dashboard Review: You start your day with a hot coffee and a review of daily dashboards showing overnight warehouse throughput, on-time delivery %, dock utilization, and labor headcount variances. One Southeast hub missed its SLA by 6%, so you mark it for escalation.

6:30am – Transport Disruption Call: You hop on an early call with the Director of Transportation. A severe weather delay hit several inbound trailers headed to the Northeast region. You approve a re-route using third-party expedited freight and activate customer comms protocols.

8:00am – Morning Ops Standup: You join your warehouse GMs, linehaul managers, and dispatch supervisors for the daily sync. You direct one facility to initiate surge hiring and call in temporary labor while another shifts excess capacity to a sister site.

9:30am – Site Walk & Kaizen Event Prep: You walk the floor of your largest hub facility. You note delays in outbound loading lanes and schedule a Kaizen event to troubleshoot layout and staging issues with the frontline team. You take notes to share with HR for workforce feedback sessions.

11:00am – Financial Coordination: You meet with the CFO to align on cost centers running hot. Detention and demurrage fees have risen. You both agree to pilot a tighter gate control process at two ports and explore contracts with tighter penalties on underperforming carriers.

12:00pm – Lunch with Regional Director: You grab lunch with your East Coast Regional Director and review performance trends. They propose testing a modified shift schedule to reduce turnover among second-shift workers. You greenlight a 30-day pilot.

1:30pm – Tech Rollout Checkpoint: You sync with the CTO and WMS product team on the deployment of new handheld devices. Two sites had 100% adoption, but a third is struggling. You decide to send an operations coach onsite to reinforce best practices.

3:00pm – Customer Success Check-In: You meet with the Client Success Director and Account Managers to review SLA exceptions and customer feedback. A DTC brand client flagged order routing delays. You commit to reallocating sortation labor and offering a makegood discount.

4:30pm – Labor Strategy Session: You hold a video call with your HR Director and Labor Analyst to review attrition and headcount needs ahead of peak season. You request a plan that balances flexible labor with incentives for cross-training and career pathing.

6:00pm – Decompress & Plan Tomorrow: You finish your day with a quiet review of tomorrow’s logistics partner RFP deck. You make margin annotations, add a few “killer questions” to stress-test their scalability, and flag contract terms you want legal to renegotiate.