A COO's Unnamed Work Type #2: Onramps and Offramps

Take three truths. First, COOs know their CEOs intimately. Second, many founder CEOs have rough edges. Third, it’s the CEO’s job to make decisions. So many people come before him or her to adjudicate or make a final call on something.

The combination of these three truths leads to the second type of unnamed work: onramp and offramps, or emotional translation.

The only one of these I think could be contentious is the first truth, knowing the CEO intimately.¹¹ Marriage is an overused analogy for these type of longstanding business relationships. We don’t have a good word for it in English, perhaps that’s why we use “work spouse” instead. But it was present in almost every duo that I got to hear about through my interviews. Of the nearly thirty people I’ve met so far, this type of close understanding was present for all but two.

I was worried this was an extension of the fact that so many of the COOs I interviewed are women. But then it showed up when I interviewed men too. At one point one male COO put his head in his hands across from me over Zoom and paused. Then he said “[my CEO] just could not, almost pathologically, relinquish control. She couldn’t help herself.”²² He also said “taking things to her was a red line factory,” which I thought was an evocative turn of phrase. He continued, clearly demonstrating how well he know his CEO.

In the onramp, high stakes decisions often get dress-rehearsed in front a COO. Can you help me figure out how to present this information so that the decision goes in my favor or the way I want? Or, I don’t care how this is decided but I don’t want to upset the CEO or get a bad reputation by presenting it badly.³³ For example, presenting information or data that shows weakness or nonperformance in their part of the business. Can you help me figure out how to say it?

Essentially, COOs are training other employees and leaders to to communicate in a way that will land with the CEO/founder.

I wonder if CEOs think about how often a COO is shaping the stories that are shared with them. Not to a particular end,⁴⁴ Or if there is a particular motivation, perhaps they are bad at their job. but because their advice is sought out.

In the offramp, a COO cleans up meetings that go badly or communications that don’t land. In one conversation over my kitchen table where a COO told me that her CEO is “ruthless,” “unempathetic” and “prone to making whoever she speaks to cry.” One of my main jobs, this COO confessed, is steeling people to that likely outcome before they walk into the room (onramp) or making them feel better after they walk out (offramp).

Another COO describe the offramp as translation combined with emotional support. “I often say something like ‘his is what [he or she] meant. This is the outcome they are trying to land. They didn’t mean it that way.’”

A third COO describe it as “I’m their EQ foil.”⁵⁵ I learned that it’s from jewelry making where the foil makes the jewel shine more brilliantly.

A consequence of the onramps and offramps work is that many COOs end up influencing or determining what CEOs get presented to about. In these cases the work is notabout emotional shielding but about reducing thrash. At first blush, I suppose that could read like a bad thing. I could imagine a CEO wanting all the information about all of the things. But in actuality, that would slow down him or her and the company. As long as the right, relevant, and appropriate information is flowing to me, and what those things are is explicit and agreed upon, it will make a company move more quickly.

“One of my biggest advantages as COO is knowing what my CEO cares to know,” said a COO to me last summer. “I know what he wants to be bothered about, and what he doesn’t.”⁶⁶ At Modern Treasury, I helped countless people prepare to share information or set up decisions with Dimitri, and I batted some things away from his proverbial “desk.” I almost always told him that I had redirected people, but only after it had happened.

What she’s describing might be why this work stays unnamed: the deep yet almost involuntary read on another person that informs so much of what a COO does. It’s the kind of thing a person doesn’t know they’re doing until someone points it out.