How to Make The CEO/COO Partnership Work

I've worked with over 300 CEOs, and I get each one of them to tell me the role they want.

Invariably, there's one thing they all agree about: they want to play a more strategic role, rather than constantly firefighting.

Many say things like: "I'm a visionary CEO and I need an integrator who can run the business."

This language comes from the popular book Traction by Gino Wickman, and it deeply resonates with many founders.

But I've noticed something. After a CEO hires a COO to help them run the business, they realise what they said they wanted wasn't quite right.

The COO tells you the vision is clear, and that they need more space and trust, so they ask you to step out completely.

“Great”, you think. ”Isn't this what a CEO needs to do—get out of ops entirely?”

So you agree.

But a few months later, you feel disconnected, powerless, and a bit useless.

This is a very common situation, so in this essay, I'll explain what's going on, and how to fix it.

Let's Get Precise

Most CEOs who want a more strategic role can't explain how this structurally works.

They say things like:

• "I want to figure out where the opportunities are"
• "I want to work on the next-gen product"
• "I don't want to be involved with the day-to-day."

So when they delegate to a COO, they effectively say: "You run the business your way."

This sounds empowering, but it can end up disempowering the CEO—because they don't make it clear enough what they actually want.

The COO is just following your brief. But "I want to be strategically involved" isn't a clear enough brief.

To make matters worse, the terms visionary and integrator can set up the idea of a sequence in people's minds.

• Step 1: the CEO does the vision.
• Step 2: the COO implements the vision.

Framing these as separate steps is part of the problem. It removes the role of the CEO from the day-to-day completely.

However, I've realised there's a verb that captures what CEOs want far better than "playing a more strategic role".

It's shaping.

You Want to Shape The Work

When Ryan Singer published Shape Up to describe Basecamp's development process, it launched to little fanfare. However, the ideas have been gaining steam—and they reflect what I see my fastest-growing CEOs doing.

Singer outlines two distinct planning tracks:

• The discovery track, where projects are shaped.

• The build track, where projects are executed.

The root cause of missed deadlines, scope bloat, and wasted work, according to Singer, is a lack of shaping early on.

"What does it mean to do shaping?... It's this super intense, really exciting collaborative session to figure out what the idea is, getting it sharp enough and crispy enough that we could very confidently [give it to the team] and it would be what we pictured."—Ryan Singer

This is what I think CEOs really want. And it's much clearer than "being strategic".

Here's what shaping means:

• Framing the problem. Getting really precise on the problem to be solved.

• Defining the appetite. Deciding how much resource to spend on solving it—rather than estimating how long an approach would take.

• Sketching the idea. Visualising a robust solution that resolves the problem.

• Identifying risks. Leveraging context to predict and get ahead of rabbit holes.

• Defining what's not in scope. This is the essence of strategy—defining what you won't do.

To be clear, the ideas being shaped can come from anywhere: the team, a sales call, leadership, even the founder. But all ideas need to be shaped before the project is selected to build.

Most companies do not do this. They select the project and then shape it as they build it. Since founders often aren't involved in the shaping, they end up getting pulled into the build itself—which is where the chaos happens.

The role of shaping is to predict and solve problems before they enter production. Indeed, unless all five points of the shaping process are fully addressed, the project isn't ready to build.

You Want to Make The Bets

There are always more ideas than fit into the plan, so Basecamp implemented a betting process to choose the projects. The term frames project selection as making a bet—and this is critical.

The defining characteristic of an entrepreneur is a willingness to take risks, and a knack for being right. Amazon Prime was universally disliked by the company, but Jeff Bezos took the risk and made it happen.

Particularly as your company grows, your team doesn't want to take risks. If you leave project selection to them, they'll predictably choose the lowest risk—and lowest reward—items.

That's why in founder-led companies, the founder chooses the projects.

Focus On The Partnership, Not The Process

This process of parallel tracks is key to making the CEO/COO partnership work.

The discovery track is the strategic track—the one where CEOs want to be involved. Shaping pitches and placing bets.

And when this track is done well, it empowers the team with the strategic thinking to build the solution and avoid risks and rabbit holes.

So if you're working with a COO and starting to get pushed out, reframe the remit. Not "run the company", but "run the company in a way I can still shape the projects."

That's the difference between being a visionary who hands over control and a founder who stays strategically useful. The first one sounds liberating. The second one actually is.