Name: Firestarters: Why COOs Become COOs
Uploaded: 2026-06-02
Duration: 7 min 10 s
Description: It has been a seismic year for COO to CEO transitions, which begs the question: what is it about COOs that make them so uniquely suited to lead large companies? Hear rapid-fire insights from three operational leaders about the particular skills a COO needs to position them for the top job.

It has been a seismic year for COO to CEO transitions, which begs the question: what is it about COOs that make them so uniquely suited to lead large companies? Hear rapid-fire insights from three operational leaders about the particular skills a COO needs to position them for the top job.

Firestarters: Why COOs Become COOs

Conferences

We're going to call on a few experts in the audience. I believe we have the mics well placed, about the skills that you have that are uniquely positioning you to be leaders in the future. So when I call your name, please wait for the microphone. You have 2 minutes, so if I cut you off, I'll do it politely. We'll. We'll start to sing to you and we look forward to hearing your thoughts. You can thank them after each one. First, I'll start with Earl Fitzhugh, global lead cloud and AI solutions advisors for Microsoft's small and medium business, who up until a few months ago was CEO of that group. Earl. Thank you, Diane. Good morning everyone. Um, you know, we've talked about AI quite a bit at the summit today, uh, and yesterday. And in this space, I think one of the things we have to be honest about is there's a real gap between the magical possibility of AI and what's being realized in terms of actual value. And I think COOs are in a unique position to bridge that gap. We've got the capability to run to the problem, to get close and personal with it, to understand the details. We have the expansive curiosity to take a step back and understand that it's not about individual issues, but it's about the cascading chain. And if you can unlock that, you can really drive exponential improvements. And fundamentally we have a deep ownership mentality, right? We make it happen. We own the results. Now, in my role, I get to talk to SMB CEOs, CIOs and CTOs almost every day. And those leaders are facing unprecedented challenges. They've got to be able to have the operational chops to move from strategy to execution in faster and faster cycles to go from conviction to action to progress to impact. They have to have a vision and not just a billboard level vision. I'm talking about a vision that's 3 clicks deep in the organization defining requirements and handoffs and the guard rails that allow them to scale their acceleration. But I think most importantly, Right now in this moment, they have to develop tech fluency. They've got to come down from that 10,000 ft level. And Develop depth and breadth across data and platforms, systems and policies, risks and governance. So they can turn these technologies to what they really are, which is leverage, the leverage to build new capabilities and durable advantages. And you know, just by a show of hands when you hear that, how many of the COOs in the room feel like that resonates for the role you're in today? I would say that COOs don't just have necks, we've actually got now. Excellent. I'm gonna cut you off there. That's a beautiful place to end and thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Well, next we have Anne Lassiter, managing director and senior partner for BCG. Hi. Hi. I'll start with a few stats from some of our recent research. So in the last 5 years for the S&P 500 companies, when you look at all of their CEO appointments. 32% were the COO before. 20% were hired externally and then 17% were from a business unit or a regional leader. I think it's no coincidence that a lot of CEOs were COOs, many of which you just shared Earl. Um, you all are in the center of strategy and execution, and you've seen how the whole enterprise functions, technology, people, customers, change initiatives, upscaling with AI and you all are pressure tested, and those are things the board is certainly looking for. However, in our research in 2025 for the first time in many years, CEO appointments trended more towards external than COOs, and even more so this occurred in industries like finance, technology, and energy and in mid-sized companies, 10 to $50 billion companies in revenue. You know, the CEOs who are making the leap now are not only the ones who can run the business better and tell a story of where the business should go, but they're telling those stories to the board. And so in the COOs we work with, a lot of them say that the hard part about making the leap isn't developing the CEO skills because they're doing it through running an AI transformation or pivoting and disruption or figuring out a big people challenging challenge. The more challenging thing that we hear from the COOs is that creating the perception with the board of having the capabilities is really something to think very structurally about within the C-suite, right? Um, and I linked to that study and CEO daily yesterday, so I recommend it highly to people. Um, it's really interesting, so thank you very much. And finally we have Tarika Richardson, executive vice president and COO Common Spirit Health. Hi, nice to see you again. Good to see you again as well. Thank you so much for the. Opportunity to have this conversation and I share with my colleagues here so much of the sentiment. Um, Common Spirit is one of the nation's largest health systems. We have 160,000 employees and as chief operating officer I get this unique opportunity to sit at the intersection of vision, strategy, growth, and performance and execution. And it's really interesting because I believe COOs in the past were order takers in some way had the opportunity to run the business but not necessarily looked upon for the vision, not necessarily looked upon for the ability to be that sort of driver of what's next and today without that vision, without the capability of translating the external world into real world action. The organizations perish and so right now is a very interesting inflection point. It's the ability to translate externally, communicate to the board, but also run the business effectively amidst all of the headwinds that we're facing right now. And so I really see that the unique position of the COO today is making sure that you're positioned and seeing and articulating and showing yourself and the rest of your organization that you're already in the seat. I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Earl, Anna, Teresa. I really Cherica. I really appreciate it and thank you to all of our experts for sharing with us today.