Insights — Executive Recruitment — 4 min read
What Good COO Performance Looks Like
Good COO performance is visible in delivery reliability, not in activity or presence.
In short
Good COO performance shows up as improving delivery reliability, a stable or falling operational cost base relative to output, a declining trend in quality and safety incidents, clearer management information, and an operating model that depends less on any one individual's memory or presence over time.
Six months into a COO appointment, most boards can describe how busy the person has been. Fewer can point to evidence that the operation is measurably more reliable, efficient or resilient than it was before the appointment started.
That gap matters because a COO's value is almost entirely observable in outcomes rather than activity. The following sets out what those outcomes should look like, and over what timeframe it is fair to expect them.
The five outcomes that matter
| Area | Evidence of good performance |
|---|---|
| Delivery reliability | On-time-in-full, service levels or comparable delivery metrics improving and staying stable, not just recovering briefly after intervention |
| Cost discipline | Operational cost per unit of output flat or falling as volume grows, rather than costs scaling in step with revenue |
| Quality and safety | A falling trend in recurring incidents and near-misses, with root causes closed out rather than repeatedly patched |
| Management information | Leadership can see delivery, cost and quality performance in near-real time, not reconstructed after the fact from separate systems |
| Organisational capability | The operating model runs on documented processes and a capable management layer, not on the COO's personal availability |
Reliability before efficiency
A common early mistake in judging COO performance is to look for cost reduction first. In most operational turnarounds, reliability has to be established before efficiency gains are safe to pursue — cutting cost in an operation that is not yet reliably delivering usually just relocates the failure somewhere less visible.
The realistic sequence is: stabilise delivery, build visibility into what is actually happening, then remove genuine waste. A board expecting cost savings in month two, before reliability has been addressed, is asking for the wrong thing at the wrong time.
A realistic timeline
- 01First 30 days: a clear, evidenced diagnosis of where delivery, cost and quality actually stand, replacing assumption with data
- 02First quarter: early stabilisation of the most acute issues, and a written plan for the operating model with named priorities
- 03Two to three quarters: measurable improvement in the core delivery and quality metrics, and the first structural changes to systems, supplier relationships or site structure
- 04Year one: a materially more resilient and visible operating model, with early evidence of sustainable cost discipline
- 05Beyond year one: the operating model should increasingly run without the COO's constant personal intervention, freeing their time for the next tier of structural or strategic work
The clearest sign a COO is succeeding is that the business becomes less dependent on them for day-to-day decisions, not more.
Leading indicators the board should track
Waiting for annual results to judge a COO appointment is too slow. The following leading indicators tend to move well before the headline numbers do, and give an honest early read on whether the appointment is working.
- Are delivery exceptions being caught and explained before the customer notices, or after?
- Is the same root cause appearing in incident reports month after month, or being genuinely closed out?
- Are supplier relationships more resilient, with fewer emergency substitutions or expediting costs?
- Is management reporting arriving on a predictable cadence with consistent definitions, rather than being rebuilt each time it is requested?
- Are decisions that used to require the COO's personal sign-off increasingly being made competently one level down?
What good performance is not
A COO who is visibly busy, frequently praised for firefighting well, and personally involved in every operational decision may be doing valuable work in the short term but is not yet demonstrating the outcome the role exists to deliver: an operating model that performs reliably without needing to be rescued.
| Looks like progress | Is actually progress |
|---|---|
| Long hours resolving daily crises personally | Fewer crises occurring in the first place |
| Frequent, dramatic recovery of missed deadlines | Deadlines being met without last-minute recovery |
| A steady stream of new initiatives launched | A smaller number of initiatives, embedded and sustained |
| Cost cut quickly across the board | Cost aligned to a reliably delivering operation |
Judging performance under each engagement model
The measures above apply across permanent, interim and fractional COOs, but the pace and scope of expected change differ. An interim COO with a stabilisation mandate should show fast, visible improvement in a narrow set of metrics tied directly to the brief. A permanent COO should show broader, more durable change across the full operating model over a longer period. A fractional COO should be judged primarily on the quality of diagnosis, design and standard-setting, since day-to-day execution sits with others.
Recruiting a permanent executive?
Long-term ownership of a defined executive remit, recruited against what the appointment has to deliver rather than against a job title.
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Written by
International Sales & Market Development Director, Evans Sales Consultancy
Published 17 September 2026 — 4 min read