What does a COO own in the model?
A COO owns the design: which work goes to Digital FTEs and which stays with people, which roles run in what order, who manages each, and how approvals are routed so that management time does not grow with each role. On ftes.ai the workforce view is the COO's screen: every role with its status, manager, approval rate, and waiting count, and one combined brief ordered by what blocks the most.
The COO also owns the standard for the monthly review across roles, so that a Finance Controller FTE and a Support FTE are each judged on their own targets and record rather than on a blended figure that tells neither story.
How should a COO sort the work?
List each function's work and divide it: repetitive and evidence-based with a checkable right answer, such as reconciliation, screening against a scorecard, first-line replies from a knowledge base, CRM hygiene, and reporting, goes to a Digital FTE that proposes; judgement, relationships, and every decision about a person stays with people, and the platform gates the last permanently. Write the sorted list into each role's remit and each person's one-sentence role.
Revisit the sort quarterly from the send-back reasons: work that keeps coming back from an FTE was judgement work mis-sorted; work people keep doing by hand is FTE work left out.
- FTE: matching, screening, drafting from sources, monitoring, reporting
- People: exceptions, interviews, complaints, negotiation, decisions about people
- Between them: approval, minutes per proposal
Which roles should run first, and in what order?
Run first the roles whose evidence is clearest and whose approval records build fastest: reconciliation, first-line support in one category, CRM hygiene, interview scheduling. Add the next role when the previous one is settled, meaning a routine class promoted, send-backs falling and staying down, and a budget understood from usage. Pair adjacent roles where one's output feeds the other, so the benefit shows sooner.
Leave the judgement-heavy roles, such as market entry and research synthesis, for later slots; they need the most management and are best added once the habits exist.
How does a COO keep management time flat?
Three practices. Route each role's routine categories to the team member closest to that function for approval, so your own items are the sensitive categories and the escalations. Promote routine classes on the autonomy ladder as soon as their record supports it, per role, so approvals thin. And start every morning in the workforce view, clearing the combined brief before opening any single workspace, which you open only for a review, a remit change, or a memory correction.
If your time is still growing with each role, the remits are too wide or the ladder is being climbed too slowly, and both show in the send-back reasons and approval rates.
What should a COO measure across roles?
Per role, the three universal measures: outcomes against targets with evidence, approval rate with send-back reasons, and cost per outcome from usage. Across roles, three patterns visible in the workforce view: a growing waiting count, which is an approver not approving; a falling approval rate, which is drift; and overlapping targets, which is duplicated work and a remit boundary to redraw. Against the wallet, combined usage each cycle to size the next block.
Refuse a single blended number for the workforce. Roles produce different outcomes, and the blend hides the role that is drifting.
What do the first 30 days look like from the COO's seat?
Week one: sort the work for the first function with the people who do it, choose the role, name its manager, route its routine approvals, and record the baseline. Weeks two to four: read the combined brief each morning even with one role, so the habit exists before the second; read the send-back reasons weekly with the approver. At the first monthly review, read the role's own report and decide targets, remit, and autonomy, and decide whether the record is settled enough to add the second role.
By day 30 you have one function with an owner, a manager with the habit, a routing that keeps your time flat, and a written note of the three decisions.
What does the platform not do for a COO?
It does not sort the work for you; the sort is a judgement about your organization and the people in it. It does not manage the people whose roles shift toward judgement; that conversation is yours, and it goes better early. It does not blend roles into one dashboard number, by design. And it does not decide anything about a person, at any level, however clean the record.
A COO who wants an operations dashboard should look elsewhere. One who wants each function owned by a direct report that reports every morning, and one screen to manage them from, has the mechanisms here.