Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

The 7 Types of COOs: Which Flavor Are You? | Ben Plomion

10 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:18

In this segment Ben Plomion discusses the concept of different COO archetypes, emphasizing the complementary nature of the COO to a product‑focused, visionary CEO. He references a dense HBR article that categorizes CEO types and positions his own role as the counterpart that handles operational details such as bonus plans, customer success, culture, and operating principles—areas the CEO typically does not excel in. Plomion recounts his personal journey: he was initially hired as an ops‑driven COO to build the accounting function from scratch, but after two years shifted toward a go‑to‑market, CMO‑like COO role to drive revenue growth and profitability. He advises CEOs to identify the specific "flavor" of COO that adds the most value as the company evolves, urging them to specialize and align the COO’s focus with the organization’s current needs.

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If you go to Google and look for HBR CEO, second in command, there's I think 6 or 7 pages, very dense and detailed article trying to figure out what are different types of CEOs. And my type is the complementary type, which is we have a CEO who's again a product visionary, who's amazing with investor relations, amazing with business development, but there's a number of things like running, you know, bonus plans. Running a customer success team, understanding the company culture and coming up with operating principles, that's just not something that, what he does best. You basically have to find your place. And I think the most challenging part for the CEO is to go identify that place. How does it look like? Particularly in the context of companies evolving over time. I was hired as an ops-driven chief operating officer because we had to build the accounting team from the ground up. But then I realized 2 years later, now I'm shifting a bit more into a go-to-market go-to-market COO type, because the next need for us is to grow revenue, become profitable, and moving back into the sort of a CMO mindset. My advice for any CEO, and I wish I was given this advice when I started, is like there's different flavors of CEO. Trying to find where you're going to add some value and try to specialize in this area.