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未來(lái)的科技界會(huì)不會(huì)由這些女性主宰?

未來(lái)的科技界會(huì)不會(huì)由這些女性主宰?

Leigh Gallagher 2018年04月03日
如今,科技界一些增長(zhǎng)最快的公司的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官都由杰出女性擔(dān)任。她們未來(lái)會(huì)成為CEO,還是代表著新的玻璃天花板?

如果只是說(shuō)萊克西·瑞斯是一個(gè)“辦事靠譜”的人,這還不足以展現(xiàn)她的才干。在快速增長(zhǎng)的初創(chuàng)公司Gusto(小型企業(yè)薪酬與人力資源軟件云端提供商),為了理清她作為領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的職責(zé)需求,她通過(guò)名為“?Dónde está Lexi?”的詳細(xì)列表來(lái)記錄其日程,這份列表事無(wú)巨細(xì)地對(duì)其時(shí)間安排進(jìn)行了劃分。這份文件細(xì)分為四大首要價(jià)值和五項(xiàng)季度要?jiǎng)?wù),從“推動(dòng)營(yíng)收”一直到“個(gè)人事務(wù)”。每一項(xiàng)要?jiǎng)?wù)都包含一組行動(dòng)以及執(zhí)行計(jì)劃細(xì)節(jié),包括牽涉的人、方式和“節(jié)奏”,從每周與銷售團(tuán)隊(duì)的會(huì)面到與丈夫一個(gè)月兩次的市內(nèi)約會(huì)。她在一份單獨(dú)的表格上列出了她的實(shí)際日程,以15分鐘為單位,用醒目的顏色進(jìn)行了標(biāo)注。

數(shù)年前,當(dāng)她準(zhǔn)備離開(kāi)工作了8年的谷歌之時(shí),瑞斯在搜尋工作方面也保持了同樣的謹(jǐn)慎態(tài)度,并列出了四大標(biāo)準(zhǔn)(包括1000億美元的目標(biāo)市場(chǎng)額,以及具有彈性的工作)以及與Gusto會(huì)談的每一個(gè)小時(shí)的詳細(xì)記錄。

瑞斯的習(xí)慣展示了人們眼中首席執(zhí)行官所應(yīng)有的機(jī)構(gòu)敏銳度、動(dòng)力和對(duì)完美的追求。但她并不是Gusto的首席執(zhí)行官(她在筆記中記道,在獲得工作之前,她花了21個(gè)小時(shí)與公司首席執(zhí)行官會(huì)面,包括三個(gè)小時(shí)的登山。)她于2015年10月加入公司,擔(dān)任首席客戶體驗(yàn)官。去年,她升任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,在科技界最熱門的一些公司,這一職責(zé)的重要性幾乎可以與首席執(zhí)行官比肩。

To say Lexi Reese is a get-things-done kind of person is an understatement. To navigate the demands of her leadership role at fast-growing startup Gusto, a cloud-based provider of payroll and human resources software for small businesses, she maintains her schedule with an elaborate spreadsheet called “?Dónde está Lexi?” that meticulously categorizes exactly how she spends her time. The document is broken down into four overarching values and five quarterly priorities, ranging from “drive revenue” to “personal.” Each priority contains a set of actions and details of her plan for execution, including who’s involved, format, and “cadence,” from weekly meetings with her sales team leads to twice-a-month dates in the city with her husband. A separate tab lays out her actual schedule, down to 15-minute increments in color-coded glory.

A few years ago, when she was ready to leave Google after an eight-year stint, Reese applied the same meticulousness to her job search, identifying four criteria (including a $100 billion addressable market and a “stretch” role), and logging, in fine detail, every hour she spent talking with Gusto.

Reese’s habits show the organizational acumen, drive, and perfectionism that you’d expect from a CEO. But she isn’t Gusto’s chief executive (though, according to her notes, before getting the job she did spend 21 hours, including a three-hour hike, meeting with the guy who is). She joined the company in October 2015 as chief customer experience officer. And last year she was promoted to chief operating officer—a role that’s becoming almost as important as CEO at some of the tech world’s hottest companies.

Courtesy of Intercom

有這么一句名言:“如果想辦好一件事,把它交給那些忙碌的人。”也可以簡(jiǎn)化為,“把它交給首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官?!痹诠韫?,越來(lái)越多自身?xiàng)l件優(yōu)越、業(yè)績(jī)突出的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官希望獲得更多的尊敬和重視,瑞斯便是其中的一員。她還具有這些優(yōu)秀副手所擁有的另一個(gè)共性:女性的占比異常的高。

不妨看看過(guò)去12個(gè)月中熱鬧的科技公司所做出的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官任命:愛(ài)彼迎的比琳達(dá)·約翰遜、WeWork的詹妮弗·博倫特、房地產(chǎn)和科技公司Compass的梅埃勒·蓋威特以及視頻流平臺(tái)(亞馬遜子公司)Twitch的莎拉·克里門斯等等。僅在2月底,薩瓦娜·薩克斯便被任命為美容訂閱服務(wù)Birchbox的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官。同時(shí),Pinterest宣布移動(dòng)支付公司Square前高管弗朗索瓦絲·布洛芙將成為公司首位首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,這也讓她成為了眾人矚目的焦點(diǎn)。

這些女性只是眾多科技行業(yè)現(xiàn)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的冰山一角罷了。Instagram的馬恩·列維、在線地產(chǎn)巨頭Zillow的艾米·博胡廷斯基、Etsy的琳達(dá)·芬得利·科佐羅斯基、Stripe的克萊爾·休斯·約翰遜、企業(yè)軟件公司Infor的帕姆·墨菲,可謂是不勝枚舉。當(dāng)然,其中有一個(gè)人可能是最近這場(chǎng)運(yùn)動(dòng)的中堅(jiān)力量——謝麗爾·桑德伯格,她剛好是在10年前離開(kāi)了谷歌,開(kāi)始擔(dān)任Facebook的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官。

企業(yè)界,尤其是科技行業(yè),在塑造女性首席執(zhí)行官方面遇到了不少困難。但就這一領(lǐng)域的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職而言,女性可謂是趕上了好時(shí)候。鑒于科技行業(yè)女性領(lǐng)袖的匱乏以及最近“兄弟”文化的泛濫,女性運(yùn)營(yíng)領(lǐng)袖的崛起正值行業(yè)的發(fā)展關(guān)鍵時(shí)期,而且其不斷增長(zhǎng)的比例在高增長(zhǎng)型科技初創(chuàng)企業(yè)尤為明顯。在這一領(lǐng)域,快速的增長(zhǎng)、較高的財(cái)務(wù)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)及其備受矚目的特性為這一職務(wù)增添了額外的分量。

然而,科技領(lǐng)域的男性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官比女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官要多得多,所有的高管級(jí)別職務(wù)都是如此。例如,在50家估值最高、設(shè)有首席運(yùn)營(yíng)執(zhí)行官一職的私營(yíng)“獨(dú)角獸”公司中,70%的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官都為男性,30%為女性。然而,與30%形成鮮明對(duì)比的是,同一組別中女性首席執(zhí)行官的比例僅為4%。(盡管獨(dú)角獸公司前50強(qiáng)之外也存在女性創(chuàng)始人,但這一數(shù)字依然是相形見(jiàn)絀。)2017年,《財(cái)富》500強(qiáng)公司的女性首席執(zhí)行官占比為6.4%,女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官占比約為10.7%,與這一數(shù)字相比,上述30%的比例看起來(lái)更加驚艷。事實(shí)上,在經(jīng)濟(jì)最活躍的一些領(lǐng)域,高管職務(wù)向女性傾斜的變動(dòng)正在發(fā)生,寥寥無(wú)幾的女性首席執(zhí)行官依然在提醒著性別平權(quán)人士現(xiàn)實(shí)中依然存在的種種棘手障礙,但這一現(xiàn)象也讓他們有充足的理由去憧憬美好的未來(lái)。

為了深入了解女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官占比頗高的現(xiàn)象,《財(cái)富》采訪了19位現(xiàn)任或前任女首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官、多名男性首席執(zhí)行官、招聘人員、風(fēng)投資本家和其他管理專家。盡管眾多的女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官并未將其看作是一個(gè)趨勢(shì),但那些緊密關(guān)注這一動(dòng)態(tài)的人士卻注意到了這個(gè)現(xiàn)象。2015年開(kāi)始擔(dān)任Zillow首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的博胡廷斯基說(shuō):“我曾經(jīng)思考過(guò)‘女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官’現(xiàn)象。我自己也注意到了這一點(diǎn)?!迸晾瓓W托高管獵頭公司Egon Zehnder合伙人瑪莎·約瑟芬森嘆息道,“純粹只是個(gè)表面現(xiàn)象,但它顯然不容忽視。”

首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的職責(zé)是出了名的難以界定,主要因?yàn)樗男螒B(tài)一直在不斷地變化:它的職責(zé)取決于公司、行業(yè)和首席執(zhí)行官。然而,不管最終的形態(tài)如何,其影響力是毋庸置疑的。它幾乎是最接近首席執(zhí)行官的角色,而且有著最寬泛的全企業(yè)監(jiān)管職責(zé)??v觀美國(guó)企業(yè)史,這一職務(wù)一直都是通往最高職務(wù)的跳板。

There’s a famous saying: “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” You might just as easily say, “Give it to a COO.” ?Reese is part of a growing cohort of high--profile, high-performing chief operating officers who command increasing respect and attention in Silicon Valley. She’s also emblematic of another commonality among these stellar seconds-in-command: An unusually large percentage of them are women.

Consider the female COO appointments at buzzy tech companies in the past 12 months: Belinda Johnson at Airbnb, Jennifer Berrent at WeWork, Ma?lle Gavet at real estate and technology firm Compass, and Sara Clemens at video-streaming platform (and Amazon subsidiary) Twitch, to name just a few. In late February alone, Savannah Sachs took on the role at beauty subscription service Birchbox, and Francoise Brougher, a former top exec at mobile-payment company Square, made headlines when Pinterest announced she would become its first-ever COO.

These women join a very long list of tech-?industry COO incumbents: Marne Levine at Instagram, Amy Bohutinsky of online real estate giant Zillow, Etsy’s Linda Findley -Kozlowski, Claire Hughes Johnson of Stripe, Pam Murphy at enterprise software firm -Infor—there are too many to list them all here. And, of course, there is the person who is arguably the spark for this recent movement: Sheryl Sandberg, who left Google to become Facebook’s COO exactly 10 years ago.

The corporate world—and the tech industry in particular—has a lot of trouble minting female CEOs. But when it comes to the COO role in this sector, women are enjoying a golden age. The rise of these operations masterminds comes at a pivotal time, given the sector’s abysmal dearth of female leaders and the recent revelations of the pervasiveness of “bro” culture. And their growing representation is especially noticeable in the universe of high-growth tech startups, where rapid growth, high financial stakes, and the glare of publicity give the role extra heft.

As is true with all C-suite positions, there are still far more male COOs than female COOs in the tech world. Among the 50 highest-valued privately held “unicorn” companies, for example, of those with COOs, 70% have men in the post, 30% women. But that 30% is a striking contrast to the mere two out of 50 CEOs in the same group who are female. (While there are female founders outside the unicorn top 50, the numbers remain scant.) Compared with the 6.4% of Fortune 500 companies that had female CEOs in 2017, or to the 10.7% of Fortune 500 COOs who are women, that 30% looks even more significant. And the fact that this C-suite shift is happening in the most dynamic sector of our economy gives advocates of gender parity in the workplace plenty of cause for hope—even as the minuscule number of female CEOs reminds them of the stubborn obstacles that remain.

To explore the female-COO phenomenon, Fortune talked to 19 female current or former COOs, a handful of male COOs, recruiters, venture capitalists, and other management experts. While many female COOs were reluctant to call this a trend, those who closely follow such things have noticed the phenomenon. “I’ve thought about the ‘woman thing,’?” says Bohutinsky, who was named COO of Zillow in 2015. “I’ve noticed it myself too.” “It’s so superficial,” laments Martha Josephson, Palo Alto–based partner at executive search firm Egon Zehnder. “But it is definitely a thing.”

The COO role is famously hard to define, largely because it is a shape-shifter: It varies company by company, sector by sector, and CEO by CEO. Yet whatever its shape, its scope of influence is undeniable. It is almost always the role closest to the CEO, and the one with the broadest cross-enterprise oversight. And throughout the annals of corporate America, it has been a stepping-stone to the top spot.

Courtesy of Rent The Runway

高管獵頭公司Crist Kolder對(duì)673家《財(cái)富》500強(qiáng)和標(biāo)普500公司的調(diào)查顯示,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職是通往最高職務(wù)最常見(jiàn)的路徑;超過(guò)40%的現(xiàn)任首席執(zhí)行官都是從總裁/首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職提拔而來(lái)??煽诳蓸?lè)現(xiàn)任首席執(zhí)行官詹姆士·昆西在擢拔之前曾在穆泰康手下?lián)问紫\(yùn)營(yíng)官;凱文·約翰遜在擔(dān)任星巴克首席執(zhí)行官之前曾擔(dān)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官。蘋(píng)果的蒂姆·庫(kù)克可謂是當(dāng)前最引人注目的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官升任首席執(zhí)行官的案例。在大型公司中,這一路徑對(duì)于女性高管來(lái)說(shuō)亦是十分普遍:在過(guò)去12個(gè)月曾擔(dān)任《財(cái)富》500強(qiáng)企業(yè)首席執(zhí)行官一職的36名女性當(dāng)中,有15名曾擔(dān)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,包括洛克希德馬丁公司的瑪麗蓮·休森、金寶湯公司首席執(zhí)行官丹尼斯·莫里森以及Guardian Life Insurance首席執(zhí)行官迪安娜·馬利根。

這一模式也帶來(lái)了一些顯著的問(wèn)題??萍夹袠I(yè)當(dāng)前聘請(qǐng)女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的趨勢(shì)是否會(huì)催生更強(qiáng)大的女性首席執(zhí)行官候選陣容,繼而擔(dān)任屬于她們自己的頂級(jí)職務(wù)?;蛘撸紫\(yùn)營(yíng)官職務(wù)自身是否有可能會(huì)成為一面玻璃天花板,在這個(gè)職務(wù)上,功勛卓著的女性領(lǐng)袖會(huì)永久性地扮演支撐者的角色,推動(dòng)行業(yè)的發(fā)展,這樣就不會(huì)破壞首席執(zhí)行官的兄弟營(yíng)。

顯然,有關(guān)首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的任何調(diào)查都難以回答這一問(wèn)題。一個(gè)重要的指標(biāo)顯示,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官職位的數(shù)量實(shí)際上正在減少。克里斯特·科爾德稱,設(shè)有首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職的《財(cái)富》500強(qiáng)和標(biāo)普500強(qiáng)公司已從2000年的48%下降至去年的29%。這一下滑始于2001年經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退之后,在2008年再次加速,因?yàn)樨?cái)政壓力迫使一些公司取消了這一職位,并將其職責(zé)分派給了其他高管。董事總經(jīng)理喬什·克里斯特指出,這些職責(zé)一直在向其他日漸關(guān)注運(yùn)營(yíng)的高管轉(zhuǎn)移,尤其是首席財(cái)務(wù)官。

然而最近,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的位置似乎成功回歸人們的視野。輝瑞、餐廳連鎖巨頭Darden以及英美煙草集團(tuán)在過(guò)去幾年中先后設(shè)立了首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職,而零售商科爾士百貨和塔吉特于2015年增設(shè)了這一職位。同時(shí),在那些保留了首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官職務(wù)的公司中,這一職務(wù)通常仍被看作是成為下一任首席執(zhí)行官的跳板。確實(shí),大多數(shù)大型公司的首席執(zhí)行官,不管是男性和女性,都由公司內(nèi)部培養(yǎng)產(chǎn)生,其中的大多數(shù)來(lái)自于所謂的線性責(zé)任職務(wù),也就是監(jiān)管負(fù)責(zé)賺錢的業(yè)務(wù)部門,通常是總裁、部門總裁或首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官。

首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的地位比其他首席級(jí)別的職務(wù)更高,在現(xiàn)實(shí)中幾乎總是如此。Korn Ferry副董事長(zhǎng)兼首席執(zhí)行官簡(jiǎn)·愛(ài)迪生·史蒂芬森指出,“首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職能夠讓某人在不擔(dān)任首席執(zhí)行官的情況下,凸顯其相對(duì)于其他人的非凡資歷。”

事實(shí)證明,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職如今在科技領(lǐng)域變得更加受歡迎,原因何在?答案在于,它有助于公司理性地去看待眾所周知的“高增長(zhǎng)型科技”領(lǐng)域,其中涵蓋那些近些年相對(duì)較新,但營(yíng)業(yè)額、規(guī)模和影響力飆升的科技企業(yè),既有原型獨(dú)角獸,也有上市巨頭。

一方面,隨著公司的發(fā)展,這些公司的創(chuàng)始人如今更不大可能退居二線,或甘心被人取而代之。曾幾何時(shí),投資者和董事會(huì)都會(huì)迫使創(chuàng)始人讓出首席執(zhí)行官的職位,并聘請(qǐng)有著豐富閱歷的企業(yè)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)擔(dān)任這一職務(wù),案例包括eBay的梅格·惠特曼或谷歌的埃里克·施密特。在人們看來(lái),引入外來(lái)高管意味著公司的規(guī)模已經(jīng)足夠大,而且做好了接受“成人監(jiān)管”的準(zhǔn)備。

但是這一浪潮在進(jìn)入21世紀(jì)后開(kāi)始轉(zhuǎn)變,而且這一變化在2009年7月馬克·安德森和本·霍洛維茨創(chuàng)建其以自己名字命名的風(fēng)投資本公司之后呈加速蔓延之勢(shì)。當(dāng)時(shí),這家公司的核心理念就是要把初創(chuàng)企業(yè)的創(chuàng)始人培養(yǎng)成為首席執(zhí)行官。他們的邏輯在于:科技行業(yè)大多數(shù)偉大的公司,包括微軟、英特爾和蘋(píng)果在內(nèi)的長(zhǎng)期領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者,均由創(chuàng)始人經(jīng)營(yíng)了很長(zhǎng)一段時(shí)間。隨著風(fēng)投資本公司投資初創(chuàng)寵兒的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)愈演愈烈, “善待創(chuàng)始人”已經(jīng)成為了談判的籌碼。

然而,善待創(chuàng)始人這種做法也存在缺點(diǎn):年輕的創(chuàng)業(yè)者突然會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)自己正在經(jīng)營(yíng)一家公司,但通常精研某一產(chǎn)品或具有工程背景的他們?nèi)狈蚝翢o(wú)管理經(jīng)驗(yàn),而首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官恰好可以彌補(bǔ)這一短板。

Compass首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官蓋威特說(shuō):“在硅谷,創(chuàng)始人就是地球的上帝。”她此前曾先后擔(dān)任Priceline(如今的Booking Holdings)首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官和Ozon.ru(人稱“俄羅斯亞馬遜”)首席執(zhí)行官。她說(shuō):“突然間,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官這一職務(wù)有了重要的存在價(jià)值。他/她會(huì)盡其所能分擔(dān)統(tǒng)一團(tuán)隊(duì)共識(shí)、大規(guī)模的流程建設(shè)以及其他所有通常讓創(chuàng)始人感到厭煩不已的事情,同時(shí)還能讓創(chuàng)始人得以保留,可謂是皆大歡喜?!?/p>

與此同時(shí),首席執(zhí)行官在所有領(lǐng)域的職責(zé)已經(jīng)發(fā)展成為了一種更加外向型的職能。首席執(zhí)行官如今被視為公眾人物,大量出現(xiàn)于社交媒體,各類會(huì)議,全球客戶路演等諸如此類的活動(dòng)。在他們奔波于各種交際場(chǎng)合之時(shí),總得有人出面打理公司。

這些變化讓公司二把手的職責(zé)變得更加重要。然而,一個(gè)不容忽視的額外因素在于:聘請(qǐng)謝麗爾·桑德伯格擔(dān)任Facebook首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官。當(dāng)23歲的馬克·扎克伯格2008年把桑德伯格(時(shí)任谷歌全球在線銷售和運(yùn)營(yíng)副總裁)從谷歌挖過(guò)來(lái)時(shí),F(xiàn)acebook還沒(méi)有盈利,而且尚未確定公司未來(lái)的商業(yè)模式。在3年的時(shí)間中,公司實(shí)現(xiàn)了盈利,而且其員工數(shù)量從130名增至2500名,同時(shí)用戶數(shù)量翻了十番。桑德伯格將其打造谷歌大獲成功的廣告平臺(tái)的經(jīng)驗(yàn)帶到了Facebook,幫助這家初出茅廬的公司賺錢,推動(dòng)其發(fā)展,并實(shí)現(xiàn)平臺(tái)的專業(yè)化。她承擔(dān)了從營(yíng)銷到文化和政策的所有事務(wù),并幫助帶領(lǐng)Facebook開(kāi)展了首次公開(kāi)募股。從紙面上來(lái)看,扎克伯格和桑德伯格是一對(duì)格格不入的組合,一位是毫無(wú)社交經(jīng)驗(yàn)的工程師,但另一位卻是異常成功,并在麥肯錫和華盛頓特區(qū)有著廣泛關(guān)系網(wǎng)絡(luò)的資深人士。然而,這兩者之間的合作是Facebook成功的基石。(桑德伯格拒絕就此事發(fā)表評(píng)論)

幾乎是在同時(shí),其他公司開(kāi)始嘗試復(fù)制這一模式。Egon Zehnder合伙人約瑟夫森說(shuō):“很多人都要求我?guī)退麄儗ふ摇硪晃恢x麗爾’,不下十次,我找得目光都呆滯了。所有的投資者都想要為自己找一個(gè)‘謝麗爾’,就好像這跟在亞馬遜上下單那么簡(jiǎn)單。”放心,我會(huì)為你物色另一位高管,他曾幫助打造了一個(gè)市值高達(dá)5000萬(wàn)美元的上市公司,創(chuàng)建了一個(gè)全球性的女性賦權(quán)品牌,而且常常有傳言說(shuō)他還是總統(tǒng)候選人。

然而,有了桑德伯格-扎克伯格模式這一成功的案例,各大公司也就更愿意將女性作為候選人。另外幾個(gè)因素也助長(zhǎng)了這一新出現(xiàn)的女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官熱。如今,業(yè)界存在一大批經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富的女性高管,她們一直在科技行業(yè)摸爬滾打,靠自己的努力進(jìn)入了公司的頂層,同時(shí)也頗為擔(dān)心科技公司高管層的多元化問(wèn)題。尤為重要的是,事實(shí)在于,那些世人認(rèn)為女性更為擅長(zhǎng)的技能——執(zhí)行多重任務(wù)、建立共識(shí)、更看重工作的意義和使命而不是頭銜,無(wú)論正確與否,讓她們尤為適合扮演這一關(guān)鍵的二號(hào)角色。

According to a study by executive search firm Crist Kolder of 673 companies in the Fortune 500 and S&P 500, it is the most common path to the top job: Upwards of 40% of sitting CEOs were promoted from the president/COO role. James Quincey, the current CEO of Coca-Cola, was COO under Muhtar Kent before taking over the top job; Kevin Johnson was COO before becoming CEO of Starbucks. Today’s highest-profile COO-turned-CEO? Apple’s Tim Cook. This path is just as common for women at large corporations: Of the 36 women who have held Fortune 500 CEO jobs in the past 12 months, 15 were previously COO, including Lockheed Martin’s Marillyn Hewson, Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison, and Guardian Life Insurance CEO Deanna Mulligan.

Given this pattern, some obvious questions emerge. Will the current wave of women COOs in tech give rise to a new, more robust pipeline of female chief-executive candidates, teed up to take top spots of their own? Or does the COO role risk becoming a glass ceiling in itself—a position from which accomplished women leaders stoke the industry’s growth, in a perpetual supporting role, without breaking into the CEO boys’ club?

Any study of the COO is, by definition, hard to tackle. By one important measure the role itself is actually in decline. According to Crist Kolder, the percentage of Fortune500 and S&P 500 companies with a COO has fallen from 48% in 2000 to 29% last year. The decline began after the recession of 2001 and accelerated again after 2008, as financial pressures led some companies to eliminate the role and spread its duties among other senior management. There has also been a shift toward other executives becoming more operationally focused, especially the CFO, says managing director Josh Crist.

More recently, however, the COO position appears to have made a comeback. Pfizer, restaurant giant Darden, and British American Tobacco have all created a COO role in the past few years, and retailers Kohl’s and Target added the position in 2015. And at the companies that do maintain the title, the role is still very often seen as a stepping-stone for the next CEO. Indeed, most big-company CEOs, men and women, are groomed internally, with most coming from roles with so-called line responsibility, or oversight of a business unit responsible for making money—typically, president, division president, or COO.

It’s also almost always true that the COO spot occupies a space higher than other C-suite positions. “It’s a way to designate someone’s extreme seniority relative to others without making them the CEO,” says Jane Edison Stevenson, vice chair, board and CEO services, at Korn Ferry.

So what to make of the evidence that the COO position—and its significance—is becoming so much more prevalent in the tech sector? For an answer, it helps to zero in on the field commonly known as “high-growth tech”—the universe of relatively new tech companies, ranging from proto-unicorns to publicly traded giants, that have seen their number, size, and influence soar in recent years.

For one thing, the founders of these companies are now much less likely to step aside—or be replaced—as they grow. It wasn’t so long ago that it was standard practice for investors and boards to move the founders out of the CEO’s chair and replace them with heavily credentialed corporate leaders: Think Meg Whitman at eBay or Eric Schmidt at Google. The high-powered import was seen as a sign that the company had gotten big enough that it was ready for “adult supervision.”

But that tide started to shift in the 2000s. The change accelerated after Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz launched their eponymous venture capital firm in July 2009 and made central to their mission a vow to keep founders as CEOs. Their rationale: Most of the great companies in the tech industry, including long-term leaders like Microsoft, Intel, and Apple, were run by a founder for a long period of time. As competition among venture capital investors for stakes in promising companies became more intense, being “founder-friendly” became table stakes.

There’s a drawback to founder-friendliness, however: It has meant that young entrepreneurs, typically with a product or engineering background but often with little to no management experience, have found themselves running companies. Enter the COO.

“Silicon Valley has been living in this world of the founders being God on earth,” says COO Gavet of Compass, who was previously COO of Priceline (now Booking Holdings) and before that served as CEO of Ozon.ru, known as the “Amazon of Russia.” “Suddenly the COO makes a ton of sense,” she says. “He or she has done his or her fair share of team alignment, process building at scale, and all the things that usually bore to death the founder, but then you get to keep the founder. So everybody’s happy.”

At the same time, the role of CEO in all sectors has evolved to become much more external. CEOs today are expected to be public figures, with a robust social media presence, conference gigs, worldwide customer tours, and the like. While they’re pressing the flesh, someone needs to run the shop.

These shifts have made the role of the second-in-command more pivotal. But there’s one additional factor that can’t be overlooked: the hiring of Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer of Facebook. When a 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg hired Sandberg in 2008 from Google, where she had been VP of global online sales and operations, Facebook was not making money and not sure what its business model should be. Within three years the company was profitable and had grown from 130 employees to 2,500, while users had grown 10-fold. Sandberg brought her experience in building Google’s enormously successful ad platforms to Facebook, helping to monetize the nascent company, grow it, and professionalize it. She took on everything from marketing to culture to policy and helped steer Facebook through its IPO. On paper, Zuckerberg and Sandberg were an odd couple—he the socially awkward engineer, she the über-?successful, well-?connected veteran of McKinsey and Washington, D.C. But their partnership stands at the core of the company’s success. (Sandberg declined to comment for this story.)

Almost immediately, other companies tried to replicate the model. “I’ve been asked a dozen times for ‘a(chǎn) Sheryl,’ to the point where my eyes glaze over,” says Josephson, the partner at Egon Zehnder. “All the investors need ‘a(chǎn) Sheryl’ as if it’s something you can order from Amazon.” Sure, I’ll just find you some OTHER executive who helped build a half-trillion-dollar public company, created a global brand around women’s empowerment, and is an oft-rumored presidential candidate.

Still, the success of the Sandberg-?Zuckerberg model has stuck, making companies all the more amenable to bringing in women as candidates. A few other factors are contributing to this new eagerness. There’s now a strong pool of seasoned female executives who have spent their careers in tech working almost all the way to the top, along with a heightened concern about diversity in tech’s C-suites. And not least, there’s the fact that the skills that, rightly or wrongly, women are perceived as excelling in—multitasking, consensus building, caring less about the title than the meaning and mission in their work—lend themselves particularly well to the critical No. 2 role.

Gusto首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官萊克希·瑞斯; Taskrabbit首席執(zhí)行官兼前首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官史黛西·布朗-菲爾波特; Booking.com首席執(zhí)行官兼前首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官吉莉安·譚斯; Fab前首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官貝斯·費(fèi)雷拉; Compass首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官馬萊·加威特REESE: COURTESY OF GUSTO; BROWN-PHILPOT: BENJAMIN RASMUSSEN; TANS: COURTESY OF BOOKING HOLDINGS; FERREIRA: LISA HOULGRAVE; GAVET: COURTESY OF COMPASS

很多人認(rèn)為這是好消息,因?yàn)楹苊黠@該現(xiàn)象說(shuō)明女性在努力爭(zhēng)取更高的管理職位?!罢f(shuō)明很多才能出眾的女性在商界出人頭地?!惫鹕虒W(xué)院兼哈佛大學(xué)高級(jí)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力行動(dòng)主席羅莎貝絲·莫斯·坎特表示。

“如果女性能擔(dān)任的最高領(lǐng)導(dǎo)職務(wù)是首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,該職位確實(shí)有很多女性,那么對(duì)女性來(lái)說(shuō)已經(jīng)是巨大勝利?!笨偛课挥谂f金山的獵頭公司Rich Talent Group創(chuàng)始人嘉娜·里奇表示。

如果說(shuō)這些就是為了接下來(lái)筆調(diào)突轉(zhuǎn),你猜得沒(méi)錯(cuò)。雖然首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官看似職位很高,但往往只是首席執(zhí)行官的副手,而且多為幕后工作。兩個(gè)職位之間的矛盾在硅谷體現(xiàn)得格外明顯,因?yàn)楣韫龋ㄍǔ槟行裕┏錆M創(chuàng)新精神的天才創(chuàng)始人影響力巨大。首席執(zhí)行官負(fù)責(zé)提出愿景,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官則負(fù)責(zé)實(shí)現(xiàn)愿景。首席執(zhí)行官主外,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官則主內(nèi)。首席執(zhí)行官主要負(fù)責(zé)產(chǎn)品和工程方面的決策責(zé)任,其他雞零瑣碎的枯燥事務(wù)都落在首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官頭上。

紅杉資本合伙人阿爾弗萊德·林曾擔(dān)任Zappos首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官兼總裁,他表示二者關(guān)系就像“冰與火”,具體來(lái)說(shuō)由創(chuàng)始人/首席執(zhí)行官為創(chuàng)新想法注入企業(yè)家精神和無(wú)限激情,但“也需要冰冷的管理技巧,”他表示。“處理激情與管理之間的矛盾正是開(kāi)創(chuàng)偉大公司的關(guān)鍵?!钡紫\(yùn)營(yíng)官的視野要更高,處理起來(lái)會(huì)遇到挑戰(zhàn):接近金字塔頂端并不意味著真正在頂端。史蒂芬森表示,如果最終目標(biāo)是當(dāng)首席執(zhí)行官,那么擔(dān)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官可能最終淪為“沉默的助手”。

當(dāng)然了,身居如此高位仍然會(huì)很有滿足感,而且確實(shí)有影響力。米歇爾·扎特林是網(wǎng)絡(luò)性能和安全公司Cloudflare首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官兼聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人,她與公司另一位聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官馬修·普林斯合作就很符合陰陽(yáng)調(diào)和的關(guān)系?!叭绻且枋鑫业墓ぷ?,就像幕后的首席黏合官吧?!彼硎?。工作內(nèi)容包括設(shè)立公司組織架構(gòu),搭建集中規(guī)劃流程,讓所有人了解公司的目標(biāo),也要掌控進(jìn)程,隨著公司發(fā)展到員工超過(guò)600人,相關(guān)工作也要隨之適應(yīng)。她還負(fù)責(zé)解決麻煩事?!叭绻诎追置?,團(tuán)隊(duì)很快就能解決?!彼f(shuō)?!耙话憬唤o我的都是處于模糊地帶的事?!彼?jīng)常想起高中籃球老師跟她說(shuō)過(guò)的話?!坝写嗡嬖V我,‘你得分從來(lái)不會(huì)最高,但是只要你在場(chǎng)上,整個(gè)隊(duì)伍表現(xiàn)會(huì)更好。’”

但并不是每個(gè)首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官地位能像扎特林一樣,畢竟她還兼任共同創(chuàng)始人。從外部聘請(qǐng)的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,不管是男性還是女性,有時(shí)都得身兼危機(jī)管理和導(dǎo)師的角色,尤其是創(chuàng)始人年輕又缺乏經(jīng)驗(yàn)的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司里。(許多女科技首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官比首席執(zhí)行官合伙人年長(zhǎng)幾歲,并非全是巧合)。Facebook早期有不少故事,不少提到桑德伯格和投資人指導(dǎo)扎克伯格公開(kāi)演講以及什么時(shí)候不能穿帽衫等等。即使最著名的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官也要習(xí)慣隨時(shí)待命,有時(shí)要決定總部外面擺放圣誕樹(shù)的大小,有時(shí)要幫首席執(zhí)行官找手機(jī)充電器(本文采訪的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官確實(shí)做過(guò)這兩件事)。

如果出現(xiàn)極端情況,女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的角色可能更接近扮演類似于辦公室主任,更差情況下像保姆。這也是女性領(lǐng)導(dǎo)支持者最想避免的情況?!拔铱磁猿袚?dān)的職責(zé)時(shí),出發(fā)點(diǎn)一定是女性能施加多大戰(zhàn)略影響力,而這也是女性地位提升的關(guān)鍵所在?!彼_莉·赫爾格森表示,她是領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力專家,也是即將出版的《女性如何崛起》一書(shū)合著者。

凱倫·皮考克離開(kāi)Intuit接手創(chuàng)業(yè)公司工作時(shí),也有類似顧慮。她在Intuit擔(dān)任高級(jí)副總裁,手下超過(guò)500名員工,負(fù)責(zé)25億美元的小企業(yè)部門業(yè)務(wù),包括QuickBooks品牌。找工作時(shí)她咨詢的好幾位顧問(wèn)給出了同樣的建議:“不管以后做什么,千萬(wàn)別當(dāng)首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官。”顧問(wèn)團(tuán)認(rèn)為皮考克已經(jīng)可以勝任首席執(zhí)行官,事實(shí)上她也確實(shí)有幾份類似工作邀請(qǐng)。但她也在考慮首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的機(jī)會(huì),考慮過(guò)程中她仔細(xì)研究了這一職位可能遇到哪些問(wèn)題。她發(fā)現(xiàn)如果首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官和首席執(zhí)行官的合作關(guān)系基于共同價(jià)值觀,兩人技能互補(bǔ),而且首席執(zhí)行官愿意“分而治之”,且兩人對(duì)出現(xiàn)爭(zhēng)端后如何處理有明確預(yù)期時(shí),情況會(huì)好許多。正因如此,皮考克決定加入用戶通信平臺(tái)Intercom擔(dān)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官前,花了5個(gè)月時(shí)間認(rèn)真了解聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官奧恩·麥卡布。

硅谷很多女性首席執(zhí)行官在公司愿景和戰(zhàn)略方面確實(shí)發(fā)揮了重要作用。知情人士透露,WeWork首席執(zhí)行官珍·貝倫特近日談妥了日本巨頭軟銀注資44億美元。Etsy的科茲洛夫斯基負(fù)責(zé)利潤(rùn)生產(chǎn)和接觸用戶的各項(xiàng)業(yè)務(wù)。Compass的加威特表示“重要決策之前,(她和首席執(zhí)行官羅伯特·里夫金)都會(huì)先談一談?!?/p>

擔(dān)任公司二把手的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官需要哪些素質(zhì)?要專注、高效,還要善于學(xué)習(xí)。他們要特別擅長(zhǎng)多任務(wù)處理,還有近似的“模式轉(zhuǎn)換”,雖然本質(zhì)上是單任務(wù)模式但要在大量任務(wù)之間切換。(“我在模式轉(zhuǎn)換方面堪稱一絕?!?Stripe公司的約翰遜說(shuō)。)時(shí)尚租賃公司Rent the Runway首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官莫林·薩利文表示,最重要的素質(zhì)是“既能飛上5萬(wàn)英尺高空,又能迅速潛下5英尺甚至5英寸的地面,還得應(yīng)對(duì)自如?!?/p>

一年多前,中小企業(yè)高管二把手首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官的組織——首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官聯(lián)盟創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官卡梅隆·赫羅爾德組織了一次試驗(yàn),他給60位創(chuàng)業(yè)者和60位首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官出題,問(wèn)他們喜歡怎樣啟動(dòng)新項(xiàng)目。結(jié)果呢,赫羅爾德表示,95%的創(chuàng)業(yè)者非常魯莽,而95%的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官特別“重視事實(shí)”?!八麄兒?jiǎn)直完美補(bǔ)充了創(chuàng)業(yè)者的弱項(xiàng)?!彼硎尽K€介紹說(shuō),去年會(huì)員中的女性已從20%增加到35%。

我跟19位女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官談過(guò)后,可以坦率地說(shuō),她們真的很厲害。每個(gè)人都很準(zhǔn)時(shí)甚至早到。談話中她們準(zhǔn)備充分觀點(diǎn)明確。如果忘帶充電器,她們很可能立刻拿出一個(gè)備用的給你。她們語(yǔ)速很快,我感覺(jué)要是把采訪筆記交給她們,過(guò)一夜她們就能把擬好的草稿交回給我。

像皮考克和里斯一樣,很多人找現(xiàn)在這份工作時(shí)都非常謹(jǐn)慎。她們認(rèn)真研究了哪些說(shuō)法有效,哪些沒(méi)用。按照科茲洛夫斯基的說(shuō)法,弄清楚首席執(zhí)行官的需要是成功的關(guān)鍵因素。至于什么沒(méi)用:“如果職位描述寫(xiě)著‘我只是需要個(gè)幫手’,或者‘能不能把我不想做的事都甩給你?’,以后麻煩就大了?!?/p>

首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官角色的改變是否對(duì)女性首席執(zhí)行官候選人有利?多數(shù)知情人士表示樂(lè)觀。畢竟已有很多先例:《財(cái)富》500強(qiáng)榜單上“傳統(tǒng)經(jīng)濟(jì)”中堅(jiān)力量的大企業(yè)里,不少女性首席執(zhí)行官就是由首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官一職提拔。美國(guó)好時(shí)公司的米歇爾·巴克就是最新一例。其他著名的由首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官升任首席執(zhí)行官案例包括Booking.com的吉莉安·譚斯、TaskRabbit’的黛西·布朗-菲爾波特、納斯達(dá)克公司的阿迪娜·弗萊德曼,還有SoulCycle的梅蘭妮·威蘭。

很多在任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官希望桑德伯格之后的一代人可以發(fā)揮更大作用,也進(jìn)一步提升女性形象?!安还茉诠_(kāi)場(chǎng)合還是公司內(nèi)部,首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官不會(huì)再是‘次要’角色,也不會(huì)安安靜靜躲在幕后?!盳illow的博霍廷斯基表說(shuō)?!巴ㄟ^(guò)前例,我們相信會(huì)有更多女性擔(dān)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,還可能走上首席執(zhí)行官職位,而且更多女性開(kāi)始敢想象朝著這些目標(biāo)努力?!?/p>

但并非所有人都同意。“我覺(jué)得說(shuō)女性以后機(jī)會(huì)多還太早?!奔~約風(fēng)投公司FirstMark Capital董事總經(jīng)理貝斯·費(fèi)雷拉表示,她之前在電商公司Fab擔(dān)任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,還在Etsy創(chuàng)立初期負(fù)責(zé)運(yùn)營(yíng)?!拔艺J(rèn)識(shí)很多首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,男女都有,他們都曾聽(tīng)說(shuō)過(guò)好消息,‘首席執(zhí)行官’肯定是你來(lái)當(dāng),結(jié)果最后并不是。”她表示,高層職位選擇男性的幾率還是比女性高很多。

但費(fèi)雷拉等人也指出,多虧#MeToo活動(dòng),還有其他揭露男性主導(dǎo)公司和行業(yè)導(dǎo)致弊端的行動(dòng),現(xiàn)在女性機(jī)會(huì)真的更多。費(fèi)雷拉表示過(guò)去兩個(gè)月里有四家公司邀請(qǐng)她擔(dān)任首席執(zhí)行官;而之前四年里很少有機(jī)會(huì),即便有也都不是好機(jī)會(huì)。(“都是些麻煩纏身可能倒閉的公司。”)

Korn Ferry公司的史蒂芬森表示,她發(fā)現(xiàn)董事會(huì)也開(kāi)始考慮將首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官當(dāng)成首席執(zhí)行官候選人。但她也指出,由于女性領(lǐng)導(dǎo)風(fēng)格不一樣,董事會(huì)考察女性候選人時(shí)也應(yīng)采取不同的方式。舉例來(lái)說(shuō),女性“不會(huì)瘋狂追求首席執(zhí)行官的位子,”她表示,這一特點(diǎn)“對(duì)首席執(zhí)行官候選人來(lái)說(shuō)算不上加分,也不算減分,只是風(fēng)格不一樣而已。”2017年史蒂芬森曾合著一份獵頭公司光輝國(guó)際的報(bào)告,題目為《女性首席執(zhí)行官有話說(shuō)》,報(bào)告調(diào)研了57位現(xiàn)任和曾任首席執(zhí)行官的女性,發(fā)現(xiàn)其中只有12%明確知道自己想當(dāng)首席執(zhí)行官,超過(guò)半數(shù)完全沒(méi)想到,直到有人明確表示她們很有潛力。

對(duì)某些女性高管來(lái)說(shuō),首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官職位也類似。紐約證券交易所首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官史黛西·康寧漢姆表示,公司總裁湯姆·法雷找她出任首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官時(shí)談了三次她才答應(yīng)。“這是很典型的反應(yīng),”康寧漢姆表示,“我只想著自己缺乏的能力。”

但如果觀察《財(cái)富》500強(qiáng)女性首席執(zhí)行官的發(fā)展軌跡可以發(fā)現(xiàn),首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官確實(shí)是個(gè)很不錯(cuò)的跳板。幾乎每位接受采訪的首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官都表示,曾有人找她們出任首席執(zhí)行官。馬萊·加威特相信用不了幾年,科技行業(yè)就能涌現(xiàn)很多位高權(quán)重又經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富的女性首席運(yùn)營(yíng)官,董事會(huì)可以從中挑選首席執(zhí)行官。她表示,最主要的問(wèn)題還是董事會(huì)是否信任她們?!昂芸炀湍苤馈=酉聛?lái)兩年到五年就能看出來(lái)。”

有些董事會(huì)已經(jīng)回答了這個(gè)問(wèn)題。寵物狗按需服務(wù)公司W(wǎng)ag最近獲得日本軟銀一筆3億美元的投資。幾乎與之同步,Wag董事會(huì)決定撤下現(xiàn)在的男性聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人兼首席執(zhí)行官,換上一位更有經(jīng)驗(yàn)的高管。

新任首席執(zhí)行官到底是誰(shuí)?她叫希拉里·施耐德。(財(cái)富中文網(wǎng))

譯者:馮豐

審稿:夏林

Many see all of this as good news, for the obvious reason that it means women are reaching new levels in executive ranks. “It indicates how many talented women there are that can really make a business work,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor at Harvard Business School and chair of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative.

“If the most senior role available is the COO role, and a lot of them are going to women, to me that’s a huge win for women,” agrees Jana Rich, founder of San Francisco–based executive search firm the Rich Talent Group.

If these optimistic words sound like a setup for a big “but,” you’re onto something. As senior as it is, the chief operating officer role is often a counterpoint to the CEO in ways that keep the COO far behind the scenes. And that tension can be particularly strong in Silicon Valley, where the mystique of the (usually male) creative-genius founder holds tremendous sway. The CEO has the vision; the COO executes on that vision. The CEO is external-facing; the COO is internal-facing. The CEO holds on to the make-or-break responsibilities of product and engineering, while the unglamorous work of running everything else falls to the COO.

Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia Capital who was previously COO and chairman of Zappos, refers to it as the balance of “fire and ice”—the founder/CEO brings the entrepreneurial spirit and passion for bold ideas, but “you also need the icy-cold skills of management,” he says. “That tension is the tension that makes for great companies.” But for a COO with sights set higher, that dynamic can present challenges: The closest thing to the top isn’t the top. For those whose goal is to become CEO, being COO may risk being seen as a “silent sidekick,” Stevenson says.

To be sure, these kinds of roles can still be extremely fulfilling—and influential. Michelle Zatlyn is the COO and a cofounder of web-performance and security company Cloudflare, and her partnership with cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince fits this yin-and-yang model. “If I had to say what my job was, it’s like the chief glue officer behind the scenes,” she says. That includes setting up the company’s organizational structure, establishing a centralized planning process so that everyone knows the company’s goals and can monitor progress, and scaling all of that as the company has grown to more than 600 employees. She also tackles anything thorny or problematic. “Anything that’s black-and-white, our team just solves,” she says. “What comes up to me is all the grays.” She often finds herself thinking back to a conversation she had with her high school basketball coach. “She told me once, ‘You’re never the highest scorer, but the team always does better when you’re on the court.’?”

But not every COO enjoys the kind of status within a company that a cofounder like Zatlyn has earned. For COOs—male or female—who are brought in from the outside, especially at startups where the founder is young and inexperienced, the role can sometimes comprise a combination of crisis manager and teacher. (Not coincidentally, many female tech COOs are several years older than their CEO partners.) There are many stories from Facebook’s early days about Sandberg and the company’s investors instructing Zuckerberg on topics like how to handle public speaking and when to shed his hoodie. And even the most high-profile COOs are accustomed to jumping in wherever needed, whether that means choosing the size of the Christmas tree that will sit outside headquarters or tracking down the CEO’s phone charger (both tasks that COOs mentioned in this story have tackled).

Taken to extremes, this dynamic can put the female COO in a role akin to chief of staff or, at worst, babysitter. That’s the role that advocates for women in leadership are most eager to steer clear of. “I’m always going to come at this from the point of view of how much strategic influence are women exerting, and that being the sort of be-all and end-all of what we’re trying to achieve here,” says Sally Helgesen, leadership expert and coauthor of the forthcoming book How Women Rise.

Karen Peacock had some of these concerns in mind when she left Intuit to seek a more entrepreneurial role. As a senior vice president, she had responsibility for Intuit’s 500-person, $2.5 billion small-business unit, including its QuickBooks brand. As she started the job hunt, several of the advisers she consulted gave her the same advice: “Whatever you do, don’t become a COO.” Those advisers thought Peacock was ready for a CEO role—and indeed, she says she was offered several such positions. But she also considered COO opportunities, and as she did so, she studied the reasons the role can be problematic. She found that the COO-CEO partnership tended to work better when it was based on shared values, where the two have different skill sets and the CEO is willing to “divide and conquer,” and where there are clear expectations on how to handle disagreements. Before deciding to join Intercom, a customer messaging platform, as COO, Peacock spent five months getting to know the cofounder and CEO, Eoghan McCabe.

To be sure, plenty of Silicon Valley’s female COOs wield influence over vision and strategy. Sources say Jen Berrent, the COO of WeWork, negotiated the company’s recent $4.4 billion investment from Japanese giant SoftBank. At Etsy, Kozlowski has responsibility for everything revenue-generating and customer-facing. Gavet of Compass says that “every big decision comes from a conversation that [she and CEO Robert Reffkin] have had together.”

So what are these second-to-none COOs like? They tend to be focused, efficient, and quick learners. They are experts at multitasking—and even more so at its second cousin, “context-switching,” which is essentially single-tasking but switching from task to task a lot. (“I can context-switch like no one you’ve ever seen,” says Johnson of Stripe.) Maureen Sullivan, COO of fashion-rental startup Rent the Runway, says a key trait is the ability to “fly at 50,000 feet and dive down to five feet or five inches and not feel turbulence.”

A little over a year ago, Cameron Herold, founder and CEO of the COO Alliance, an organization for No. 2 executives at small and midsize companies, ran an experiment in which he gave 60 entrepreneurs and 60 seconds-in-command a personality test designed to reveal how they like to start new projects. The findings: 95% of the entrepreneurs shoot from the hip, Herold says, and 95% of the COOs came up as “fact finders.” “They’re almost the perfect cleanup act to the entrepreneur,” he says. He says the group has seen women rise from 20% of its membership to 35% in the past year. (For an in-depth look at COO support groups, see Fortune.com.)

After speaking with 19 of them, I can say that these women COOs are also, to put it bluntly, ballers. They’re on time or early. They come to a conversation with prepared and thoughtful points. If you forget your charger, they may have one already plugged in and waiting for you. They talk fast. I got the sense that if I handed them my reams of notes, they would turn my story around overnight and hand it back to me fully drafted.

Like Peacock and Reese, many of them took a meticulous approach to the search for their current jobs. They have studied what works and doesn’t work. According to Kozlowski, clarity in what the CEO needs is the most important element for success. What doesn’t work: “When your job description is ‘I just need help,’ or ‘Can you do all the things I don’t want to do?,’ then you know you’re in trouble.”

Are these changes to the COO role creating a pipeline of female CEO candidates? Most sources I spoke to are optimistic. There is plenty of precedent, after all: Consider the Fortune 500 women who have been promoted from COO to CEO at “old economy” stalwarts, including, recently, Michelle Buck of the Hershey Company. Other recent notable female COO-to-CEO promotions include Gillian Tans of Booking.com, TaskRabbit’s Stacy Brown-Philpot, Nasdaq’s Adena Friedman, and SoulCycle’s Melanie Whelan.

Many sitting COOs hope that the post-Sandberg generation has raised the profile of the role and the women who hold it. “You see it in both the public and internal sphere not as a ‘secondary’ role or as the quiet or background role,” says Bohutinsky of Zillow. “That has set an example for seeing more women in this role and imagining more women in the CEO role—and, for more women starting to imagine these roles for themselves.”

Not everyone agrees. “I don’t think it’s a layup,” says Beth Ferreira, managing director at FirstMark Capital, a New York City venture capital firm, who was previously COO of e-commerce company Fab and ran operations in the early days of Etsy. “I know many COOs—men and women—who have been told as things evolve, ‘the CEO job is yours,’ and it doesn’t happen.” She says she sees men still chosen for stretch roles far more often than women.

But Ferreira and others point out that, thanks to the #MeToo movement and the exposure of the downsides of male-?dominated companies and industries, we are at a turning point when it comes to opportunities for women. Ferreira says she has been approached about four CEO roles in the past two months; in the four years prior to that, she says, she got very few, or else they weren’t appealing opportunities. (“They were, like, companies that were going to hit the wall at any moment.”)

Korn Ferry’s Stevenson says she has noticed a shift on the part of boards to start considering positions like COO more frequently as developmental roles toward a CEO seat. But she also notes that differences in the way women lead may mean that boards have to look at female candidates differently. Women, for example, “don’t pound the door down to CEO,” she says, a trait that “doesn’t make her a better or worse CEO candidate, it’s just different.” A 2017 Korn Ferry report Stevenson coauthored, “Women CEOs Speak,” which surveyed 57 current and former female CEOs, found that only 12% knew they wanted to be a CEO—and that more than half gave no thought to being one until someone explicitly told them they had the potential.

For some women executives, a similar dynamic has been in play around the COO position. Stacey Cunningham, COO of the New York Stock Exchange, says that NYSE president Tom Farley had to ask her three times to take on the role of COO before she said yes. “It’s that classic thing,” Cunningham says. “I focused on the skills I didn’t already have.”

But if the Fortune 500 women CEOs who have moved up from the role are any indication, the COO job can indeed be an effective primer. Almost every COO I talked to says she has gotten inquiries for CEO positions. Ma?lle Gavet believes that within a few years, tech industry boards will have a substantial cadre of high-powered and well-rounded female COOs to choose from to fill CEO seats. The main question, she says, will be whether the boards trust them. “We’re about to find out. We’re literally going to find out in the next two to five years.”

Some boards are already answering the question. Wag, an on-demand dog-care service, recently lined up a $300 million investment from SoftBank. In tandem with that move, Wag’s board decided to replace its male cofounder and CEO with a more experienced executive.

The new CEO? Her name is Hilary ?Schneider.

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