- Mark Graham, The Counselling Foundation
Most COOs are excellent operators. Fewer feel their strategic and commercial contributions are at the levels they'd like them to be.
The COO role is one of the most complex and least defined at senior level. There's no standard qualification, agreed professional pathway or consistent definition of what excellent looks like. The role varies widely depending on the business and the leader to whom you report.
Most COOs figure it out by doing. This takes time, is often challenging and can leave important areas overlooked.
This programme creates the space to stop and ask yourself whether you are doing the right version of your role. Are you delivering at the levels required commercially, strategically and, in terms of the environment you're creating for your colleagues, culturally?
You will benefit from this programme if any of the following feel true:
> You are operationally strong but sense the commercial and strategic dimensions of your role are not yet as developed as the operational ones
> You want to be seen as a genuine strategic and commercial partner by the CEO and the board rather than the person who keeps things running
> You feel the constant tension between delivering today's results and thinking clearly about where the organisation is going and how you are contributing to that direction
> You want a practical approach for thinking holistically about the environment you have created for your people and where it could be stronger
> You are new to a COO role and want to get oriented quickly and clearly across all the dimensions the role demands
> You are an established COO who wants to challenge and evolve your impact
> You have never had formal leadership development and want to fill that gap deliberately
> You find yourself in board or executive conversations where you feel a gap between your operational confidence and your strategic credibility
> You are aware that the organisation is more dependent on you personally than is healthy and you want a practical approach to changing that
A thought provoking journey
A complete self-contained experience designed to be finished in a single sitting or broken into manageable chunks on mobile.
Short Focused Video Lessons
Stories, practical business teaching, immediately applicable techniques, real-world observations and reflective questions. Each video under six minutes, most under three. Around 4 hours total. Mobile enabled. Filmed across multiple locations. Each video either teaches, provokes or challenges.
Live Online Forum With Rob
A group session led directly by Rob Evans where you bring your questions, your specific situation, your challenges. This is a live conversation with someone who has worked operationally inside 150+ businesses worldwide and understands the COO role from the ground up. Direct access. Your questions answered.
Practical Ways Of Thinking
PPMCleadership™️, The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️, Activity Model Acumen™️ and a range of practical techniques and aide memoires for decision making, strategic thinking, relationship building and communication. All designed to be simple enough to remember and immediately applicable in your role.
An experience, not a lecture.
Where You Begin
Orientation And Business Context
Before anything else the programme establishes a way of thinking about your role, your organisation and your stakeholders that reframes everything that follows. You will examine the business ecosystem you operate in, the expectations of the various stakeholders you serve and how the best leaders think about exceeding those expectations rather than simply meeting them.
What The Role Actually Demands
The COO role is among the most varied at senior level. The programme examines the different flavours of COO responsibility that exist across organisations, the opportunity to shape the role to fit your specific strengths and the commercial, strategic and cultural dimensions that most operational development overlooks.
The Commercial And Financial Foundation
A practical grounding in how businesses work, how they are funded, how the financial picture tells a story about the organisation, and how the best operational leaders engage with that picture rather than leaving it to the finance function alone. Accessible and thought provoking whether you have a financial background or not.
The Middle
Stories, Observations & Objective Questions
The heart of the programme moves through a series of short focused videos, each one a story with a point, an observation from the real world or a practical technique drawn from more than thirty five years of operational experience across 150+ businesses. Each video ends with one or more questions directed at you and your specific situation. Some will be comfortable, some won't.
The Leadership Environment
PPMCleadership™️ and The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️
Two proprietary approaches for thinking clearly about the environment you and your senior colleagues have created for your people and where your team is in its development cycle. PPMCleadership™️ covers People, Principles, Mechanics and Culture. The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️ covers the management styles that best serve the phases teams move through. Together they give you a useful practical lens for continually examining and improving what you have built around you.
Where You Arrive
Clarity, Challenge & Next Steps
The programme doesn't end with a summary, it ends with a challenge. What have you concluded? And what are you going to do differently?
A Note On Format
Every video in this programme teaches, provokes or challenges. You can complete the entire programme in a single sitting or in fifteen minute chunks on your phone. When you're done you'll see your role, your organisation and the environment you have created with greater clarity than the day to day allows.
'This isn't training in a traditional sense. It's a structured journey of practical teaching, objective reflection and immediately applicable thinking.'
Clarity First
Before teaching you anything new this programme helps you see clearly where you are. Most leadership development starts with answers, this starts with questions. Before introducing any new capability it helps you understand your current situation, your team, your commercial contribution, your strategic clarity and your culture. That clarity makes everything that follows land with more specificity and usefulness.
Real Approaches From Real Operational Experience
Every technique in this programme is drawn from direct experience and observation across 150+ businesses worldwide. PPMCleadership™️ and The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️ are not borrowed models given new names. They are original and developed from identifying the recurrent ingredients in successful teams and observing where struggling teams come unstuck.
Designed To Be Genuinely Enjoyable
Short sharp videos filmed across multiple locations. Personal stories, practical techniques and reflective questions throughout. Around 4 hours total. Mobile enabled and consumable in fifteen minute chunks. The more enjoyable the experience the more likely it is to positively change how you actually lead.
Direct Access To Rob
Every programme includes a live online forum with Rob Evans directly. A live group conversation where you bring your questions and challenges to someone who has been in the room with many businesses worldwide and will engage with your specific reality rather than a generic answer.
- Lynn Murphy, Plugable Technologies
- Chris Griffiths, Travel A La Carte
- Ian Edwards, The Westgrove Group
- Gahn Lane, Pindrop
- Mevin Anenden, Logicalis
- Mark Graham, The Counselling Foundation
Highly Experienced, Practical, Operationally Grounded
Rob Evans has spent more than 35 years working operationally inside 150+ businesses worldwide, with C-suite and project roles spanning operations, finance and general management, involvement in over 50 acquisitions and a nomination for CFO Of The Year in South Africa while serving as CFO of a $6.5bn revenue group.
The COO role sits at the intersection of operational delivery and strategic contribution. Rob has observed that intersection closely across more organisations and cultures than almost any development provider can claim. Everything in this programme is drawn from that direct operational experience which includes serving as COO in multiple international groups.
Based on 35+ years working inside 150+ businesses worldwide, its not theory. It's what Rob observed working and where he saw folks come unstuck.
- Yvonne Chin Irving, CET
- Extract From Corporate Stock Exchange Announcement
- Mark Graham, The Counselling Foundation
For COOs who want to lead with more clarity, commercial impact and intention.
This programme works whether you're new to the COO role or established in it, whether your organisation is growing, transforming or under pressure, and whether your primary challenge is strategic, commercial, cultural or all three.
> COOs who want to operate with more strategic impact alongside their operational responsibilities.
> Operations leaders who want a holistic framework for thinking about their team, their function and their commercial contribution.
> New COOs who want to get oriented quickly and clearly in a complex and ill-defined role.
> Established COOs who want to challenge and evolve their impact.
> Any senior operational leader who wants to be seen as a genuine commercial partner than the person who keeps things running.
This programme is for those who are ready to think honestly about their situation and act on what they find. It is not for those going through the motions.
Everything included. We find participants who engage quickly get the most from the programme and the forum access is structured to support this.
Around 4 hours of short focused video lessons
Mobile enabled, watch in chunks of 15 minutes
Practical business teaching and immediately applicable techniques
PPMCleadership™️, The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️, Activity Model Acumen™️
Reflective questions throughout to personalise the learning to your specific situation
Action oriented - 30 days to complete videos before forum
Live online forum session led directly by Rob Evans
Direct answers to your specific questions and situation
If you are looking to develop a team, a dedicated group forum session with Rob Evans can be added for no extra charge for cohorts of five or more
You'll find the programme guiding you through an objective examination of your organisation, your operational context and your leadership through considered and candid reflection. Rob shares lessons from his experiences illustrated with personal stories, examples and real-world observations. Carefully crafted questions at the end of each video help you relate the material to your specific situation. The goal is to provoke thought, help you analyse your situation and equip you with practical ways of thinking you can apply throughout your career.
Yes. The material is available immediately on purchase and you proceed at whatever pace suits you. Many questions are posed for reflection and you take whatever time feels right for each one. Your value comes from engaging with the programme in the way that best suits how you think and work.
All material is immediately available on purchase. We find that participants who engage quickly get most from the programme and the forum access is structured to support this. We encourage you to begin as soon as practicable after purchase.
Every month a live invite-only online forum is held directly by Rob Evans. You will be invited to three monthly sessions following purchase. We vary the times and days to give you the best opportunity to attend at least one. This is a live session, not a recording, where you bring your specific questions and situations directly to Rob.
Yes. Every organisation operates in a business context. Each has investors, customers, employees, suppliers and stakeholders. Each must deliver value to those it serves and generate a return, financial or otherwise, to those who fund it. The approaches and thinking in this programme apply across all organisational types.
The programme includes PPMCleadership™️, The Natural Cycle of Team Success™️, Activity Model Acumen™️, The Three Levels Of Endeavour™️, The Five Cornerstone Principles Of Planning™️, The CulturalVEST™️ and a range of other practical aide memoires for leadership, communication, decision making and relationship building. All are designed to be simple enough to remember and are immediately applicable in your role.