THE EXPENDABLES

Is the COO position becoming redundant?

- SHIVANI SHINDE, SHINE JACOB, SOHINI DAS, SUBHAYAN CHAKRABORTY & ISHITA AYAN DUTT

When Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced last month its chief operating officer (COO) and executive director, N Ganapathy Subramaniam, would retire in May, the information technology giant also said it would not appoint Subramaniam's successor. Instead, it would redistribute his work.

TCS is not the only IT major to have done away with the COO's position. Truth be told, the company never consistently had one.

The only other time it had a COO was when N Chandrasekaran, now the chairman of Tata Sons, was appointed to the post in 2007.

In December 2021, Infosys scrapped the position when its COO, UB Pravin Rao, retired. Rao's responsibilities were delegated to others to create a stronger leadership structure.

What does this say about the COO's position? Does India Inc think it is becoming redundant? Not entirely, and not in every sector, though the COO position is being reassessed as organisational structures and leadership roles get recalibrated.

"The current thinking among leaders and members of boards is to keep an organisation flat and nimble to make decisions faster and be more agile than ever before,” says Aditya Narayan Mishra, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, CIEL HR, a recruitment agency.

According to CIEL HR, there are currently more than 8,000 openings for chief experience officer (CXO) across companies in sectors such as consulting, telecommunications, manufacturing, IT, and healthcare. Of these, barely 12 per cent are for the COO'S role. (CXO encompasses several C-suite positions such as COO, chief financial officer or CFO, chief technology officer or CTO, and chief accounting officer or CAO.)