COO Operating Model Playbook

With the time audit, before anything else. One hour tagging the last four weeks of calendar against two written definitions produces the number the whole model runs on: how much of your time the operation consumes versus a stated target. Without it, delegation is guesswork and protected time has no defense. With it, you have a measured gap and a ranked list of the commitments driving it, which becomes the delegation work's starting agenda.

Move the authority in writing and then defend it. The contract names one owner per area and the specific decisions each makes alone, concrete enough to use this week. The part most leaders skip is the backing: when someone appeals an in-threshold call to you, send them back to the owner in the same conversation, and if the outcome worries you, revise the threshold going forward instead of reversing the decision. One visible override teaches the whole operation to route everything through you again.

Diagnose the installation instead of resuming the work. A handed-off problem that bounces back is usually missing one of two things: the authority the loop actually requires, or a capability the owner has not built yet. Fix that, announce it again if needed, and stay out. Quietly re-absorbing the problem because you are faster restarts the loop and tells the organization the handoff was temporary.

Attach it to named work and defend it with the machinery you built. A calendar block labeled with a workstream and its next deliverable is defensible; generic focus time is not. When an operational demand lands on a protected slot, reroute it to the installed owner or reschedule it into operating hours in the moment. The only asks you absorb immediately are the ones on your written retained list. Surrendering a single block teaches the operation your protected time is negotiable.