If I see myself as a COO one day, what are typical career paths in the middle of my career? MBB right now 2yrs post MBA

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Chief of Staff could be useful

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Chief supply chain officer too

Depends on type of company / industry. Very unlikely to go straight from consulting to COO even as a senior partner.

Before getting to COO you’ll need experience running a large P&L and managing a large number of people. Typically you’ll get that through experience either running a BU and/or running a major staff function that reports to the COO - Ops, Mfg, Sup Chain etc.

Most COOs I’ve seen at large firms have held a bunch of different titles, often across multiple firms, with P&L responsibility. It’s worth noting that COO is a blanket title that can actually apply to a variety of types of responsibilities - some more operational than others (is the company ops focused, is the role perceived as “in waiting” for the CEO spot, etc).

By that logic, you just need to build solid gm experience - which as others have said, probably means exiting consulting at some point to start building that (fairly different) skill set.

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