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What happens when the office stops being a box of desks and starts acting like a magnet for your best people? This piece looks at how modern workplaces in the Middle East are being redesigned with flexible layouts, natural light, wellness zones, and concierge-style support that actually earn the commute.
Take a moment to see how a thoughtful office can feel less like an obligation and more like a place you want to go.
In this issue:
Playbook of the Day
How to Run a 20-Minute Daily Metrics Huddle
Goal: Keep every team aligned on what happened yesterday, what matters today, and what’s blocked.
Who: COO/Head of Ops + 1 lead per core function. Same time every workday.
Before the huddle (2–3 mins):
Everyone updates 1–3 key metrics in a shared dashboard.
Host opens the group’s dashboard.
During the 20 minutes:
Headlines (2 mins): Host quickly calls out what’s green, yellow, red. No discussion.
Round Robin (10 mins): Each lead gets 60 seconds:
Yesterday’s result
Today’s one main action
Any blocker
Blockers (5 mins): Only discuss items that block multiple teams or top KPIs. Assign owner + next step + due date.
Commitments (3 mins): Host repeats who’s doing what by when. Verbal “yes” from each owner.
Rules: No brainstorming, no long stories, start and end on time.
Latest News
Offices People Actually Want To Visit 🏢
Read the full article here »
Published: 11/27/25
Modern offices are shifting from cost centers to strategic assets that attract and keep talent. The piece argues that value now comes from experience, productivity, and brand signal inside the workspace. For the Middle East’s young workforce, that means spaces that inspire, connect, and support wellbeing.
Upside: Leaders can use this framework to stress-test whether their office actually earns the commute. Start with simple upgrades like flexible layouts, natural light, and visible wellness zones near collaboration hubs. Pair those with concierge-style support and reliable tech so people feel empowered, not managed.
Impact: Treating the office as a destination reframes it as a lever for culture and performance. Investments suddenly measure return in terms of engagement, retention, and reputation, rather than just rent and square footage. In a market racing to attract top talent, that shift could decide who wins.
Business Impact Analysis That Protects Your Worst Day 🛡️
Read the full article here »
Published: 12/02/25
A business impact analysis shows exactly which failures could hurt your company most. Shopify’s guide walks you from mapping critical functions to setting clear recovery targets. It even uses an AWS outage example to show how one failure cascades through operations.
Upside: You can use this process to stress-test every core workflow in your business. For example, calculate the revenue lost per hour if your checkout crashes, then set a recovery limit. Do the same for nonfinancial hits, such as damaged trust after a data breach.
Impact: Treating this as a living document turns risk planning into an ongoing habit. Regular reviews keep pace with new software, vendors, and regions before something breaks. When disruption hits, you are not guessing; you are executing a tested recovery playbook.
Okta Flags AI Agents As Identity’s Biggest Risk 🚨
Read the full article here »
Published: 12/04/25
Okta president and COO Eric Kelleher now calls AI agents the top identity security threat. He says securing and governing those agents is consuming customer conversations this quarter. Okta is pushing its Okta for AI Agents tools so companies can manage agents like human users.
Upside: Security and identity teams can treat agents as full identities, not unnoticed scripts. Start by discovering deployed agents, then centralize credentials and enforce rotation and just-in-time access. Layer identity governance on top so agents gain access only when needed and lose it cleanly.
Impact: Okta’s survey found nearly all organizations deploy agents, yet only 10 percent trust their security. That gap between adoption and governance turns agents into prime targets for data theft and misuse. Now is the time to ask where agents sit in your stack and lock them down.
Prompt of the Day
How Your COO Thought-Partner Prompt Streamlines Your Day
Trigger Event | Action | Use Case Example |
|---|---|---|
Start of the workday | Paste your schedule into the prompt to identify the top 3 outcomes | Turn a messy calendar into a clear “today’s priorities” list |
Before a high-stakes meeting | Share meeting context and ask for risks and key questions to raise | Walk into a board or investor meeting with sharpened talking points |
Feeling overwhelmed or unfocused | Share meeting context and ask for risks and key questions to raise | Cut through noise and decide what to do in the next 60–90 minutes |
New operational issue or fire drill | Explain the situation and ask for bottlenecks and mitigation steps | Quickly structure a response plan for outages, delays, or team conflicts |
Prompt
“Act as my COO thought partner. Given this brief description of my day and current company context, help me: (1) clarify the three most important outcomes I should drive today, (2) surface the top risks or bottlenecks I might be missing, and (3) suggest 2–3 concrete actions or conversations that would have the biggest impact on revenue, operations, or team health. Ask me any clarifying questions first if needed.”
I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.
One last Thing
Offices that focus on experience, productivity, and well-being send a clear signal about how a company values its people. When leaders invest in spaces that help teams connect, focus, and recharge, they gain an edge in engagement, retention, and day-to-day performance.
In a talent race, the right workspace can quietly become one of your strongest recruiting tools.
Until next edition,
Chloe Rivers
Editor-in-Chief
COO Intelligence
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