⚙ Hi {{first_name_tally|Operator}},

Thinking about running a fantasy football league this year.

Buy-in required (nothing wallet-breaking, just enough to make Sundays spicy).

If you’re in, reply YES.

If we hit 10 players, I’ll lock it in and get things rolling.

- Rameel

Operations Nation has announced the return of cONference - Europe’s only conference built specifically for startup and scaleup operations leaders, from COOs and VPs of Ops to Heads of Operations and Operations Managers.

Taking place on October 20-21 in London, this year's event is all about how to lead in an unpredictable world by building resilience within yourself, your organisation, and the broader ecosystem.

Speakers announced so far include Divinia Knowles FCMA (The COO Coach), Tom Foster-Carter (Co-Founder & CEO @ Cherrypick, ex-COO @ Monzo), Jonathan Bullock (ex-Chief of Staff @ Google, ex-COO @ SoftBank), and many more!

Each ticket gets you full access to the two-day cONference experience:

This is more than just a conference; it’s an investment in your growth and success.

Sheryl Sandberg built Mark Zuckerberg into a legendary CEO (he’s in my Mount Rushmore of CEO’s).

Between 2008 and 2022, she transformed a money-losing social network into a $100 billion revenue machine. More impressively, she taught a 23-year-old hacker how to run a company (without ever making it obvious that's what she was doing).

The partnership worked because both parties understood the transaction: She would make him rich and respectable. He would make her powerful and eventually replaceable.

Last week, I asked three different COOs the same question: "Would you take Sheryl's deal?"

Not one said yes.

In March 2008, Facebook had a Zuckerberg problem.

The company was burning tens of millions a year. Microsoft had just invested at a $15 billion valuation that everyone knew was bullshit. The 23-year-old CEO was brilliant at product… but treated revenue like a disease. Board members were getting nervous.

Enter Sheryl Sandberg. Google's VP of Global Online Sales. Larry Summers' former chief of staff. Everything Zuckerberg wasn't.

Their courtship played out over dinners at Zuckerberg's house. No restaurants. No witnesses. Just two people negotiating one of tech's most important partnerships.

The terms were never written down, but both understood them.

Sheryl would handle everything Zuckerberg hated - sales, policy, politics, adults.

Mark would retain total control - product, vision, and most importantly, narrative.

She got the work. He got the glory. That was supposed to be the deal.

Within 18 months, Sandberg turned Facebook from startup to printing press.

She didn't invent Facebook ads. But she built the infrastructure that made them inevitable. Sales teams. Measurement tools. The entire relationship with Madison Avenue.

By 2010, Facebook was profitable. By 2018, it was generating $55 billion annually.

The mechanics were brilliant but boring. Quarterly business reviews. Operating committees. The kind of process discipline that makes engineers want to die but makes companies actually function.

More importantly, she built a translation layer between Zuckerberg and reality. When he said "companies over countries," she heard "we need a government relations team." When he insisted on "radical transparency," she knew to hire crisis communications.

She made his philosophy investable.

Here's what every COO knows but won't say: The job is usually designed for invisibility.

When Facebook went public in 2012, Zuckerberg remotely rang the opening bell from Facebook’s Menlo Park office. And Sheryl was right next to him.

Sheryl Sandberg wasn't playing the usual COO game. She was using the COO role to build something else.

Lean In wasn't a book. It was a capitalization event. She turned operational excellence into thought leadership, corporate success into cultural influence.

For a brief moment, she transcended the role. First woman on Facebook's board. Time 100. Davos. The rare COO who became a brand.

Then Cambridge Analytica happened.

When Zuckerberg testified before Congress in April 2018, the headlines focused on his performance:

Sandberg testified separately five months later to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Her hearing received less coverage, and stories often framed her appearance in relation to Facebook's broader issues rather than her specific role in running the company's operations.

Suddenly, visibility meant vulnerability. Every Facebook scandal needed a face, and it couldn't always be Mark's (he was worth too much to the stock price).

This pattern - CEO in the spotlight during crisis, COO handling the machinery behind the scenes - defined their entire partnership.

The same operational excellence that made her invaluable also made her expendable. She'd built a machine that no longer needed her to run it.

But she knew this going in. The question is why she took the deal anyway.

(Money… duh!)

When Sandberg left Meta in 2022, she was worth $2 billion but professionally radioactive.

She'd spent 14 years making someone else look like a genius. In return, she got wealth, power, and eventually, blame for everything from election interference to teenage depression.

Three different COOs told me they wouldn't take her deal. I think they’re lying to themselves.

Every COO takes some version of Sheryl's deal. The only question is the exchange rate.

Some trade invisibility for equity. Others for learning. The smart ones, like Sandberg, trade it for optionality; the chance to become something more than someone else's operator.

Every COO who reads this is running some version of her playbook.

The difference is that Sandberg played the game better than anyone before or since. She extracted maximum value from a role designed to suppress it.

For 14 years, she was the most powerful COO in the world. Then she cashed out - not just financially, but reputationally - turning operational excellence into cultural influence.

The fact that it ended badly doesn't mean she played it wrong. It means she played it to its logical conclusion.

When COOs ask me "How do I avoid becoming Sheryl?" they're asking the wrong question.

The right question is: "What am I willing to trade my ego for?"

Because in the end, that's all we're doing - negotiating the terms of our own erasure.

The only choice is whether we get something worthwhile in return.