Your CRO wants to close the quarter. Your RevOps leader wants to fix the process that makes every quarter a scramble.

Both are right. And they're pulling in opposite directions.

This isn't a personality conflict. It's a structural misalignment baked into how most companies define these roles.

The CRO is measured on revenue. This quarter. This number. The RevOps leader is (theoretically) responsible for the architecture that produces revenue sustainably. Those two mandates collide every time a short-term revenue decision undermines long-term operational integrity.

And in most companies, the short term wins. Every time.

The Fundamental Tension

Let's name this clearly.

The CRO's job is commercial. Hit the number. Build the team. Drive the deals. Their success is measured quarterly, their compensation is tied to bookings, and their board credibility depends on delivering predictable revenue growth.

The RevOps leader's job is architectural. Design the systems. Govern the data. Build the processes that make revenue repeatable and scalable. Their success should be measured over multiple quarters, because architectural changes compound over time.

Here's where it breaks.

  • The CRO wants flexibility. They want to approve an exception discount to save a deal. They want reps to move fast, even if that means skipping pipeline stages. They want the forecast to reflect their commercial judgement, not a governance model.
  • RevOps wants structure. They want discount governance enforced. They want pipeline stages to mean something. They want the forecast built on data integrity, not gut feel adjusted in a Thursday afternoon call.

Neither position is wrong. But when these two priorities aren't explicitly balanced, the relationship degrades into a pattern I've seen dozens of times.

RevOps builds governance. The CRO overrides it. RevOps stops trying. The CRO wonders why operations never improve.

Five Symptoms of the Misalignment

You might not hear either person complain about the relationship directly. But the symptoms are visible if you know where to look.

1. RevOps has become a service desk

The CRO treats RevOps as an execution function. "Build me this report." "Fix this dashboard." "Set up this territory." RevOps responds to requests but never initiates architectural work because they've learned it will get deprioritised or overridden.

When RevOps stops proposing structural changes, the relationship is already broken. They've internalised that their architectural mandate doesn't actually exist.

2. Governance gets bypassed routinely

RevOps implements pipeline stage gates. The CRO tells a rep to advance a deal anyway because "I've spoken to the buyer and this is real." The governance exists on paper but not in practice because the commercial leader doesn't respect the operational framework.

After this happens three or four times, RevOps stops enforcing. The governance becomes decorative.

3. The forecast is a negotiation, not a methodology

RevOps builds a data-driven forecast model. The CRO adjusts it based on conversations with managers. The number that goes to the board is the CRO's number, not the model's number. When the forecast misses, nobody examines whether the model or the adjustment was wrong.

Over time, RevOps disengages from the forecast entirely. They build the report. The CRO overrides it. The report becomes a formality.

4. Tech stack decisions happen without RevOps input

The CRO buys a new sales engagement tool because a peer recommended it. Or a forecasting overlay because a board member saw a demo. RevOps finds out after the contract is signed and is asked to "integrate it."

The tool doesn't fit the architecture. The integration creates data fragmentation. RevOps spends months making it work. The CRO complains about slow execution.

5. RevOps turnover is high

Good RevOps leaders don't stay in roles where they have responsibility without authority. If your RevOps team turns over every 12–18 months, the problem isn't talent. It's the structural relationship with sales leadership.

High RevOps turnover is the most expensive symptom of this misalignment. Each departure resets the architectural clock. Each new hire spends months rebuilding context. The revenue engine never gets the sustained architectural attention it needs.

Why This Happens: The Reporting Line Problem

In most companies, RevOps reports to the CRO. Or to the VP of Sales. Or to a Chief Revenue Officer who came up through sales leadership.

This creates a structural problem.

When the person responsible for operational architecture reports to the person responsible for commercial results, the commercial priority always wins. It has to. The CRO's boss is the CEO. The CEO wants the number. The CRO needs flexibility to hit the number. RevOps governance is an obstacle to that flexibility.

It's not malice. It's gravity. The reporting line determines which priorities prevail when they conflict.

This is why the best-run revenue organisations do one of two things:

  • RevOps reports to the CEO or COO. This gives RevOps an independent mandate that isn't subordinate to any single commercial function. They can enforce governance even when it creates friction with sales, marketing, or CS.
  • RevOps has a dotted line to finance. The CFO cares about data integrity, forecast accuracy, and operational efficiency. A finance relationship gives RevOps an institutional ally when governance gets challenged by commercial leadership.

I'm not saying RevOps can't report to a CRO. I'm saying the default configuration creates a structural conflict. If you keep that reporting line, you need explicit mechanisms to protect the architectural mandate.

The Time Horizon Mismatch

There's a deeper issue beneath the reporting line.

CROs operate on a quarterly cadence. Their world is measured in 90-day increments. The current quarter's number is existential. Next quarter is important. The quarter after that is theoretical.

RevOps architecture operates on a multi-quarter cadence. Pipeline governance takes a quarter to implement and two more quarters to produce clean historical data. Data architecture improvements compound over 6–12 months. Comp plan changes take a full cycle to evaluate.

When the CRO asks "will this help us hit the number this quarter?" and the honest answer is "no, but it will make every future quarter more predictable," the initiative dies.

This isn't a CRO problem. It's an incentive problem. CROs are compensated on short-term results. RevOps value is realised over longer time horizons. Unless the organisation explicitly protects long-term architectural investment, it will always lose to short-term commercial urgency.

How to Fix It

This isn't about getting the CRO and RevOps leader to "communicate better" or "align on priorities." Those are symptoms. The fix is structural.

1. Define the boundary between commercial and operational authority

The CRO makes commercial decisions: pricing strategy, market positioning, team structure, quota targets. RevOps makes operational decisions: process design, data governance, system architecture, forecast methodology.

Where these overlap, define who has final authority. Specifically:

  • Pipeline stage definitions: RevOps. The CRO provides input, but the operational definitions are governed by RevOps because they underpin data integrity across the entire organisation.
  • Discount governance: Shared. The CRO sets the commercial strategy (discount thresholds, approval levels). RevOps designs and enforces the system that implements it.
  • Forecast methodology: RevOps owns the methodology. The CRO owns the commercial judgement layer. But the base forecast comes from the governed data, and any overrides are tracked and reviewed.
  • Tech stack: RevOps has veto power on new tools that affect the operational architecture. No more surprise purchases that RevOps has to integrate after the fact.

This sounds political. It is. But undefined authority defaults to whoever shouts loudest, and that's worse.

2. Create a shared scorecard

If the CRO is measured on bookings and RevOps is measured on operational metrics, they'll always prioritise differently.

Build a shared scorecard that both own:

  • Forecast accuracy — both are accountable for the gap between predicted and actual revenue.
  • Pipeline quality — not just volume, but conversion rates, stage velocity, and win rate by segment.
  • Revenue efficiency — CAC payback, margin per deal, and exception rate as a percentage of total deals.
  • Data integrity — field completion rates, attribution accuracy, and the percentage of deals that follow the governed process.

When both leaders are measured on the same outcomes, the alignment follows naturally. Not because they agree on everything. Because their incentives point in the same direction.

3. Protect the architectural investment

The CEO or board needs to explicitly carve out a portion of RevOps capacity that is not available for reactive commercial requests.

A simple rule: 60% of RevOps capacity goes to operational support (the ticket queue, the reports, the day-to-day). 40% goes to architectural work (governance implementation, data infrastructure, system design). The 40% is protected. The CRO cannot redirect it to "urgent" requests without CEO approval.

Without this protection, Parkinson's Law applies. Reactive work expands to fill all available capacity. The architectural work never happens. And the company wonders why operations don't improve.

4. Institute a quarterly operating model review

The CRO and RevOps leader should sit down quarterly — not to review pipeline or forecast, but to review the operating model itself.

  • What governance rules were bypassed this quarter? Why? Were the rules wrong, or was the bypass unjustified?
  • What exceptions became patterns? Should the rules change to accommodate them, or should enforcement tighten?
  • What architectural work was planned but didn't happen? What blocked it?
  • What's the biggest operational risk going into next quarter?

This review isn't about blame. It's about structural learning. The revenue engine evolves because both leaders examine it together and agree on what needs to change.

5. Align compensation to reinforce the partnership

If the CRO's comp is 100% tied to bookings and the RevOps leader's comp has no commercial component, their incentives are structurally misaligned.

Give the CRO a component tied to operational health — forecast accuracy, data quality, or revenue efficiency. Give the RevOps leader a component tied to commercial outcomes — pipeline generation, win rates, or NRR.

Small adjustments. Big behavioural effects. The CRO starts caring about governance because it affects their comp. The RevOps leader starts caring about commercial velocity because it affects theirs.

What Good Looks Like

When this relationship works, it's unmistakable.

The CRO calls RevOps before making a commercial decision that affects the operating model — not because they have to, but because the insight is valuable. RevOps surfaces operational patterns that inform commercial strategy — not as complaints, but as data.

Pipeline governance holds because the CRO enforces it, not just RevOps. The forecast is trusted because it's built on a methodology that both leaders own. Tech stack decisions are made jointly, with commercial requirements and architectural integrity weighed equally.

Exceptions still happen. But they're tracked, analysed, and used to improve the system rather than undermine it.

The CRO and RevOps leader don't need to agree on everything. They need to operate within a structure that prevents their natural tensions from becoming destructive.

That structure doesn't build itself. It requires deliberate design, executive sponsorship, and the willingness to define boundaries that most companies leave ambiguous.

Define them. The alignment follows.