CtoRole
Forbes articles:
- Avoiding A CTO Meltdown: Part 1 - Defining The Role
- Avoiding A CTO Meltdown: Part 2 - Warning Signs
- Avoiding A CTO Meltdown: Part 3 - Fixes
The Role
Two parts to the role:
- C-part, which is the part of the job that is focused on strategy and designing the way that technology will serve the business or create a product
- VP of Engineering part, which is focused on development and keeping the trains running on time for all things technological.
The C-part has the following elements:
- Understanding the business
- Contributing to the strategy
- Assessing risk and opportunity
- Design (getting the right people to do it)
The VP Engineering part has the following elements:
- Organizing and synchronizing requirements
- Managing teams (including coaching)
- Properly allocating people
- Keeping the trains on time (project management!)
Warning Signs
C-part problems:
- Lack of clear roadmap and detailed plans: this Q, next Q, beyond
- "For a CTO playing a strong game, you should be able to take the plan at the beginning of a quarter and compare it to the plan at the end of the quarter and be able to explain what happened, what didn’t happen, and why anything changed," said Uhrmacher. "This is not easy, but it is essential."
- Never Saying No: "There is no quality of service without denial of service."
- Lack of confidence from above
VP problems:
- Missing dates: poor project planning, execution and/or resource allocation
- Always saying no
- Poor customer satisfaction
- Low morale
- Retention and recruiting problems
- Lack of confidence from below
Fixes
How can a CEO decide if a CTO Is fixable?
The key point of decision comes after a few rounds of constructive criticism in which the CEO demonstrates to the CTO that important needs are not being met.
Bad signs:
- Promising to work harder at what they are already doing
- Panic: blaming, hiding, denial
- Magic Bullets (consultants, methodology)
Good signs: ability to use the criticism. The problem then usually becomes to decide how to do the following things:
- Understand which needs are unmet
- Understand which of the needs can realistically be met with a reasonable amount of resources and which are just not possible
- See which can be met by building skills, which need external help
- Prioritise meeting the needs against other current concerns
- Involve peers and management
- Provide visibility into all the above decision processes
In other words, if CTOs are "fixable" they'll look for help either from the CEO or from advisers on the outside. Coaching from other senior executives or from other practitioners can really help CTOs with the process of rethinking.
First question: is it too late? Get an outside opinion from an expert, either an experienced manager of CTOs or a consulting CTO: a CRO who is "fixable" should not object to external scrutiny or coaching. External coaching is particularly valuable as it removes the natural aversion to looking weak or incapable to managers and peers.
Final Suggestion
For CTOs who are rising to a new level: why not get a coach from day one?