“In my view, the CTO role is not about making the best technical decision, but enabling the other software engineers to make it themselves, so I can have free time for coding myself.”
– Angel Gruev, CTO of Dreamix
In today’s busy business environment, there are a number of unique challenges that Chief Technical Officers, or CTOs, face on a daily basis. They need to plan strategies ahead, implement them, present technical ideas to clients and stay involved in current projects. Before we dive into how to master your responsibilities as a CTO even in times of uncertainty, we first need to clarify what the specific expert domains are and which skills every successful CTO should possess.
From my experience working in a bespoke software development company – Dreamix, I’ve learned that team culture is probably the most critical factor contributing to a company’s growth besides technical talent. As this happens, the CTO’s role changes as well and accepts more business flair and C-level management responsibilities. Without further ado, let’s look into best practices to shape your skills as an excellent technical leader.
- Master Your Technical & Business Skills
As a CTO, you simply can’t go without in-depth technical knowledge and experience. Depending on the industry your business operates in, there will be various technologies and stacks that you need to master. For example, if you work in a software development firm, your tech skills will include architecture design know-how and strong R&D (Research and Development) talent that seeks to combine existing technologies with emerging ones.
Another part of your responsibilities will cover technical oversight and consultations for ongoing projects. But an experienced CTO should beware of over-engineering as it might slip your efforts to deliver a good product or service. In his book ‘’Modern CTO’’ Joel Beasly discusses how concentrating too much on technical development might introduce clutter in your pipeline. Instead, he suggests first delivering something good enough to your client, getting a hundred users to test it, and then improving it. Afterwards, get a thousand people and enhance further based on their feedback.
Excellence Tip: Find the right balance between technical and business responsibilities. Although technical skills are invaluable, it is better to have a working solution that fits essential market needs and then optimise it further.
- Build Aspiring Teams with Field Experts
A key CTO responsibility is to help your company build strong teams and select the perfect job candidates to enrich your company’s culture. CTOs often take part during technical interviews to ensure every newcomer is both a savvy tech professional and a team player.
A promising future trend on how to build highly devoted and productive teams revolves around hiring T-shaped employees. To elaborate on that idea, the vertical line refers to the depth of someone’s technical skills. In contrast, the upper horizontal line of the letter T stands for the broad capacities to rely on cross-disciplinary knowledge beyond your field of expertise. For example, if an employee’s primary knowledge domain is front-end UI design, it would be good if he or she can also show some understanding of back-end technologies. In addition to that, strive to hire ambitious people with soft skills such as effective communication, problem-solving and negotiation.
Excellence Tip: Every new team member should be a valuable asset. Prioritise hiring team players with multiple talents besides technical expertise.
- Learn How to Communicate and Delegate
This is one of the most crucial skills to develop and has to do with the intrinsic need to control every process. Even though you might feel as if nobody can do a better job than you, to become a good CTO, you must know when to take a step back and trust someone else for a particular task or a whole project. As our CTO mentioned while helping me with this article, the most tricky part of delegation is often freeing up a colleague’s time to commit to the task becasue they are busy and have responsibilities for other projects.
The CTO also needs to establish a connection between customer problems and technology and also between different technologies within the company. Without proper communication skills, your ability to successfully address arising issues and give correct estimates is likely to cause trust issues and potential partnership problems. Thus, CTOs should invest in boosting their interpersonal skills and become “professional storytellers” because they have to continuously narrate a “problem-solving story”.
Excellence Tip: Divide and conquer. Work on understanding complex concepts fast, simplify them and then convey them to a broader audience.
- Organise and Facilitate Continuous Learning
Contrary to popular belief, a CTO can’t possibly know everything about every technology, and usually, this is also not necessary. As Albert Einstein put it, a clever man tries to solve a problem, but a wise man avoids it altogether. If you think about it, whenever your business faces a problem, it can drain huge amounts of energy to successfully solve it. It would definitely be wiser to make conscious efforts to come around arising crises.
The best way to avoid technical deficiency gaps is to stimulate continuous learning within the different teams in your organisation. Almost every young individual nowadays wants to develop both personally and professionally in a meaningful way. To facilitate a learning atmosphere, you can reach out to proactive employees to organise learning clubs or embrace the initiative yourself. The first option will also benefit the feeling of employee’s autonomy and self-management, which should be the company’s top priorities.
Excellence Tip: Nourish a learning environment within your organisation. Facilitate various narrow specialisations, e.g. AI and ML experts & involve the most experienced team members as an initial driving force during early project phases.
- Acknowledge Your Company’s Current Life Cycle
Like any project with a life cycle, whole businesses run a similar path when they grow and scale their business capacities. To excel as a CTO, bear in mind that a great deal of your professional responsibilities will change over time as your business expands. For instance, during the seed and development phase, you will most probably take the role of a software engineer who can design and code the whole architecture on your own. Later on, as the company grows into a startup, the CTO can be the person who commits to the technical onboarding process and creates a vision for future development.
As your business enters the growth stage, the CTO’s role shifts further and takes more management and consultancy responsibilities. The business now has more projects and clients and requires you to oversee technicalities on ongoing projects. During the next stage, namely the expansion, the CTO’s focus moves towards being a technical executive figure who helps with client acquisition during presale processes. Finally, when your business reaches the maturity stage, the CTO embraces primarily a business representative role.
Excellence Tip: Be aware of your company’s life cycle and your personal CTO responsibilities during different stages. Do your best to overcome existing challenges while preparing for and navigating your way to reach the next level.
