The CTO’s toolbox

Know yourself

Don’t make plans without knowing the players in the story. And the key player is you. What are your strengths? What do you get energy…

Drive clarity in Decision Making

Nothing will slow an organization faster than a lack of clarity in decision making.

Communicate courageously

A lot of dysfunctions in teams arise because of a lack of courageous communication.

Done poorly, bad communication has two extremes, and all of us likely have seen this. At one end of the spectrum is is lack of courage to speak the truth: You paper over the…

Tactics and Strategy

Establish a financial framework

Your job as your CTO means working with your counterparts — legal, finance, marketing and others. A key…

Establish an on-call program

I like having an on call program. I participate in it. Not all engineers like it.

Congratulations. You are the CTO

Your success as a technical leader for many years has resulted in you being the CTO. Maybe it is your…