CTO Insights — Jan 2022

Introduction

I’m Anup Marwadi. I help Entrepreneurs build SaaS platforms that dent the universe. I am also building a few things that might impact you soon.

At some point in your life, you get to a point where relationships, collaboration, problem-solving and peer-reviews mean a LOT to you.

I consider my learning, my relationships and my peers as a Swiss-Army knife of sorts. It allows me to solve virtually all problems, personal and professional.

For me, my 7CTOs peer-group is that Swiss-army knife.

My Goals with these posts

I have some goals…

• Retain my learning with the “Listen, Interact, Write and Reflect” loop
• Keep a personal record of the wisdom that comes out of these forums
• Inspire others in becoming active members in their own communities
• Build better leaders through open communication

NOTE: A lot of what we talk about in these forums is confidential. I will not be revealing any specific individual, Organization or personal challenges that we talk about during these sessions. Instead, I will focus on the learnings — as best as I can.

My hope is to inspire other CTOs to become a part of 7CTOs or a similar community. The journey alone is worth the price of admission.

My friend Etienne de Bruin has built a community that is unlike any other. Reach out to him and tell him Anup sent you…if you’re a CTO, that is….

Team Alliances

As leaders, we often reflect on the importance of team alliances. We spoke about establishing the guidelines and principles of alignment for our group, but it also pours into managing teams in general.

Here are some questions to start with:

• What culture/atmosphere do we want to create?
• What are our guiding principles?
• How are we going to set expectations and talk about agreements/disagreements?
• What conditions are present when the team functions at its HIGHEST?
• What is MY personal goal and intention?
• What will it require of ME to achieve my personal goal?
• What will be required of my team lead to lead this team?

It’s worth noting that most teams have informal alliances, but formalizing these really helps in aligning all members of the team.

Things to focus on:

• Identify how we want to and must show-up — examples include: being present, being available, being honest, being warm and receptive, being kind, compassion and vulnerable when needed.
• Make it a priority to show-up for the team
• Have mutual respect
• Make it fun, include social activities to develop deeper ties with each other
• Talk about experiences, both good and bad — talking often opens up other threads and areas of improvement.

We also discussed how interesting it was that even though we are C-level executives, we still need accountability.

It made me smile, because we’re all human — and no accountability is most likely reserved for God, or dead people.

Team Leader Responsibilities

Team leaders bear the responsibility (and the pressure, if I may add), of always having to show up. They are LEADERS. They get very few “off” days.

That doesn’t mean they have to fake it. Being vulnerable is OK. Letting it be known that they’re not having a good day is more than OK. Giving the team the space to process this is allowed. After all, we’re all humans.

We noted some responsibilities here:

• Encourage the quiet voices — We often find that some members in general may not want to speak up, but may have valuable opinions. It’s important to empower the quieter voices to speak up.
• Be a great Moderator — Yes, we’re all type-A personalities, and we all love to talk, but being a great moderator means recognizing when to stop another member from hijacking the conversation. It is an art to know when the dialogue turns into a monologue and stops offering value to the team, and then it’s time to stop that thread.
• Sound back what you heard, guide and align — Sometimes, a team member may want to communicate a complex idea, or they may be finding it hard to articulate an idea. It’s important for the team member to sound back the idea to make sure that the team understands what the member just said. It is also important to guide and align everyone so we don’t jump into problem solving mode.
• Hold Team Members Accountable — someone has to do the dirty job.
• Ask Open-Ended Questions — so that the person talking can do a better job of articulating themselves.
• Lead by example — to draw the best out of people
• Discover Blind spots — so that we are more aware of the things we don’t know
• Observe Bad Habits — so that there is room for improvement
• Ensure that the team is PRESENT and showing up as per the alliances — remind everyone over and again.
• Help close the loop on open items — as a team, you discuss items that might not have a solution right away. Make sure that we invest time in closing out prior open loops. Yes, closure is important.

Team Members

A team is a team for a reason, not all team members you may lead are alike.

It is important to understand how to create an Org structure that allows you to create specific responsibilities for people. From my EOS Traction reading — if there is more than 1 person accountable for something, no one is accountable for that thing.

Expecting everyone to be like the leader is not fair. You have to see it from their perspective. As a CEO/Founder, you may benefit a LOT more than employees. How do you justify them being so committed and passionate about your Organization as much as you are?

Financial incentives are one way to solve the problem. However, just financial incentives may not be good enough.

In fact, it has been proven that extrinsic motivation may lead to negative behaviors. A book DRIVE by Daniel Pink talks about this.

Make sure the team arrives at a set of Core values (that could be the subset of the Organization’s core values). One could argue that if the team members don’t align with the company’s core values, you have the wrong team members. This is true in many organizations today. It is vital for newer companies to hire on the Organization’s core values as possible.

STOP RELATING TO CHALLENGES AS PROBLEMS — see them as OPPORTUNITIES

Just re-framing a problem into an OPPORTUNITY totally changes the way you look at things.

For e.g. a developer not producing quality code is a problem. However, if you look at that as an opportunity to train them on clean coding practices, the way you interact with them completely changes.

Compensation & Salaries

We discussed compensation and salaries a lot. As our companies grow, we run into interesting challenges with compensation.

With competition from extremely well-funded Startups and FAANG companies, it has become very challenging to find great candidates, unless you pay them a LOT more.

And that’s where the dilemma is.

How do you pay a new hire more than what their manager earns? How do you justify this to the manager who now feels undervalued?

A lot depends on the role you’re hiring for.

Here are a few pointers:

• What is the ROI of bringing in this employee?
• Are they the right person for the job?
• What does a journey for this employee’s growth looks like? Will they always be working under their manager? Or will they be leading a team of their own soon?
• Has everyone been aligned on WHY this new hire is being paid significantly more than their manager?
• Has the company separated pay scales for Manager track vs Engineer track?
• What is the size of the problem? What is the size of the solution?
• What impact will this hire have on the team and the company?

Remember: Specialists ALWAYS get paid more than GENERALISTS.

If this person is solving a problem that no one in the company can, then it is justified. One could even argue that the “manager” may not effectively lead this person over a longer period of time and there may be a need to split the teams accordingly.

You always want to be cross-training other interested individuals so you’re never held hostage by one employee’s skillsets. If the manager really has a problem, we may need to establish a growth path for the manager in conjunction with the on-boarding of the new hire.

Conclusion

There was a LOT of learning in this forum. The action items emanating from an intense 4hr discussion lead to a lot more interesting research and discussions.

I had fun writing this one…let’s see what the next one brings.