Help for people working in tech
I’ve been busy in the lead-up to the Christmas break, so I thought I would provide some links to the work I've been doing on other channels and platforms to benefit this publication's readers.
Hi everyone,
Thank you for reading Great CTOs Focus on Outcomes. I publish weekly and have an archive of almost 150 posts, each packed with valuable insights on various topics relevant to CTOs and the issues they face, distilled from my career experience.
I strive to make each post a helpful resource on the topic it focuses on so that when a CTO has a need, they can reference an atomic nugget of insight. To this end, I regularly revisit and refine posts, ensuring you always receive the best and most up-to-date information with the most clarity.
If you’d like to support the growth of this resource, consider upgrading to paid and take advantage of the other ways I can help you.It’s been a little while between posts. I was busy at the end of the year and then took a well-earned holiday over Christmas and New Year’s. The good news is that one of the reasons I was busy was creating more materials that help CTOs on other channels, which I can also share here.
If any of this content resonates with you, please subscribe to these channels to be notified of new episodes and posts.
Some of this content will be reposted here over the coming weeks for paid subscribers as a convenience—you may consume it for free at the source channels. I will continue to provide exclusive original content behind the paywall.
Other places I am providing help for people in tech
As I mentioned, I have been contributing content in other channels, so let’s look at each.
CTO Life Line
CTO Life Line is a monthly video livestream conversation with my former colleague Noah Cantor and guests. In our first year, we have had a fantastic array of guests, including Matthew Skelton, Adelina Chalmers, Fred George, Jabe Bloom & Ben Mosior (hosts of the excellent ThoughtReactors livestream), and Tiani Jones, to name a few.
Here’s a segment featuring some live on-air coaching by Adam Horner and Olly Brand, who graciously volunteered to bring a challenge he was looking for help with live on-air. I loved this segment because I think it does a great job of demystifying what coaching involves and how it can help people achieve progress on something they were struggling with.
Open Door Policy
Continuing that trend of looking to help more people live on air, I created a new show late last year, Open Door Policy, which has run for four episodes thus far. The idea is a similar one, we create the space for people to join me live on air for help or, if they prefer, just a chat.
There’s no agenda, no plan and no safety net - there’s every chance in every episode that no one has a question and I am left talking by myself. Its a good challenge not just in coaching but in improvisation. As an executive I had a lot of opportunities for public speaking. As a coach and a consultant I have to but not as many by comparison. This format has allowed me to keep my practice up of public speaking.
Here is an audio clip from a chat I had with my colleague Paul Jacobs about the importance of humility and openness in leaders (among a wide-range of things we covered in the episode):
Posts on the HYPR blog
Quality vs speed in software development: insights for CEOs
We’ve long considered software development a trade-off between quality and speed. This notion has been reiterated in many forms, such as ‘good, fast, cheap—pick any two’, and, on shallow inspection, it seems to stand to reason. The actual relationship between quality and speed is more complicated and can behave in some counterintuitive ways. Ignorance of these can lead to misguided efforts to improve quality and speed, which can be detrimental to both.
https://hyprinnovation.io/our-thoughts/quality-vs-speed-in-software-development-insights-for-ceos
CEOs, is your culture sabotaging software quality?
When I speak with CEOs, they often feel frustrated by their teams’ perceived lack of pace and urgency. They hear their customers’ expectations, their sales teams’ calls for new things to talk to customers about and their competitors breathing down their necks. From their perspective, the product development teams are falling short of expectations.
How CEOs manage these pressures and the resulting culture of the organisation can have huge effects on software product development efforts and can be a factor in determining the quality or lack thereof.
https://hyprinnovation.io/our-thoughts/ceos-is-your-culture-sabotaging-software-quality
CEOs, software funding and budget mechanisms could damage your investments
This is another cautionary post for executives of some unexpected effects that widely used budgeting and funding approaches can have on software creation.
Value-driven technology funding: aligning investment mechanisms with software excellence
Building on the previous post this one details strategies for alternative approaches to budgeting and funding which are more aligned to continuous value creation and quality management.
Interview with Adelina Chalmers
I caught up with The Geek Whisperer herself, Adelina Chalmers, to answer the question, ‘How do you juggle IT (CIO duties) with product (CTO duties) when you have both roles at the same time?’
https://www.linkedin.com/events/jugglingciotoctoina2-500peoplec7234838357267083266/theater/
Interview with Adam Horner on The CTO Playbook
This next video is from earlier 2024, but I don’t think I’ve shared it in this publication, so I am sharing it now. I appeared on Adam Horner’s podcast The CTO Playbook to discuss the pattern of new leaders joining and quickly making changes before they have adequate information to make a good decision. I share strategies for how to avoid this mistake and what to do instead. It was a great chat. Adam is an excellent interviewer, and his podcast has some fantastic interviews relevant for CTOs on various topics.
What other great resources for CTOs and other technology leaders do you use, and which would you recommend for others? Please share your suggestions in the comments.
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