Prioritizing in Turbulent Times (for CTOs)
Figuring Out What to Do When Your Company is Undergoing Major Change
The Executive Brief
Twister. It was a mid-90’s disaster movie about tornados. For some it’s a guilty pleasure. For others it represents 113 minutes of their lives they wish they had back. For a CTO, it’s more like a documentary of life at work.
A CTO is almost always at the center of any storm brewing at work. Massive AWS outage? CTO problem. Security incident? CTO problem. Strategic customer screaming because the application is too slow? CTO problem.
In all of my years as a CTO, I’ve been through all of those and much, much, much…much more. In this article I give you tips on dealing with life inside the tornado.
While you read on, I’m going to pop a copy of Twister into the dusty VCR I pulled out of the garage to spend 113 minutes rooting for Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt to save the day.
Prioritizing in Turbulent Times (for CTOs)
Every CTO encounters turbulent times in their career when their company goes through major changes impacting them and their work.
This may involve a major business model pivot, significant leadership change, major reorganization, divestiture, substantial acquisition or perhaps all of the above at the same time (I’ve actually seen that happen before).
One of the things that becomes very difficult for CTOs in times like this is prioritization.
Everything is in flux so what do you focus on 1st, 2nd and 3rd? You may not have clear business objectives, your executive peer group might be changing, the product strategy may have been substantially adjusted.
In these scenarios what do you even align to?
The first thing is to not go chasing for perfect answers from the company. You will waste copious amounts of time & frustrate yourself because right now nothing is perfect. Most likely several major pieces of the business that are totally out of your control will need to fall in place before you’ll get the kind of clarity you seek. Great amounts of patience is needed.
Next is a return to core fundamentals for your team. Is Product & Engineering a perfectly well-functioning organization? Probably not. There are most likely a great number of optimizations that must happen and now is a good time to undertake them. It’s important to create a well-oiled machine in the midst of a changing business. It will be needed.
This is also a very important time to take care of your people. Keeping the team intact and their morale at a reasonable level should be a high priority. But this is made especially hard with the craziness surrounding you. So, sharpen your organizational management strategies like team building, performance reviews, 1:1s, etc. You need a strong team through the turbulence.
Low-hanging fruit is easy to pick and still quite delicious. So what easy-to-fix friction points can you get rid of for your internal and external customers? If you lack a clear product strategy then low-hanging fruit is a good place to focus. No one will get upset with you for solving cheap but useful to solve problems. And if you batch a bunch of these together your team will have something to look back on and be proud of.
The temptation to fight a thousand fires when chaos reigns supreme in a company is great because it’s an easy way to feel like you’re getting things done. But even in the turbulent darkness there is some room for strategic initiatives. What can you do now technologically speaking, that will lay the foundation for a future business success when there is clarity again.
Lastly, I would loosely quote Steve Jobs in saying that focus (and prioritization) depends a lot on what you’re saying no to. During difficult times saying no is even more important because the chaos will try and stretch you in 50 directions at the same time. You must sharpen your diplomacy and reject a great many things or you risk breeding even more chaos.
No CTO is immune to the phenomenon of having to manage a team through great company upheaval. In fact, this is almost a right of passage. Once you go through this you can say you’ve been through the trenches. And if it lasts years then surely you’ll be a grizzled veteran who will come out the other side willing to handle anything.
And take hope. Because as the saying goes, “tough people are built in tough times.”
I have seen CTOs and heads of Product reach lofty heights because of how they handled themselves and their teams during difficult company times.
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