From the course: Chief Technology Officer Career Guide

Being CTO is a people job

From the course: Chief Technology Officer Career Guide

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Being CTO is a people job

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- At it's heart, the job of CTO is more abut people than anything else. As you grow and scale your company, you'll be managing technology less and your team more. As such, the most important skill at your disposal is working with people. This includes deciding when to hire talent and when to outsource it, hiring the right people, building a great community and inspiring people to enjoy their work and help your company. The CTO's job is to utilize technology to better their company. While this most certainly means understanding technology and staying current, it also means having relationships with key managers throughout the business. That way, you can understand their pains and be constantly looking for ways you can use your technical expertise and your team to enable them to do their jobs better, and ultimately enable your company to be more profitable and more competitive. At the heart of all this, is great communication. It's important that you communicate things clearly. This is both when you're talking one-on-one, talking to the whole group, and writing down objectives in emails. Given the importance of communication with all the meetings, slack conversations, and emails one thing managers often overlook is the necessity for technical people to have time to focus on their work. There's an important aspect of work called flow, and everyone needs it. This is the ability to shut out the environment and be able to focus on tasks. If you can incorporate the ability for your team to achieve this state everyday, you will find you are extremely productive. Ultimately, as CTO, your job is execution. You'll spend a lot of time on managing the thousand and one projects your team is undergoing, setting clear management objectives, setting clear expectations with the board and CEO, and keeping clear communication amongst your team. Communication between your team and other parts of your organization will be the best way to ensure that you're a successful CTO. Let's dive in and take a look at what it takes to be a good CTO.

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