Many scale up CTOs make themselves miserable because don't use this one key power they hold:

They don't realise that they have the power, authority and autonomy to design their CTO role around their strengths, what they love doing and what they thrive on!

Often they either:

~ do their job focusing on things they enjoy but without taking into account what the business needs from them (e.g. they focus on creating code because they dislike people management, ignoring all people issues, instead of focusing efforts on making the business case to hire a VP Engineering to do the operations and people management side of engineering deivery)

~ they hear that they should be delegating and they might delegate the stuff they love, becoming demotivated and uninterested in the role, instead of delegating things that the company needs done by someone who is good at this and enjoys it.

This is why:

~ self awareness of what you enjoy, what you are good at and what you don't enjoy and are not good at

+

~ business acumen and awareness of what the business needs at every stage of development

are both needed in order to continuously adapt and evolve the CTO role and the roles in engineering operations delivery that support the cto to deliver the business goals.

Post inspired by Matt Watson 's post several weeks ago about delegating the stuff you love...

What do you think?

#cto #delegating #reengineeringleadership