The 10 Most Common Mistakes of First-Time CTOs, #9 and #10
I've made most of these mistakes myself, and see people following the same path over and over. Don't let these mistakes limit your ability to have impact in this role.
Today's article is the final in a 5-part series in which I share the ten most common mistakes I see first-time CTOs make and ways to avoid them.
If you found this article and would like to read the series in order of publication, jump to the bottom of the page, where you'll find a link to the previous articles.
Today's mistakes involve interactions with people in your team and other organization members.
I hope you'll find this helpful and actionable.
Let's get started!
#9 Becoming overprotective with your team
Some of you will err toward being overly protective of your teams. As you're taking your mission of being a shield and a servant leader a bit too seriously, you can find yourself engaging in one of the two following extreme behaviors:
You over-filter the amount of information reaching your team in an attempt to protect its focus. You don't inform people in your organization about essential decisions, tensions, or challenges the company faces because you think it'll only add noise. Though it's vital to shield your team, over-filtering will cause it to grow disconnected from the reality of the company they're operating in, ultimately leading to bad decisions.
As you want to help your team members, you'll pick up toil and menial work from them to enable them to focus on what matters. You'll be doing bug fixing, manual migrations, and all sorts of low-value efforts required to keep the machine functioning. Though this might come from a good intention, the effects are disastrous. On the one end, you're wasting your time on activities that don't pertain to your role. Conversely, you're taking responsibility away from the team, acting as some helicopter parent. You want the team to be responsible for all the toil work required to manage the platform, which will incentivize its members to make improvements.
Find ways to protect and serve your team that can scale and don't flirt with infantilization.
Treat team members as adults, help them figure out solutions to their problems, and, more importantly, help them by unblocking the required resources to address the underlying issues rather than spending your time treating the symptoms.
#10 Procrastinating difficult conversations with your CEO, Peers, and team members.
A promotion to the CTO role entails a broad set of new responsibilities. It's normal to feel overwhelmed in the beginning. You will have to prioritize what you focus on ruthlessly. In such a situation, focusing on what you are more comfortable with and procrastinating on many new elements will be tempting.
One of those is handling disagreements and tensions with your boss, the CEO, and your peers in the executive team. You might write them off as people who don't understand what you're trying to do, implying they are responsible for solving the issue.
That's the best way to get yourself in a lot of trouble.
Whenever you procrastinate in these difficult conversations, you favor your short-term comfort over the long-term benefits of solid alignment. The more you postpone them, the harder it will become to straighten the situation.
You'll build a reputation for yourself that will be difficult to change as people around you will collect observations that will reinforce their views.
Do not procrastinate these conversations. Accept the short-term pain to make your life easier down the road. Address those disagreements up front, respectfully, and with courage.
If you're afraid you won't have strong enough arguments to prove your points, this might signal that you need to improve your thinking and narrative. Take it as a learning exercise.
People will appreciate your growth mindset and think highly of you as someone who engages with peers before making important decisions that will impact many company areas.
I described the most common mistakes I've seen first-time CTOs make.
Your situation might resonate with some of them, and you might struggle with other aspects I didn't cover here.
Each case is different, and generalization can help us start thinking about our case from an outside perspective.
I hope you enjoyed today's article.
See you next week!
Next week: announcement of a new product
As I mentioned in my latest quarterly update, in the past few weeks, I have been working on a new product: Group Mentoring and Coaching sessions.
Last week, we had the first session with a small group of trusted people, and I've already received some useful feedback.
I am about to open up more subscription slots at a special rate. I intend to close the signups once I have reached ten members. That initial group will have access to the product in exclusivity for a few weeks and will help me nail the offering before I feel it's ready to be opened publicly.
Next week, I'll share the special signup link with all my newsletter readers. You don't want to miss it as only a few more seats are still available.
The membership comes with additional advantages and benefits that will be detailed in next week's article.
If you think someone you know might be interested, forward them this email and invite them to subscribe to my newsletter.
Stay tuned!
Previous articles in the series
If you want to read the previous article in this series, you'll find them here.
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