The often overlooked truth about CTOs responsibilities

CTOs have many responsibilities, but only one cannot be delegated.

CTOs have many responsibilities, but only one cannot be delegated.

This is a reality that many will understand implicitly. I believe making it very explicit will help many young or even not so young CTOs out there.

In my experience, as a CTOs you have 3 main areas of responsibilities: Technology, the Engineering team and the Executive team. More specifically you will have to focus your activities around:

1. Making sure the company has the best possible technology stack and architecture

2. Making sure the company has the best possible engineering team and organisation

3. Contributing to the overall business strategy as a member of the executive team

Let’s look at each one of them in detail to draw some observations.

1. Best possible technology stack and architecture. This is often what first time CTOs tend to focus on the most, given that in many cases they’ve been growing into the role from a Software Engineer background. This is definitely the area of domain expertise that is required from any senior technology leader. As the team grows, as a CTO you’ll surround yourself of more and more Staff and Principal engineers as well as Architects (either with a formal or informal title). They will take over more and more responsibilities both in defining and executing the details of the technology strategy. As a CTO you will retain full accountability for ensuring that there is a relevant technology strategy in place, and that it is being executed appropriately. Many details of which you will have delegated to key senior roles in your organisation. Delegation doesn’t mean ignoring. You will need to be on top of those details, without becoming the bottleneck.

2. Best possible engineering team and organisation. This is probably what most first time CTOs struggle with, especially the ones that didn’t have the chance to learn the art and science of managing and structuring teams from more experienced professionals. It doesn’t matter how good your stack is, if the team that is supposed to maintain, evolve and operate it is either lacking the required competences, has lousy processes or is set up in a way that doesn’t maximise flow of work. A lot has been written about this in books such as Team Topologies, showing how important and how non-trivial this task is. As the team grows, as a CTO you’ll be able to empower and delegate more and more of these responsibilities to Directors, Head of Engineering and VPs of Engineering. In some setup you might even want to delegate all of the "organisational architecture" to a VP of engineering, who will manage it for you. As for the technical stack, you’ll retain full accountability on this area, while most of the execution can be delegated to other members of your team.

3. Contributing as a member of the executive team. This is the one that tends to be the most underestimated by first time CTOs. The big news here is that CTO is a business role, and the C- letter in the title is the main indicator of it. You’ll be part of an executive team, whose mandate is to run and grow the business on behalf of the owners. That is your main team, the team you belong to and that you have to collaborate with. As a member of this team you’ll have to understand very clearly the overall business strategy, participate in its definition, and ensure that the technology strategy your team is working agains fully aligns with and supports it. That is half of the job. The other half is about making sure that the whole executive team understands how technology and your strategy is supporting the business, and that over time they see all the opportunities that are clear in your mind as practitioner, but unknown to them. It will require a good deal of educating, but not patronising. It will require a good deal of repeating things over and over until they sink in, without sounding arrogant. It’ll require acknowledging that the team lacks maturity in certain areas, without being judgemental. Here is the big news: there is no way you can delegate any of this to someone else. You’re either a member of the team, or you’re not. If you decide not to play your part in it, you’re effectively giving up your opportunity to influence the business and make sure that what your team is doing is fully understood and supported across the organisation. And guess what, someone else in the team might decide to fill the gap you created with their own narrative and story. You don’t want that to happen, unless you’re seriously considering being fired as an option.

I think we spend too much time trying to answer the question “What is the most important responsibility of a CTO?”, as if there was a unique answer to it. I think at best you might be able to identify what is the most important right now, given the situation you’re facing. Ultimately all these responsibilities are important.

What you can and should be aware of is that you can delegate many details of two of these areas to other members of your team, while still retaining full accountability for the outcomes.

One of these areas though — being part of the executive team — is solely in your hands. It’s important to have that very clear in your mind to be successful in this amazing and challenging role. Take full ownership of it, and your ability to effectively impact the business you're in will be greatly amplified.