Skill Set
- 2x Learning: Key requirement of a CTO role is communication of new technology with every department within one company or organization. Presently, technology is changing almost every day and it demands constant learning. My roles as CTO in ESS require knowledge of the latest solution and ability to spread that knowledge across the whole company.
- Patience: Second key is patience and awareness of the fact that others may know more that you. So, while engaging in discussion on the subject of technology it is better not to rust and put your view forward. My recommendation to every CTO is to practice patience when engaging with different teams.
- Hiring: Effective hiring is key to build trust and a thriving environment within a company – it is also the third key to become a successful CTO.
- People Skill: The fourth key – and as a leader, you need to inspire others to get behind your vision. Even if you have the greatest technical skills on the planet – it would be ineffective without leadership. As CTO you should love sharing empathy and desire to see your team members grow professionally.
- Strategic Thinking: To become a successful CTO you need to have the ability to focus on larger pictures. The fifth key is thinking – developers, UX designers, and project managers would be focusing on product details but it is the responsibility of the CTO to lead the team in the right direction.
- Communication: The sixth key is communication. Every CTO needs to be able to communicate effectively. You should communicate technical information to business personnel and business information to the technical team without any data loss. To master this key, you would need an understanding and proper comprehension of efficient speaking.
- Listening: Perhaps it is one of most underrated skills but listening to your peers and market is critical. The seventh key to success as a CTO role is about helping balance the need for technology, business, product, and personal life.
- Privacy Management: The eight key is to fulfil business goals while maintaining security and privacy standards. CTO’s position often flows parallel to managing conflicts of degrading security, data leak, and security mistakes.
- Customer Service: Successful CTO makes every decision with the customer in mind. You should create, enhance or sustain your customer’s best interest – it is the night key.
- Time Management: Last but not least, the tenth key is constantly improving your time management skills. Everyone has 24hrs in a day but what you do with it depends on your priorities.
Managerial Skills
- Strategic Vision: As a CTO you need sound technical skill and along with it you need to focus your time and intellectual energy towards strategy. A technological leader plays a pivotal part in a strategic roadmap and your vision will be supercritical to the process. This includes aligning operational goals to vision and communicating it to departments and teams.
- Financial Learning: Next, a successful CTO should have basic learning about management and high finance. Though you won’t be handling any finance-related stuff or forecasting budget definitely you will be shaping it. It makes a big difference, particularly as CTO.
- Commercial Understanding: How to value a business fundamentally? Where is the value of business being created? Within technology, the people, customer and strategic partnerships? A savvy CTO needs to be part executive, part project manager, part team lead and part mentor. You should understand how basic evaluation drives value.
- Sales and Marketing: Last but not least a CTO need to be cool. Don’t expect your CTO responsibility or description to cover everything you do. A successful CTO makes his/her comfort zone around ‘sales’ and ‘marketing’.
Project Management Skills
- Leadership: Being a good CTO means to be good leadership. To play the role effectively you need to outline the vision and define your road map including what encourages you and motivates you.
- Motivation: A great CTO is able to keep their team happy during tough times. Some projects can be difficult and stressful – it is essential to praise good work, and do team building activities.
- Prioritizing: Working on massive projects means information overload and today it is a very real phenomenon. At a modern workplace, there could be too much information and as a successful CTO you should be able to manage data and extract useful bits from noise.
- Adaptability: In the current fast pace eco-space, particularly in the tech industry where changes come every day – things happen fast. Here planning is vital but the key is adaptability.
Highly Recommended Project Management Tools
- Trello
- Zoho
- Slack
- Bitrix24
Server Management Skills
- Networking: While handling a team is one thing, on the other a good CTO also has key networking skills of a system administrator. As admin, he/she keeps touch with every single stakeholder and provides fix to tech-related problems.
- Technical Skills: Your communication skills will make you better with people and your tech skills will help you to grow more into your career. There are a plethora of courses that offer this skill.
Highly Recommended Server Management Tools
- Amazon AWS Server
- Bluehost Cloud/ Shared / Dedicated
- Godaddy
- Dreamhost
- Hostgator VPS/Dedicated Hosting
- A2 Hosting
- InMotion
- Siteground
- iPage
- Cloudways and many more
Documentation Skills
1.Clear, Concise and Precise Writing: It is the ability to write well and convey proper information.
- Tools of Trade: Quick learning and becoming proficient in using computer applications.
- Visual Enhancements: In digital space, visual facts create more appeal than just written facts.
- Curiosity: A natural CTO carries curiosity about subject, product, and service that requires documentation.
- Ask Question: A key skill of becoming a good CTO is asking questions and learning from answers.
Product Development Skills
- Business Competencies: A CTO does not need a business degree or diploma in finance, but it is expected from the CTO to have some fluency in business basics.
- Research and Analysis: Data is vital to a product and pivotal for marketing. CTO has to work on all forms of data. You should know how to conduct market research, how to use different tools to analyze data and how to interpret all the data.
- Economics: Although a degree is not required you should know how to form alternative uses of a single tool. Having a basic understanding of economics can help in handling everyday issues.
Requirement Development Skills
- Understanding Multiple Objectives: Ability to interpret direction is essential. You need to fully understand what and, more importantly, why of everything that surrounds you.
- Presentation Skill: It is likely that at some point you will be asked to present things, for example in a workshop. Consider gaining presentation skills to display your understanding.
- Modeling Skills: A picture can paint a thousand words – this is a fact and having technique or two in your modelling process can help to convey massive information.
Case Study
The Brief: The major aim of this case study is to identify and attract a CTO with amazing credibility, leadership and communication skills that can quadruple the size of our client’s business.
CTO reports directly to the CEO or founder of the company. In his role, he drives business forward with support of the latest technology. The CTO person would set a clear and strategic agenda for technology and transform the development team by putting the process and structure required to grow business at the right place. CTO should be highly entrepreneurial and should lead a high-growth technology business.
The Process: Extensive time which is invested with the co-founder of a business. This should enable them to develop a deep understanding of their vision and culture. The team of researchers worked through a target list of 150+ appropriate companies and subsequently identified the leader of their technology function.
The Results: CTO enables clients to identify and attract a person with significant relevant experience and to gain great reputation.
The person stationed at the CTO position is most successful and has a wealth of experience in tech start-ups. It is mutual attraction between organization, individual and stakeholder to financially negotiate for a process or product.
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