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Hi there, I'm Ben Pearce and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Every episode we talk through how to thrive in the tech world, not just survive. Now, if you want me to work with your team, just give me a shout. I love to help teams be more influential, memorable and successful with their stakeholders. Head over to www.techworldhumanskills.com to book a chat.
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Thank you Ben. Lovely introduction. It's absolutely wonderful to be here. Yeah, sure, of course. So I've been in technology all my life, started off as an engineer, we call them programmers back then, programming in COBOL and ICL mainframes. I was never very good at it. I was better at organizing people who were better at technology software engineering than I was. So I made a career out of that, grew up through a bit of project and program management, a bit of managing large teams, worked for companies such as, well I worked for the government to start with and then for BT, Sky, I've worked which was foundational in sort of developing me ready to be a CTO and then came out of Sky, had my first CTO position with the national lottery as it was a few years ago and then I've gone on from there and held technology leadership positions in startups, scale-ups and now I'm fractional which we'll get into what that actually means in a minute because that's a whole new world that's come online. I was technical, I still class myself as technical but as we'll discuss as we go through, you know, what does the modern CTO role need and sort of more about the people, the organization, the processes surrounding the world of technology now. That's where I've really honed my skills and where I trade as a CTO today. Well, the trouble is is that I'm going to tell you what I think a CTO is now and there'll be a hundred comments on here telling you what somebody else thinks a CTO is, right, and that's part of the challenge, right. It is complicated and of course we have other terms that we'll talk about as well but the CTO, the modern CTO today, is really the person in your company who is leading the technology vision and strategy and responsible for delivering and operating technology across your company and that's kind of true whether that's you're an internally focused digital company who sell, you know, socks that you manufacture or whether you're a, you know, a meta who have all the digital consumer facing products. That really doesn't matter. The CTO is ultimately responsible for building those and for running those systems and all of the people and all of the budgets and everything that's that's included within that.
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So I'm on record as saying that I think that a CTO can do CIO responsibilities but a CIO can't necessarily do CTO responsibilities and when I made that it went viral on TikTok and I got to a lot of trouble over it so I'll try and refine my answer a little bit now. I think that the traditional CIO role has been really evolved out of the IT manager role, the person who's managing a bunch of people who look after the server room, the network, the virus scanner, all of those kind of internal systems that companies use. Whereas the CTO has been much more about developing products that are outward facing either B2B or B2C but outward facing products that people outside of your company are going to use but it's blurred recently right. Some CIOs are looking after the as the CIO is Chief Information Officer are looking after all of the information and data internally and externally to the company so they would say no no I'm very customer focused, I'm very outward facing right and then it blurs the lines a little bit and I think basically I'm thinking of a CIO from its traditional sense as an internal IT manager evolution role and therefore I'm saying because I've held that position, I've done that work and often as the CTO you are responsible. So Naked Wines for example, I was the the CTO for Naked Wines and looked after all of the systems and products that went out to Naked Wines customers but I was also responsible for the the server room, the cloud accounts, the security internally, the Microsoft Office platform that we used etc etc so you know I think it's it can get confusing and shouldn't worry about it too much, it's more about what the company needs you to do. I think it's just at the minute the CTO title is a bit more trendy than the CIO title that's the main thing at the moment.
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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I think I think that's a good yeah it's a good split and I think also you know therefore it doesn't mean the CTO role is more important than the CIO role right. Some of the CIO roles in this country are huge you know running running hundreds of thousands you know so for example the NHS and I'm a non-executive director in the NHS so I've recently sort of navigated my way around that. The NHS doesn't have CTOs because although they have patients they're not sort of outwardly looking you know systems from that point of view they have CIOs and a fair few of them and it's increasing over time but yeah it's to a certain extent it's what you need as a company but that's the kind of split and then of course there's things like VP of engineering which you know that they're about levels really Americans, VPs, SVP that's a more of an Americanism sort of thing and that's fine you can have an SVP you know or a VP of engineering who's kind of in charge. Some companies have head heads of IT, heads of technology, heads of software engineering yeah it doesn't I mean the title doesn't really matter and you know it matters if you haven't held it that's that's the key if you've not held the title it sort of matters to you and then you get the first time I got the CTO title I was like yeah this is great right and then and then after I'd held it like three times I was like yeah I'm over it I don't care what I'm called anymore so.
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Yeah.
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So again it's a it's a real kind of horses for courses thing it's basically as you say you know CTO or CIO or even you know when I was at Sky I was a uh the role I held was head of software engineering at Sky right I had more people in the organization I looked after more budget responsibility and more P&L responsibility for the products that were going out than I've ever had since right and I've held the CTO title about three or four times since right so it's just that I've held CTO title at smaller companies than Sky and so it's really weird that you sort of like so sorry in that company ahead of can have more responsibility and therefore need more skills and experience than a CTO over here and you're like yeah that's that's how it could literally be and then of course you know in startups it's very popular to you know if you're a three four or five person startup to be the founding CTO yeah and and that's great chances are you wouldn't pull somebody uh you know really like you wouldn't pull somebody from the CTO of Barclays Bank to become and be the CTO of a startup that that person would much more likely be a advisor to your startup right about strategy and stuff because the CTO of Barclays Bank chances are that individual hasn't coded or done any architecture or structural and you know engineering design or anything like that or product development for years they've been stuck in the boardroom right and so you need somebody on the ground who probably can code somebody who knows the difference between on-prem and cloud you know all of those kind of things and somebody who can work with the small development team engineering team you've got and do a bit of product and a bit of software design and all of those kind of things yeah as well as make sure that the you know the the virus scanner is working correctly inside the company so you you need to be a much more kind of low level hands-on person if you're in a startup and then a scale-up is like this confusing world between the two and scale-up's often where I play because I've got the big enterprise experience where it's all you know quite strict and quite process driven out of necessity often even though large enterprises can still innovate and then you've got the startup world where it's all about just do it break the rules move fast go along and bend the rules and stuff like that and and then in between you're going from one and you want to be the other and so you have to just start going okay well what can I take from the enterprise world but apply it so that we're not going to constrain the the fast pace of a startup world and it's that balance in between plus you know often a startup so a scale-up cto their first thing is yeah can you double the size of team we've just got some funding can you double the size of the team so you know you're straight into like recruiting a bunch of people right and so all of those different challenges and they spread across my advice to anybody who wants to be a cto um it's funny enough is start an enterprise world right enterprise world actually gives you a real good grounding in almost every aspect of of what it takes to be a future cto and then you can go to startup later and get a bit grungy and all that kind of stuff or sit in the middle of scale up bringing that enterprise experience into a startup world so it's lots of opportunity but they are incredibly different roles and nobody appreciates that because we just go cto cio
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so i think you know listeners will be familiar with perm roles right so just like anybody can be a permanent role you can be a permanent cto cio or whatever um and there'll be you know a lot of people will have heard about interim which is kind of a hired gun you you come in maybe somebody's left maybe you need to do a piece of transformation to get to the next level or whatever in the last couple of years interim has meant come in and reorganize us reshape us get rid of a whole load of people and sometimes being an interim knowing that you're going to leave that can be easier right because you're like i'm only going to be here for a short time i'm being paid to sort this challenge or problem out or deliver this vision or whatever so your approach to that is different it sometimes takes a different sort of personality to do that but again that's everybody understands interim what it means but then we've introduced this term fractional and i was talking to somebody about it the other day and this somebody said so it's part time and i went no no no no no it's not part time not at all it's it's fractional and they went but you work not not five days a week and i'm like yeah that's that's right but you're there permanently and i'm like yeah that's right and they're like right so it's not interim i'm like no no and i like and it's not permanent i'm like well it is permanent but it's only fractional and they're like yeah but a fraction of your time is by definition i'm like all right it's a part-time gig yeah that's what that's what it's a part-time so we've dressed it up as fractional and i and again lots of lots of the recruiters out there are going to shoot me because fractional is the buzzword right so i think but yeah it's it's it's part-time and the beauty of it is and i actually think i've put a post on linkedin on this recently or comment on somebody's post i think that the fractional world might be stopping the permanent world at senior leadership and maybe one level down returning because it's been dry for the last couple of years for certainly due to the global market but actually what's happening is is that companies are going so i could get all of your 20 30 years experience and leadership and only pay you for two days a week right and and the other three days a week i don't care what you're doing right so and it's like but when when you were perm and i was paying you for five days a week i didn't know what you were doing three days a week anyway i only saw you two days and so in people's in ceo's minds in board's minds they're starting to go there is no downside to this i can pay a lot less money and get all of the experience and i think people like me are going um yeah yeah i think i think that's right you know but then we're sort of adding a little margin on top of the day rate to make sure that that caters for that and the last thing i'm going to say about fractional is if you're thinking of stepping into that world the diary juggle is a nightmare yeah so at the minute i have five roles and they all they all they all know about each other in the sense not in detail but they all know that i work for different people at different companies but i make it seamless to them right i i very rarely turn down a meeting request i just juggle things around and move things around and so consequently each of my customers believes that they're the most important customer and that's how i make them feel that's how i interact with them and that's hopefully for them the value that i deliver to them so you can see why it's an attractive model for for companies
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this topic gets highly debated in lots and lots of forums i would say 70 to 80 percent of the time the answer from whoever you're talking to falls down to yes absolutely you need to have technical chops to uh you know somewhere in your background to be able to understand how engineers work uh you know how to get the best value out of them etc etc and i think i think that's where i am i think for 80 percent of the card carrying cto's technology leadership roles if you don't have some tech credentials in your background if you haven't been around the block once or twice that doesn't necessarily mean you need to code but maybe you've been a technology operational leader and to understand like incidents and infrastructure and release processes and all that kind of stuff i believe that you have to have some insight into how technology gets designed developed delivered and how it operates if you don't you might make mistakes now the controversy around that is is that we're living in a world for a lot of digital first companies of product development right so you know digital product development has come along and it's and it's recently basically been positioned as the thing that will make sure that we prioritize and and design the things that are going to be functionally rich and and appropriate for our customers and benefit the company in terms of moving forward and that sort of responsibility has been lumped into this thing called product management right and it's sort of worked and sort of hasn't depends on the different places so a lot of engineers who who were like i just want to sit in the basement listening to my music banging out great code and there are people who you know you should leave them alone to do that they're like oh great so you product managers are all going to go off and talk to the business i don't have to engage with anybody now this is this is great i'm happy sort of thing and then there are product managers who don't understand the technology enough and so they're making up you know flights of fancy and fictional things and coming along and and engineers are getting frustrated because they're if you don't have as the technology leader the ability to um you know bring those two teams together arbitrate between them explain from one to the other what they're trying to do then you're just going to have you're just going to have people fighting and stuff like that so i personally believe that the cto and the cio role and a head of engineering and a vp of software and all those kind of things you've got to have a software background but then bringing that back to me as an individual and my point at the start i do have and i i like to i'm about to say this publicly so anybody worse from you know me in the future will know this i guess but i like to keep a little bit back right so i i can every now and again show a flash of understanding now i i can jump up on a board and draw a bit on architecture and and you know sometimes that surprises my teams you know i've been working with them for a year they've never heard me reference serious architecture and then i get up and start drawing lines and they're like did you know he knew that i didn't i didn't know he knew how to do that you know sort of thing and do you know what it's that's okay keeps them on their toes right that that's all right but in actual fact i'm just not the best at it right and i i think that what i'm the best at is organizing the the people who are the best at that to do that work right and that's for me is leadership right and and there's a lot of talk about you know servant leadership there's a lot of talk about inspirational up the front leadership i'm like it doesn't matter what it is there's all sorts of leadership that you need to do depending on the team you're working with the organization size the stakeholders you've got all of that kind of stuff but for me the leadership role is to bring a bunch of talented people together technologists non-technologists and and give them the ability to do great work
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um so i'll talk about the skills that i i think are important but this is the thing that scares people off right this is the thing where you know you get some great engineers come through some great architects maybe they become a senior engineer senior architect an expert qa automation whatever and then and they're sort of getting to that point of their career i've done a bit of that done a bit that oh i could i could go for it here i could i could go all the way sort of thing and then they they they often reach out to me for a chat and say look i'm thinking of getting into leadership what do you think and i'm like how are you with spreadsheets and they're like what's what's that what are we talking about and i'm like well finance finances is probably the most significant lever that you have to know how to pull and they're like sorry finance i'm applying for an it leadership role here and you're like no no finance you will become responsible for the budget and in in you know forward thinking companies shall we say generically you know technology is seen as a core part of the business in a lot of companies technology is seen as a cost center and so being able to understand how much it costs for these wonderful group of individuals you've got over here or this new shiny piece of cloud technology you've got over here right or even the laptops that you're justifying that your engineers definitely need the best one with the mega chips and all that kind of stuff right you have to understand all of that you have to know how much it costs you have to put it in a big long spreadsheet or some posh erp system or something and you have to be able to justify it you have to be able to say well that's going to enable us to do that which is going to enable us to do that which delivers this value to the company you kind of have to get your accountancy gig on to be able to be a really decent cto i'll caveat with if you're a startup cto who's basically a senior engineer who's coding and creating the next world of greatness for this startup do you really have to probably not because you probably get a lump of money and it's like go go fast you know don't worry about the money would and you probably got a cfo or something who'll do that right so again it depends but if you want to operate in scale up or start if you want to operate with a team of like 20 plus people and multi-million pound budgets you better understand finance right now instantly a lot of your listeners will be going right well that's me out i'm done right so i think actually it's not that hard we're not talking about being computer whiz kids and all you actually have to do here's a secret for everybody just go and find somebody in finance who wants to help you right who actually wants to understand your world because most finance people don't understand the world of technology i mean pretty much nobody outside of technology understands the world of technology so go and help them go and go and bring them into your world and they'll bring you into this right so finance is a big one for me but then there's a whole load of other stuff and i'm campaigning for for the term soft skills to be to be reapplied i think they're hard skills in leadership they might be soft skills when you're you know a developer or a product manager or a qa and you've got to go and annoyingly talk to somebody so you've got to get your presentation skills up and stuff like that you might call them soft skills then but when you're a leader soft skills are hard skills right you have to be able to communicate you have to be able to adjudicate between people right you have to be able to debate you have to be able to understand people's work issues you have to understand their personal issues more and more these days you have to understand that you have to understand the rules of HR you know and how that applies to the workplace environment you have to understand all sorts of things including organizational design so you know organizational design is really hard you know we're all looking at org charts and stuff like that we go yes that person reports to that person that person then somebody comes along goes we should flatten this this hierarchical structure and you're like well just get a smaller piece of paper what does that mean you know so and you have to work out how people engage with each other and then processes i mean i think that i think actually being a technology leader and working with people not just technologists but people else who you know people who say they're non-technology technology people um you know you almost have to be a bit of a bit of a psychologist really to understand how the human mind works and how people engage with each other and and i love that right if i wasn't in technology i'd either be a master craftsman because i love wood and all things to do with that or i'd be a psychologist right because i just find the way that humans interact absolutely fascinating and if you get those skills as a technology leader and understand what drives people what motivates people um i think that's really really important for uh for some of those skills and i hate that they're called soft skills they should be called bloody hard skills
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There is, and you touch on performance management there, right? This is a much maligned area, right? Performance management, you mean telling people they're crap? It's like, no, sort of thing. You have to do performance management across the organization. And it becomes organization-wide, team-based and individual-based, right? And so you have to have some process, some sort of approach to doing performance management across the company. So that starts with the C-suite, as far as I'm concerned, right? How we're expecting people to deliver. Yes, OKRs, objectives, whatever, they're all important. Setting goals for the company that everybody can align to and know how they contribute to, that's all really, really important. But also behavioral management, right? How are we expecting people to behave with each other? And you might think, come on, they're all grownups. We don't need to have a behavioral management policy. Well, I've got the scars to say that you do, right? You need to talk to people about how we as a company want to behave. And some people will encapsulate that in values for the company. But actually, when it comes down to it, again, another hard skill is, how do you deliver feedback to people? Good feedback's easy, right? You don't worry, let's go to the pub, you know, sort of thing. Bad feedback, you know, what do you do and how hard do you go on the data? Well, I was checking your, how many times you'd, how many PRs you'd issued in the last month and you're down 30%, right? That's quite a harsh metric to go on, because actually it might not be their fault, it might be because they were stuck in meetings with some stakeholder who just couldn't make up their mind about what they wanted and kept changing the scope, right? So you've got to learn to navigate that, you've got to be able to spot the trends through an organization. And then if the worst comes to worst, you've got to be able to get rid of people. Now, you know, I've probably in my career, I think I've done three, maybe four restructuring, let's be clear that means making people redundant, telling people that you are no longer going to employ them and pay them, right? That never stops being challenging to do, doesn't matter how experienced you are at it. But let me tell you, if you haven't done performance management, how you over the last couple of years, previous to coming to a situation like that, how do you, what measure do you use? How do you look that person in the eye and say, we're keeping Sarah over you, Fred, because of, right? How do you do that sort of thing? And managers don't invest enough time in that, leaders don't invest enough time in that. And it's because it's scary and it's a bit, how do you talk about,
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leaders put a policy in place, leaders put a process in place. And then they talk about it all the time when you're not in times of crisis. And you talk about how you're going to promote people. And you talk about how people are going to be succeeded by other people. You even talk about who's going to succeed you and how that might look like, right? And I'm not looking, when I join a company, I'm not looking for the exit. But I'm always cognizant about looking for that next CTO or CIO who will come and replace me. And that's, you know, I've talked for the last ten minutes. I've said nothing about software, nothing about code, nothing about architecture, nothing about delivery, right? And you're like, Conch, this is what leadership at the technology level is all about. It's about doing that. And then there's one final thing, one final skill set that I think that you have to have. And it's talking to non-technologists. Now I have a little bit of a debate, right? Loads of people, CEOs are particularly good at this. They turn up and on day one, they go, yeah, I'm not techy. I don't understand tech. I'm not techy at all. And they're basically going, so that's just you deal with all of that, right? And of course you do have to, that's your responsibility. But actually, they are techy. Everybody who exists in today's society is techy. You know, if you've ever used Netflix, well, there's a little bit of a navigation to do that. You've got a button that's doing it and you've understood you have to go to that screen, not that screen, right? So if you use online bank accounting, you've navigated a technical solution, right? You've got your mobile phone, you're making it do stuff, right? Everybody is engaging with technology all the time. And they do understand a lot more about how it works. So, you know, in terms of communicating, it's very difficult to turn up to your non-technical colleagues and start talking in a really detailed technical language. But that's the art of communication that a CTO, CIO technology leader needs to develop. And you need to be able to explain things. I use anecdotes. I use stories. I use analogies. Analogies are great. I'm always banging on about a bus or a grapefruit or something or other to explain a concept of technology. But the other thing that you've got to do there as a leader is know when to shut up, know when to not bother. They don't need to understand this. Let's be clear about the things that, you know, I need to understand my budget, but the chief financial officer doesn't turn up and explain the rules of accounting and annual submissions to me every five minutes, right? I don't need to know. That's why they're there, yes? So you work out what people need to know and then you help them to understand that. So a lot of your technology leadership is communicating technology things to non-technologists. And you should practice that skill from like a junior developer upwards because it's going to stand you in good stead later in life.
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So I think a large part, right? I think that it's important to be visible to your team. So I think there is, you know, you have to have face time and engagement time with your team. And if that's a big team, you know, when I was at Sky, I had sort of 500 plus engineers who were part of my team. We had this big building. They were kind of more or less all in, although we had a bunch of people in Portugal as well. And, you know, I'd walk around this building and people call me D.C. And everybody's like, hi, D.C. Hi, D.C. And I was like, hi, like you've got no idea who these people are. So making an effort to be visible to your team and engage with your team, that's a big part of the role. But then the stakeholders, they all want a piece of you because you're the, you know, they see you as the ultimate conduit to getting their thing done. Right. And so you have to invest time. Depending on the size of the organization, that's coffees, lunches, beers after work. Sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's turning up with a very formal presentation in non-techy words that explains what it is that you're doing or how you're going to meet their challenges. A lot of the time, it's just listening to what it is and maybe challenging occasionally, but listening to what it is that they need. So I call that stakeholder management, basically. Right. But the key to setting that up for success. And actually, I wrote a post on this on LinkedIn recently about questions I ask a CEO before I'll take a CTO job. And one of them is what's the role of technology? How do you see my role and the technology team's role? And if they use words like, well, you're there to support the business, right, or, well, you're a bit of a cost center, but, you know, unnecessary any of that kind of stuff. I'm out the door. Right. So I think the answers I'm looking for are you're an integral part of the business. You are the business. Right. So then and you get this in companies, you talk about technology and the business. That's a red flag. Right. We are the business. We've got to be interested even if you're just delivering internal technology functions. Right. I mean, take I all of the marketeers and salespeople out there are all clamoring to get the best use of I to get all of the you know, the work that they do really ramped up through I. Who is going to provide that technology to them? Where is that? Where is that system going to come from? Right. It's got to come from the technology team. So it's appropriate, secure, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, you have to be living and breathing the day to day interactions of what a business is, what it's trying to do.
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Yeah. And so I believe that that it's a large part of technology leadership role is being visible to the business as well as to your team and also getting your team visible to the business. And that's a real great career development for people because as a technology leader, you're also responsible for helping people develop their careers. Surprise, surprise. Right. And so getting your team in front of non-technical people, helping them, coaching them to speak in a language and and also listen to the language that's being talked to them. You know, that's all part of it as well. So, yeah, a lot of time you can't bury yourself in a in a basement listening to ACDC, I'm afraid.
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I mean, you can, but just the weekends, right. Sorry.
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So I think the the biggest thing is go and find a CTO. And if you're pretty low down in the organization, you know, just hierarchically, you know, you might think I'm a junior developer and I'd like to be a CTO one day. I'm not sure I can go knock on the CTO's door today. Then find somebody a couple of rungs up, not your manager, but go go and find a head off or something like that. Right. And don't say to the head of I want to be the CTO. Say I want to be a head off. Right. So start early. I mean, I've enjoyed a career where I haven't really planned hugely significantly in front. I just sort of enjoy what I'm doing and take the opportunities as as they come. And I've been fortunate in that way. But actually, there is nothing wrong with a bit of planning. There's nothing wrong with saying, right, I'm a junior now. Within four years, I want to be a mid. Within eight years, I want to be a senior. Within 15, I want to be a head off. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with planning that out. Go and find somebody who's been there or is there now and ask them to mentor you. And mentoring is a big one. We've all got, you know, really on to mentoring. And, you know, off the back of this podcast, right, I guarantee you, even though I'm saying now, please don't do it. I will get hit up on LinkedIn by a bunch of people going, would you be my mentor, please? Right. And it's a nice compliment in one way. But the trouble is, if I was if I responded to every single person who asked to be a mentor about, you know, leadership and stuff like that, I'd never actually get any pain work, which would be a shame for Mrs Crawford. But so but but I think I think although I do love coaching and mentoring and, you know, providing a little bit of help and support for the next generation coming through, find somebody a bit closer to you. And actually, maybe find somebody outside of your company. Right. People people love the compliment. I do for sure. People love the compliment of being asked to give you some advice, particularly if it's personal career development advice for you. People love that compliment. And, you know, they were in your position once, too. So so go and ask and don't be scared. I know you pitched it as like, you know, if you if all of that stuff doesn't scare, it's not scary. Right. It was scary when I didn't understand it. But actually, it's new skills for you. You know, if chances are the reason you're thinking about being going into senior technology leadership is because you've mastered the other parts. And you're a bit like what's next? And everybody wants the money that comes with technology leadership if it's there. But, you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't go and, you know, torture yourself just for money. Right. So I think you must be interested in developing yourself and learning new skills. And I think that's every part of your career. Go and find somebody who's been there. Ask them. And they they I bet you. And if the first one says no, then ask the next one. Right. I think that's it. Can you read can you read books? Can you listen to podcasts? You can do all of those things. Of course you can. You can even go on training course. And that's why I say enterprises are good training grounds for future leaders. Right. I've only ever been sent on a management or leadership training course when working for a large enterprise. They're the only people who still maintain their training budgets. Everybody else has cut back on them. They're the only people who really sort of like process wise engage in your development and go go on these courses. Now, you know, courses, of course, is right. So I think but it gives you some grounding. It gives you some good thinking. And then, of course, you're responsible for developing yourself. Read. Listen. Practice. Ask other people. It's just like anything in life. You want if you're interested in doing it, be curious about it.
[00:38:55:13 - 00:40:33:07]
I think that people should understand that that saying CTO is is only part of the story. You've got to scratch a little bit below the surface. Is it CTO? Is it CIO? Is it VP of engineering? Is it for a small company, a large company? Do I need to be hands on technical? Do I need to be more about the people and the organization? So, you know, that should that should please people who are thinking, well, it sounds a bit more. There's so much variety in there. Right. So a key takeaway is and you can do all of those, by the way. Right. And jump from a move between. So that's a key takeaway. Look below the surface of the title is my is my key takeaway there. And then the other thing I think is is that if once you've looked below the surface, truly understand all the skills that you're going to need. Don't don't just enter it thinking I'm a great developer. I'm a great architect. I'm a great QA engineer. Right. I'm a great product manager. Those things are great, but they're the role you're in today. You might be brilliant at that. You need to understand what it takes to do this role over here. So so do your research on that and start learning those skills as you go and developing them. And then I think the third takeaway for me is be curious about it. Right. It won't just happen. Nobody turns up one day and goes, we think we're going to make you the CTO. Right. That doesn't happen. So be curious. Ask people. Let them know you're interested in about evolving into a senior technology leadership role and people will help you. Lots and lots of people helped me. We'd have to do another podcast for me to name those individuals. But but, you know, lots of people help me and they will help you.
[00:40:35:05 - 00:40:55:06]
I. Yeah.
[00:41:05:06 - 00:41:10:06]
Yeah.
[00:41:32:06 - 00:42:11:01]
So as you mentioned right at the start, I've been with London tech leaders leading a lot of events for the last few years. In fact, we've got an event this October and that will be an annual event with a two day summit for that. And I'll be there hosting that. And I do a podcast with them called The CTO Lens. And it's kind of all about this kind of stuff. And we dive deep. But that's with, you know, experience CTOs because I'm coming across here as if I know everything. Of course, I don't. I've only been around the block once or twice. But but, you know, we get on some really top flight CTOs, all sorts of different experience. And we ask them all of these kind of questions and dive into it. So if you like this kind of thing, then that's an area, the CTO lens.
[00:42:12:01 - 00:42:22:07]
I think the other thing is, is that is that, you know, I'm out there making money, right? I'm a fractional CTO and that's good. I've started I've started giving a bit of coaching, but a mentoring advice.
[00:42:23:09 - 00:43:01:11]
And as I say, you can get a bit dailies with people individually on that. I do coach and mentor some individuals, but I'm a bit full on that for the moment. But for companies, it's it's also a service I'm offering is to go in and help them if, you know, their CTO or their future CTO needs a bit of coaching or their organizational design is not delivering what they wanted to deliver. So basically, all the things that we've talked about, you could hire me as a fractional or an interim or just for a small piece of consultancy to do it. And there's, you know, I'm not the only I'm not the only one doing this out there. There are other people doing it. So but yeah, that sort of thing is a good way to engage in this experience as well.
[00:43:08:08 - 00:43:08:14]
Yeah.
[00:43:22:05 - 00:43:37:22]
It's an absolute pleasure, Ben. And I think your point about you do such a wide variety of content when you asked me to come on, I looked at some of your previous and I thought, yeah, this is great. And if you listen to lots and lots of these podcasts that you've done, Ben, you'll get a real good covering. So hopefully I've contributed to that in some way. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.
[00:43:41:12 - 00:44:01:15]
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