Modern CTO: Everything you need to know, to be a Modern CTO.

by Joel Beasley

Being a visionary is nothing magical. It’s more like an ungodly persistence. It’s a skill learned out of necessity.

I began to ask, “Is there a programmer that’s also a business person?” That’s the CTO.

If I can’t do it, I get the best person that can. I can only know so much and that’s fine.

You become stronger and more confident as you get through each trial. So, lift the heaviest cross you can bear and carry it like a champion.

The essence of being a visionary is not being satisfied with who you are right now, and always, always moving towards who you want to be in the future.

The visionary CTO must have a high capacity to execute, organize, identify whitespace, communicate, and lead.

how people think, how to create value, how to communicate value, and how to manage people.

It’s imperative for me to constantly pull the business objectives back into view and remind us about the “why.”

By continuously bringing the business into the conversation, I eliminate over-engineering and drive momentum instead.

The greater the distance a person feels from the top tier, the less they feel a part of the team.

Although it’s essential to delegate, it’s important to establish a structure under which teams are built.

My teams are structured the way I like to structure code—clean, concise, and with a keenly defined goal. They are small, isolated groups that have a single responsibility.

I keep my teams lean and harmonious, and we all go home smiling at the end of the day.

Identify the problem. 2. Develop two to three solutions 3. Test the solutions and select the best performing ones. 4. Create variations and repeat.

Learn to unleash useful information, and people will appreciate it. If you think you have something worthwhile to say, then say it. Irregardless of how you imagine they’ll react.

So hire people smarter than you are, and let them tell you what to do. #SteveJobs It works like a charm.

Leave behind the bad, conserve the good, improve, and move on.

Team composition carries as much or perhaps even greater weight than programming expertise.

Don’t just keep a faulty project rolling until things blow up, or until shareholders ask why a project costs so much but delivers so little. If you stand there and watch it bleed, you’re responsible. If you reach out and stop the bleeding, you’re the hero.

The feedback process becomes unfocused if you try to change too much at once. In scientific experiments, if you modify too many variables, the data gets too noisy to get any real meaning.

The best way to explain complex ideas is with brief and simple terms. If you can’t do this, then you don’t understand the topic.