CTO Requirements from the CEO

I found the following article on silicon.com incredibly interesting. By coincidence I also had the opportunity to spend some time with a CEO the other day so I had the chance to ask him a couple of fundamental questions: What are your requirements for a CTO? And how does a CTO do well?

Immediately, right at the top of the list was trust. It's so fundamental that if trust isn't there, the relationship's over and the CTO's on his bike. This is the case for the whole C-suite, but in particular for the CTO since they hold sway over a massive area that typically the CEO has little, if any knowledge. Thus trust is key to the on-going relationship. No wonder it's important for a CTO to take the time to build relationships across the whole board if trust is the main reason for a CTO to retain their position!

The CEO then said that the CTO needed to be like a goal-keeper. Typically getting little, if any thanks for keeping a clean sheet, but being able to recover quickly should issues occur, have an explanation for what went wrong, how it was resolved and what needs to be done to ensure it won't happen again in the future. This I fully appreciate, I've always been of the opinion that technology in a company should be like the light-bulb. When you switch the switch, the expectation is that it'll light up and do what it's supposed to do and no more. This is also the expectation that CEOs have for their company's technology infrastructure: Make sure it does what's required and no more and be stable and available. It's up to the CTO to ensure it does.

In addition, high on the list was innovation. However this was not about innovation through new technology, this was innovation that enabled things to happen. Specifically the CTO needs to be able to respond to board-level requests with "Yes, and", not "Yes, but" and certainly never "No, but". CEOs have an on-going need for the CTO to get a quart in a pint-pot. The CEO acknowledged this, but was not prepared to compromise! On top of that, ensuring quality whilst at the same time providing clear value for money was expected. This is a tall order when the technology function is often the largest underlying, but least understood cost. The CEO made it clear that by enabling things to happen was the best way of demonstrating value and gaining that much needed trust and respect.

Probably related to the first point on trust was an expectation that the CTO would be a good communicator. I cannot imagine not being good at communication at the C-Suite level, but the ability to discuss topics from a non-technology perspective with other members of the board is essential. If a CTO is viewed as a technocrat rather than an equal to the other board-members, they'll never get or retain their place on that board.

Finally, the CEO I was with said that it was essential that the CTO came from a technical background, but it didn't matter what type of technical background. In the view of the CEO, the technical background ensures that vendors and internal teams alike won't be able to pull the wool over the CTO's eyes and thus value is more likely to be maintained and innovation is more likely to happen.

In the end though, it is all about money and one of the hardest things for the CEO appears to be understanding why technology costs so much both in terms of capex and opex. If the CEO thinks that the CTO doesn't have a grasp on the techology and why it's being used then the CTO can't know whether the costs are reasonable. If the CTO doesn't know the costs are reasonable, then they themselves can't be trusted. Lack of trust leads to a relationship breaks down and we're back to the first point.

It was a very interesting session, certainly one that has given me a lot of food for thought. I wonder if these views are similar to other large company CEOs out there? I think I'm going to have to find out.