One thing I love about working with CTOs is their ability to see technology in the bigger context of a business and the market. Technology is not just about the code and software; it is about the team, their culture, the product, the process, and the scalability, each with many related topics. The implementation and focus on each of these topics should be tightly related to the market conditions and the current phase of the organization.
CTOs are often directly associated with innovation. While innovation is part of their portfolio of responsibilities, the unaware often have unrealistic expectations of the magical results innovation can bring. And recently, these expectations are even further inflated by the hype around AI.
Dutch satirist Arjen Lubach recently discussed the misuse of innovation as a magical crutch to solve every challenge, while most problems actually need to be solved by making hard decisions. More often than not, the best advice is to cut down on the amount of technology, sticking with something lean and mean that works, and sometimes even sunsetting products and diverting resources to different services.
Analyzing the context, researching these kinds of hypotheses, and constructing argumentation are the strong suits of a good CTO. Thankful to be part of a full team of them at TechMiners!
video of Arjen Lubach on innovation as a crutch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_1lwAtUZw
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