What would be my responsibilities as the CTO of your business?

What would be my responsibilities as the CTO of your business?

I see the primary responsibility of the Chief Technology Officer of a business to be that of education through communication. Technology is of little use to a business without education in its proper use within a business.

Education and communication of technology begins with knowing and conveying. A CTO must know how their company works, how products are developed and sold to their customers through company channels, how goods and services are obtained from vendors and how the business thrives within its own community of both workers and investors.

Technology ranges from a benefit to a curse on businesses in that it involves change. Change causes disturbances in business process. Change causes work to be interrupted, communications to be broken and costs to rise. Too much change will damage a business so severely as to not be able to recover from the changes. Change brought on by technology is often feared by those who are not educated as to the benefits of the technology and left only to become suspicious of how technology will harm them in their business.

Educations starts with communication between the CTO and all teams the technological changes will impact. A CTO must communicate honestly with all parties on how they will affected by changes in technology used by the business.

A CTO’s own education does not stop when hired. A CTO needs to understand the business environments in which technology will be used. How technology will improve and harm the business, its investors, workers, management, suppliers, customers and its local community.

First a CTO must know the business so as to act as part leader, executive, advocate and just a bit the mad genius to bring the benefits of technology. As leader the CTO must lead teams to better understand how technology will benefit them. As an executive the CTO must be able to make good business decisions on which technologies will be bring to the company advantages. A CTO must be an advocate for the right changes in technology for a business. Finally the CTO will need to be part mad genius to assist company teams on their voyages of discovery to profit from the use of available technology.

Contrary to popular thinking I do not belief that a CTO should be the owner of the technology in the business rather the caretaker of the technology. As a caretaker the CTO can see that good choices are made as to interoperability between teams is maintained. As caretaker the CTO should maintain the relationships with vendors and suppliers of technology for the company. Individual teams within the company should be responsible for use of the technology they need. 

Being CTO does not mean centralizing the power of technology within the business rather it means expanding the power of teams to use technology do their work better in their own way. If you put control over the Sales departments servers under the CTO then every problem or failure in sales will become a failure of the CTO. Giving support to but control over their own technology to the Sales team needs to do it job means the people who know the problem best will take responsibility for the problem. While the equipment and the services might be owned by the CTO, to maintain interoperability,  the running of the equipment and software must be owned by the Sales department. The sales DBA must work for the Sales department so they will become part of the team and exist only as an intruder, some would say spy, from the office of the CTO.

Communications systems, networks and telephony, fall under the prevue of the CTO in that the technology updates often and interoperability needs to be maintained across the business. But is there one single telephone that is best for the entire company or a single telephone service that can work for the factory floor and the mobile sales force. No, there is none. 

Voice communications have changed greatly of late in that the cost and quality of voice telephony has wavered much. A poor quality codec in a noisy environment is a safety hazard. Poor quality VoIP compression when making a sales call causes confusion in the customer.

Secure network communications, Internet, email, web presence, voice, video, file transfers need to be maintained. Internal networks must be secured from threats from both inside and outside the business. Again each department’s needs are specific to that department such that they must be able to define, control and support their needs within their department. How can this be done while maintaining security and interoperability in a business which moves physical resources and personnel about to fit either the needs of the business or the physical plant? Does the CTO allow web surfing on the same network which handles billing transactions and VoIP because it is convenient or simply too difficult to figure out a better way?

The CTO must be able to balance the costs of security, opportunity and complexity against the ability of the business to be successful. Security is the responsibility of every team within a business.

What would be my first steps as Chief Technology Officer in your business

What would be my first steps as Chief Technology Officer in your business.

I would begin by communicating through listening to management and board as to what the business of your business is now and what it would like to be in the future.

Communication begins with listening. Through listening one can learn much more than facts. Listening first allows others to communicate their needs and wants directly to the listeners. By listening I would gain an inventory of the desires of management. I would not begin the process deciding on technology until all of my inventories had been completed.

Next I would continue to take inventory of the needs and wants of the business by expanding with a physical and personnel inventory of the business. A physical inventory would reveal the current state of the business equipment belong both to technological and non technological aspects of the business. A personnel inventory would divulge information as to engine of the business as knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the staff reveals the strength of the business itself.

Next I would conduct an inventory of investors, customers,vendors and the local community as a company does not exist alone in the business universe. A business’s customers and vendors are partners who need to be kept in trust. Customers purchase products they need. The business is the customer of vendors. Investors are the owners of a business thought not necessarily the management. The local community is impacted by the acts of the business through providing worthwhile work, commerce, taxes and value. A business is in partnership with

A business cannot prosper without the goodwill of the community it serves. From Taxes to Planning and Permits boards, from an educated local work force to cooperative labor force, from the health of consumers of the business products both public and private a business is part of the community and should cooperate to betterment of its community.

As the CTO I would need to know the community’s technology needs and wants. If the business needed increased Internet bandwidth capacity how would increasing that capacity affect the community. Would wires and towers be unwelcome in the scenery. Could the community be enhanced by cooperation to expand assistive technology.

A conversation with vendors is needed to know what impediments could be removed from the supply cycle. Is our business up to date and aligned with the latest vendor delivery and invoicing methods. What are the vendor’s plans to improve their own uses of technology to reduce costs and improve services to the business. How can our business improve communications with our vendors to reduce costs on both sides.

To our customers our business is only one of their vendors. So how can our choice and use of technology improve our relationship with our customers. Are the business’s communications channels synchronized with our customers needs and capacities. Are we costing our customers time and resources to do business with us because of our lack of technology or need to improve their technology. Our customers are part of our community in that what we do with technology must not do harm to our customers just as we would not harm our own environment. We are in partnership with our customers to do business that benefits our customers, our business and our respective communities.

My purpose in meeting with investors is to establish a rapport as to which technologies they would be willing to invest in to improve our business. Investors fund companies to improve their investment. No investor is going to pour money down a drain on a fad. No investors is going to fund technology that is going to do them harm in other ways. Knowing the needs of investors leads to better partnerships across the business.

The physical assets inventory would allow me to begin formulating an plan to improve or modify the physical plant. Does it have enough power capacity to expand operations, will the infrastructure need replacement to handle the new business loads or is the physical plant underutilized to the point of begin wasteful and costly to the business. Knowing the physical plant allows for better planning to be considered.

An inventory of the current skills of the workforce would assist in determining what technology could be added to aid the teams to improve their business value. Technology, new or old, good or bad, can be frightening to many in both management and the working teams. Forcing technology that is seen as not needed on a team is a recipe for business disaster as is the cart before the horse.

Technology must be used as the servant of teams and not their master. Forcing technology on teams is a waste as it will cause revolt, both silent and open. It is the business of the team to decide which technologies they need to succeed at their tasks. It is the responsibility of the CTO to assist and guide teams in choosing the best technology given the restraints of the business. Teams that take the responsibility to choose their own tools can work better as they have a stake in the success of the business. Teams that chafe at the bit when technology if perceived to have been forced on them. Teams that control their own destiny will choose better.

Knowing the skills of the entire workforce beyond those skills they use at the business can go a long way in better shaping of technology within the business. As a CTO knowing who can do electrical or construction trades within the accounting department means a resource that can assisting in expanding the accounting departments technology. Such resources, for example, would probably be aware of infrastructure needs of their department though no one ever asked their opinion on what could be done to improve accounting teams. Inclusion, looking within first, knowing the strengths of personnel throughout the business, builds interdepartmental teams and lessens quarreling when changes that affect departments are needed.

Knowing leads to understanding and cooperation with the sharing of responsibility. Business are only cooperative groups of people.

Once the inventories are complete a plan for any needed changes would be create if needed. There is a difference between needed change and change for the sake of change.  The latter often leads to waste while the former only comes from knowing the true needs of the business. Adding more bandwidth because the Internet is slow does not change the waste of employees. Changes in technologies should pay for themselves through lessening of waste or improvement in process. Technological changes are not free of costs. Changes in technology are costly in time, work effort and opportunities.

Once plans are complete they will need to be reviewed the parties they will affect. Each party needs to speak their peace before implementation of the technology begins. Not everyone needs vote on what is to be done but they must be kept informed as to why decisions are being made. Denying parties to express their views on change encourages them to be closed and hidden on future change. To deny them expression is not fair to their value to the company. Though there will be times when decisions will need to be made that will not fully satisfy all parties. Such is business. Through allowing all parties to express their views they will know that their voice is being heard and they are part of the process.

Change cannot be done in secret if all are to trust the changes to benefit them. Technology cannot be seen controlling the companies decisions on change. People must know that technological changes are their choice.

Once I have information I can begin to affect changes to the technology of business teams to the better.