Friday, September 21, 2012

CTO - Rethinking the priorities

Do you know what is takes of a person to jump up from the quality assurance world into the leading production role? I do as after having more than 12 years of quality management experience I got an opportunity to head up the entire development operation.

This always looks easy when you are judging based on a limited understanding of the complexity f someone's else job. The best football players are always those sitting on the sofa. You have probably seen your boss acting and thought that you could do no worse. Actually you don't know until you try it out. I was thinking somewhat the same too.

Now I learned the difference and it's huge. I never knew how much of a company success depends on the personality of its leaders. Being a leader is the responsibility. The team is very sensitive to your own conditions. They see how you do and try to do the same. If you go lazy, the team does the same. If you are working hard the team catches up.

But the most complex thing was wear a new role on the team. Instead of quality perspective only I have got budget and business goals to drive my actions. I learned how to compromise quality when it is required. Yes, I did those obscene for which I hated CTOs with whom I worked before. This does not mean I am a bad person now (hope you don't think so:)). This only means that I understood and adopted a new role.

The moral of this story is that we should always be flexible and be prepared for a change. If we don't we will hardly be able to feast on the opportunities.

Good luck in changing the world through changing yourself!