Your hard skills landed you the management position, but it’s your soft and management skills that will drive your success. Numerous books cover architecture and processes, "Amazing CTO" stands out as the essential guide for managing effectively, authored by influential CTO Coach Stephan Schmidt.

The one book for CTOs and techmanagers. The CTO role is the most difficult role from the perspective of diverse skills and change. With AMAZING CTO the job gets much easier with proven advice and many ideas to succeed.

Example Rule

#14 Sets up people for success not failure

In my coaching one of the common mistakes is to hire someone or delegate something but then set up the person for failure. Happy for the help, and because the reason was to safe time, they do not invest enough time to make the employee successful. When I hear a coachee say, "That developer failed, he was a mis-hire" I say "Most probably you did set up the developer for failure." Set up for failure is not investing into a new hire. The Amazing CTO sets people up for success. She thinks, "What are all the things I can do to make the person successful?" Does the person need to know something? Do I need to communicate his role? Do I need to introduce him to someone? Does he need tools? Does he need a budget? Do I need to give authority? Setting up people for success leads to a happier work environment that gets results instead of a string of failures.

Excerpt Table of Contents

The book has nine parts of rules, here the example of one part:

“Hunting High And Low” . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Takes leaving not personally . . . . . . . . 67
Actively promotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Knows technology is a fashion industry . . . 69
Knows processes are swimming wings . . . . . 70
Knows processes are solved conflicts . . . . 71
Handles underperformers . . . . . . . . . . .72
Fires people herself . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Is a professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
Manages her boss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Leads the team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Knows what she loves . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Budgets expenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Does dailies when hiring . . . . . . . . . . 79
Is kind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
Gives honest feedback . . . . . . . . . . . .81
Is creative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82
Encourages people to think . . . . . . . . . 83