Days 1–10: Learn the Business Goals and Objectives

Why does the company want to use the technology you’ve been hired to fix anyway? Understanding the business goals and objectives will answer this question for you. How will you make a piece of technology work better for the company if you don’t know why the company does what it does in the first place?

Get user accounts for everything inside the company. No matter what it’s for, get a user account and get inside it. Use every tool and figure out how each tool serves the goals of the company. Find out what subsets of each tool work best for the company and make notes in your CTO journal about tools that overlap each other. There’s a template at the end of this chapter that you can use for this.

Some tools serve the same purpose as others, with small differences that make the company think they need both tools. This isn’t always true. Dive into every tool to find these discrepancies.

Observe which team members prefer which tools and find out why. This will be part of your essential conversations. What aspects of the tools appeal to them? If the company is using different tools for similar tasks, ask why. You will save money and time by streamlining company tools, but first you must find out why multiple tools are in use in the first place. In fact, streamlining company tools might be your first month quick win (see “Identifying a Quick Win”).

Make a list of projects that are currently running, and make sure that you immerse yourself in the work that’s already been done. You’d be surprised sometimes that the conclusions you come to after weeks of deliberation may already have been documented before your time. There is always something to be learned from work that’s been done before you, whether it’s code, SOPs, or design documents.

Looking at what’s been done before, what’s currently being done, and what experiments to try for the future is a proven method. Consider Franklin D. Roosevelt and his action of bringing a brain trust with him into office. He made a statement with that action, and the statement was this: We are not pretending to know the grand plan to deal with the Great Depression. Instead, we are going to do a series of experiments and see what works and what doesn’t. He brought enough experience with him to know that the problem did not have a grand, sweeping solution. Instead, it needed experimentation before a solution would be found.

Speaking from experience, as FDR proved, builds a sense of knowledge for those around you. In that first month, you work tirelessly to build up experiences as quickly as you can so you can grow in your voice of authority. A few ways to galvanize authority are experiences, data, and empathy. If you can speak for your customers, you can say, “I spoke to 150 customers, and I read the reports of the recent surveys you did. This is what we are hoping to accomplish on the larger business scale, and this is where we want you to have an impact on that.”

Using Your Strengths to Company Advantage

Yes, one of your strengths is in technology, but let’s dive into strengths you probably don’t know you have. Bring curiosity about the product and service with you. You already have that, don’t you? If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have put in all that hard work and volunteer time before you got this job. Use that drive to research the company itself and find out how to make that product or service operate better as a whole, not just as a piece of technology.

That same curiosity will serve you in other areas of the business too. You’ve already signed up for all available services from the company, right? Use them. Find out how customers are buying and why. What, if anything, leads them to buy more from the company? If there is a free trial, what ushers the customer into purchasing at the trial’s end? What’s so great about the product or service? Develop your own empathy for the company’s customer by going through the motions yourself. You’ll gain a clearer picture of the company and understand why the customers do what they do. This is where you will see the start of the buying cycle.

Sometimes it requires many months to understand buying cycles. Do whatever you can do to try the product out in the meantime. If it’s a mobile app that helps you get connected to your neighbors, then sign up and get connected with your neighbors. Use the app. Begin to understand why customers love the app or why they may be drifting away.

Look at customer reviews critically. What is the word on the street? What are customers saying about the product overall, and why are they saying it? Consider conducting market research with top customers for products with negative reviews to find out what customers really want and why they seem unhappy with the product. Ask customers what improvements would make them love the product more. Consider their answers and find ways to make them happen. Again, this might become a first-month quick win.

Finally, use your intelligence to your advantage. You didn’t get here through luck alone. You worked hard through networking, volunteering, and impressing the right people with your expertise. Use that and build on it. Build relationships, have essential conversations to find problems, and document your ideas to help solve those problems. Continue to build on your CTO journal using the exercises at the end of each chapter because the journal will become your guide to moving around the company.

Company Organization

You will need to understand how the company is organized and who is in charge of what, both outside and inside their official titles. Record your observations. If you see anything that needs changing, whether it be low-hanging fruit or complex matters, jot it down in your CTO journal using the template at the end of this chapter.

A huge advantage of documenting your ideas is that some of your ideas may be unfinished or inaccurate as you base them on unfolding facts. Writing them down is a lot better than saying them out loud. You may inadvertently be making enemies or building unproductive alliances if you speak out too soon. Get the ideas on paper first. Sleep on it.

This documentation will be used for your goal setting and your quick win, discussed later. It will also be the foundation for the duration of the time you spend with the company. You will refer back to it, building on it and making appropriate changes to it as you get to know the company and the team better.

CTO Journal Exercises: Days 1–10

1. Which subsets of each tool work best for each team?
2. Make a list of projects that are currently running, and list ways you could immerse yourself in the work that’s already being done.
3. Try the product and look at customer reviews critically. Note your findings.
4. Record how the company is organized; who is in charge of what, outside and inside their official titles; and anything you see that needs to be changed.