Prioritizing in Chaotic Times
Tips for Prioritizing in Engineering When the Business Side is Going Nuts
đ Hello Technocrats!
We live in chaotic times, thatâs for sure. đą And the same goes for almost every company, anywhere â even the best ones go through serious turbulence occasionally.
Today, I offer 7 tips to CTOs on prioritizing during chaotic times. Itâs definitely not easy but you can save yourself a LOT of stress & grief by handling things in the right way.
Cheers & letâs dive in! đŚ
Bobby
Being a CTO is all fun and games until you suddenly have to set priorities in the middle of your company playing Jumanji with its business strategy.
One moment, youâre cruising along, and the next, youâre knee-deep in a business model pivot, a leadership coup, or a full-blown reorgâsometimes all at once.
Oh, and donât forget that shiny new acquisition to keep things *really* interesting.
Prioritization in the best of times is difficult especially in a large organization. But throw in a strong dose of chaos and it becomes almost impossible unless you know the right strategies.
So, how do you manage when the ground keeps shifting under your feet?
Buckle upâhereâs your survival guide, divided into 7 tips, so you can tackle one disaster at a time. đ
Tip 1: Maintain Your Zen
Top-flight CTOs maintain their Zen in the middle of business & product chaos.
The death of setting good priorities is to get overly involved in the chaos. You must create and maintain a certain distance if you want clear priorities â that is the truth.
Exactly HOW you do this is very important of course. You canât disengage with the big business decisionsâŚthatâs not what Iâm recommending.
Instead you have to offer value to the company to solve its problems, but know when to leave thing to be sorted out by the business (unless specifically asked to own something.)
While every other department leader runs around in a tizzy you must be the rock â that is part of what defines a good CTO.
If youâre able to do this youâll be able to set and track priorities with much more clarity.
If you donât maintain your Zen your priorities will twist in the wind along with the rest of the business.
Tip 2: Donât Seek Clarity, Let it Come to You
As executives we are taught to constantly seek & provide clarity.
But sometimes s**t gets SO dysfunctional & chaotic that aggressively seeking clarity actually becomes an extremely stress-inducing, circular endeavor for a tech leader.
Iâm not saying give up on getting clarity â Iâm saying allow clarity to develop out of the chaos at its own pace without trying to force it.
While you are waiting for this clarity your priorities may feel âunattachedâ to clear business objectives and thatâs OK â remember you are patiently observing until clarity returns.
One excellent tip someone gave me and that I use all the time is to paint a picture of the lack of clarity to leadership & other stakeholders.
Donât do this in an annoying way but realize that when a business is going through chaos it very often doesnât even know the fundamentals of what it needs to get clarity on!
Thatâs where you jump in.
Tip 3: During ChaosâŚFocus on Fewer Things
When times are good at your company you might focus on 10 things. But when times are chaotic you must focus on no more than 4 to 6.
By doing this you are bringing focus to your team and this in turn creates order in the midst of the craziness.
If before you were running around chasing 7 major projects reduce it down to 3 or 4 so calmness can reign supreme in the engineering organization.
The mistake many technology leaders make is assuming they can do the same amount of work when everything is getting wrecked around you.
You canât! There are far too many dependencies between you and the rest of the organization.
I would loosely quote Steve Jobs in saying that focus (and prioritization) depends a lot on what youâre saying no to.
During difficult times saying no is even more important because the chaos will try and stretch you in 50 directions at the same time.
You must sharpen your diplomacy and reject a great many things or you risk creating even more chaos.
Tip 4: Return to the Core Fundamentals of Building
Most likely you have an engineering background and so does 75% plus of your team.
That means you are all builders.
This is often forgotten by technology leaders in this midst of turbulent times.
They get too involved in everything OTHER than building like: gossiping, pontificating, politicking, snoozing or just plain wasting time HOPING the chaos will stop.
Instead start building awesome software!
You know that pesky problem every customer has been complaining about for 2 years? Take the time and fix it!
No one is going to get upset about that.
Engineeringsâ value in large part is based on building things. So lean into that.
Take your attention and your teams attention and put it towards building software and the priorities you seek will begin to reveal themselves.
Tip 5: Engineers Can Provide Answers
Iâve noticed during chaotic times that people within the engineering team often have the exact right insight for what to do that even the business end continues to miss.
In fact, the engineers have often long-known the right answers, while the business side is just now going through a turbulent process of realization & catch up.
Thatâs why during tough times itâs wise to allow your team to express themselves and to join the conversation around strategic direction of Product & Engineering.
It will surprise you how insightful engineers can be about what big priorities should be addressed 1st, 2nd and 3rd. They just need a chance to express themselves.
So donât forget to look to your team for opinions on prioritization. You may find several hidden gems you didnât expect.
Tip 6: Practice âStrategic Listeningâ
On one hand you donât want to get caught up in the chaos yourself, but on the other hand you do want to look for clues about what lies on the other side of the chaos.
This is especially true during more prolonged periods of company turbulence.
Now, some CTOs are good at this while others are just plain terrible â there seems to be no in-between.
Strategic listening is an investigation into what the future will hold for the company but done in a clever way where you donât make the situation more difficult.
You must be like Switzerland â a neutral party simply on the hunt for information.
Once you get this information you can take it back to your team so it can be used to establish better direction and priorities.
CTOs who are bad at this wade into the choppy waters of business chaos and sometimes make things even worse by pushing their agenda. Switzerland, remember.
Listen to the right people at the right time and make sure to ask the right questions so as to extract valuable information to help you & your team with direction.
Tip 7: Hit the Low-Hanging Fruit Hard
Even with lots of unknown, unknowns during chaotic times great technology leaders should have a backlog of high-value priorities to knock out.
This is the low-hanging fruit youâve always wanted to do.
Now, be careful here because when things clear up on the business side the CEO and CFO are going to come looking into what you spent their dollars on!
So donât build anything silly just to keep busy â thatâs not what this is about.
Instead youâre looking for:
High-value bugs to fix that help customers
Internal processes to optimize that youâve put off addressing in the past
Fixes to systems (cleaning up JIRA anyone?)
Quick turnaround, high-value features that you can easily justify
Security initiatives that will put you in a good posture
Simplification initiatives like getting rid of unnecessary libraries
New tech partnership opportunities what will boost impact, speed, productivity, etc
You get the drift.
What easy-to-fix friction points can you get rid of?
If you lack a clear product strategy then the low-hanging fruit is a good place to focus.
No one will get upset with you for solving cheap but useful problems.
And if you batch these together your team will have something to look back on and be proud of.
Final ThoughtsâŚby Jack Handy
Iâm sure my 90s SNL pals will remember this reference. đ They had the funniest jokes back thenâŚbut company chaos is no joke, EVER!
And yet every CTO encounters it at one point or another in their career.
Your priorities get wrecked almost overnight it seems and youâre stuck trying to figure out the direction to point your team in.
The reality is that almost every tip I gave you starts BEFORE the chaos arrives. If you start trying to figure out your approach AFTER the chaos starts youâve already lost.
So donât do that.
Think about where your company is and if you feel like thereâs even a 50% chance that things could go south for a while then prepare yourself and your team.
Youâll thank yourself and your team will thank YOU!
And take hope. Because as the saying goes, âtough people are built in tough times.â
I have seen CTOs reach lofty heights because of how they handled themselves and their teams during difficult & tumultuous times.
OK, if you need any help email me at bobby@technocratic.io.
And in the meantime, keep the shark swimming! đŚ