It’s not only computer systems that need a firewall but also for anyone in a leadership position.
In some cases, we need a firewall, load balance, and anything else to help free up our resources and let us focus our energy and time on the things that really matter to us and the business.
“The key is not to prioritise your schedule, but to schedule your priorities” Stephen Covey
I am fortunate in my career to work with some great technology leaders, whether in my own organization, or those I support around the globe.
We have all had the same problem of being a bottleneck in our team at some point. Sometimes we are just too close to see it and need someone to remind us to stop and put in layers to protect ourselves. We also need to allow others to take over and grow allowing the team and systems around us to grow at a faster rate without us being the bottleneck.
A common issue I see is being ‘the only one’ that knows a certain platform, or a bit of code in a legacy part of the product, or how to work with a library that went out of support 5 years ago.
This list of challenges (or excuses) is endless. I call it the Brent Syndrome (reference to The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr).
The issue we have when we are the bottleneck is that we think it’s quicker if we get that bit of work done and move on.
The reality is by doing this, we are creating a rod for our own backs as this work will never leave us and the system, that is our team, will never evolve without us always being there! This is probably the biggest growth mistake we can make as leaders, and I see as a leadership coach.
So how to solve this?
First, and arguably the hardest step, you need to realize you are doing it!
I say this because earlier on in my career I never spotted when that was me.
However, I was lucky to be in a good management team or had a coach guiding me to stop(!) and do something about it.
You now know you have a problem, how do you go about solving it?
As this is the case, it means that person needs to get some form of training or knowledge transfer on that request. This means you will have to figure how that training is going to take place. Will it be you, external support, etc.
Solving this type of issue is a really good use of your time, so get this bit correct as this will ultimately allow you and your teams to scale.
In my experience I would also suggest that if this item is important to your business then use the ‘load balancer’ technique, as it suggests, have multiple people trained up and dealing with this type of issue. Remember, this will cost you (your time, energy or budget), and that cost will be significant, but you have to trust in the process and go with it.
Over a 3-6 month period, you will find that the firewall and load balancers are handling all the requests and you have released your capacity to do the things you should be doing, the real added value part required of you as a technology leader.
Keep the sessions short and sharp.
Ensure there is output from each session, so this could be creating a wiki article, updating code comments, etc. The key is to make sure that knowledge goes into the ‘system’ and not into someone else’s head!
By doing this, not only will you remove yourself from being the bottleneck, but you will be helping and training those in your team to avoid the same problem.
So the question you might now be asking yourself.
How do I know if I am being the bottleneck?
The truth is, we typically know when this is happening it’s just that we don’t like to admit it.
This is where a member of your management team or a coach really helps. If these are not available and you want to do a check, then my standard technique is to create a diary.
Create a one week diary of the things you are working on. You don’t need to go into lots of detail, but put in broad areas that will help you identify where you are spending your week. Eg internal meetings, emails/slack, coding (new product), coding (bugs) client meetings, etc.
Use a tally and mark down your time in 30 minute intervals.
The results will quickly answer the question for you.
To conclude – Key things to remember when building your own personal firewall;
About the Author
Sanjay Mistry is an experienced COO/CTO and also one of the longest serving leadership coaches at CTO Academy, working with technology leaders around the world. He is also one of our tribe leaders, facilitating experienced CTOs through our 3 and 12 month group coaching programmes.
About CTO Academy
CTO Academy provide leadership courses, masterclass series, coaching and career development to tech leaders from around the world.
90 Things You Need To Know To Become an Effective CTO
In this post, Jason Noble, Academy’s Chief Technology Officer, explains the design of highly relevant CTO KPIs and shows you how to a) track them and, more importantly, b) use them to improve performance. Now, the odds are that you’re either a CTO in a start-up or fast-growing company or soon to become one. That […]
Price’s law (competence is linear, incompetence is exponential) pertains to the relationship between the literature on a subject and the number of authors in the subject area, stating that half of the publications come from the square root of all contributors. If 100 papers are written by 25 authors, five authors will have contributed 50 […]
I’ve been asked to write a short piece on the impact of confidence in leadership. 1st, how do I keep it short? 2nd, which angle do I start with for this many tentacled topic? Because whether we talk about true confidence, projection, self-doubt and/or the ever present Imposter syndrome, how we deal with these issues […]
London
2nd Floor, 20 St Thomas St, SE1 9RS
Copyright © 2023 - CTO Academy Ltd