Newsletter #43: Remote workers, Surviving senior roles, Gender balance

Andrew Weaver
February 15, 2021

Happy Friday

With offices in the UK and Spain, it’s been quite a week for the CTO Academy team as major issues are going down on the streets of Barcelona and London.

But like all good entrepreneurs we keep our heads down and our focus on what we can impact.  That said, we are certainly living through interesting times …

To help you briefly take your mind off things, we present you with this weeks ‘5 Minute Tech Break’.

Have a great weekend.

Jason Noble
CTO Academy
[email protected]

Remote Workers Are More Productive

Following this weeks CTO Academy webinar on “How to find & manage remote workers”, an article that suggests remote workers are more productive than their in-house bretheren.

Remote workers take longer breaks on average, but they remain productive for an additional 10 minutes per day.
Remote employees work 1.4 more days per month than their office-based counterparts, resulting in more than three additional weeks of work per year.

29% of remote employees said they struggle with work-life balance, and
31% said they have needed to take a day off for their mental health.

It’s not easy organising the Christmas party with a team of remote workers but otherwise, it’s clearly a boon to have them around.

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Surviving being senior (tech) management

We will soon be launching a new series of Tech Leader Q&As where we get inside the head, metaphorically, of CTOs around the world.

In preparation for this series, an old interview with Kellan Elliott-McCrea (ex CTO at Etsy) where he walks through some of the critical success factors for ‘surviving‘ senior tech  management roles.

His headline points are consistent with some of our previous articles but always useful to re-emphasise;

1.  Exercise
2.  Have someone to talk to
3.  Talk with peers
4.  Personal mastery project (often away from tech)
5.  Put your own oxygen mask first, before assisting others (I like that turn of phrase)You can find the full article here.


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Gartner Reveals Five Major Trends Shaping Evolution of Analytics and Business Intelligence

“As intelligence is at the core of all digital businesses, IT and business leaders continue to make analytics and BI their top innovation investment priority” – so says Jim Hard, research vice president at Gartner, opening an article on 5 major trenches shaping analytics and BI.

1. Augmented Analytics
2. Digital Culture
3. Relationship Analytics
4. Decision Intelligence
5. Operationalising and Scaling

For more information you can view the article here.


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Gender Balance Cultures Create Profit Premiums

The tech world has (and still) suffers from elements of the ‘bro’ culture and a lack of diversity.

I recently met Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, an author and consultant on gender balance.  She mentioned some fascinating studies about diversity (or the lack of) in the corporate world and it’s impact on performance including Research indicates that companies with gender balanced cultures, are more profitable than those without.

As tech leaders and entrepreneurs we also have to balance family time with work time and by coincidence this week, I happened upon an interesting article from Avivah herself in the Harvard Business Review, If You Can’t Find A Spouse Who Supports Your Career, Stay Single 


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Last Webinar: How To Find & Manage Remote Tech Team

Tuesday 15th October 2019

We walked through our experience of building and working with remote teams.

The recruitment process, how to get buy-in, protecting your IP and when/how to see and deal with potential issues. Watch (Listen) Again 

Quote of the week 

What is important is seldom urgent, What is urgent is seldom important” – The Eisenhower Decision Matrix

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