The 5-Minute Startup CTO #7
Managing upwards, Handling budgets, CTO discussion
Here are your picks for this week:
It’s all about people
Managing upwards is an important skill to have, regardless of your position within a company. This great set of slides covers that topic very well, and this article on asking for (and offering) feedback does complement it well.
Process makes perfect
Do you manage your own budget, and if so, how?
Most companies break down their budget into departmental sub-budgets - thus giving each team autonomy to handle their own affairs, which is good. Except it can lead to problems such as discrepancies at a low-level (eg for travel allowances), and overall budget overruns that no single person is responsible for.
This interesting insight into Zoom suggests a simple solution: tasking the management team to do joined-up thinking, on a regular basis, on the overall budget. Once again, genuine team work seems key.
Something to watch
A short-ish discussion between 3 experienced CTOs, with lots of valuable advice. Suggestion: pause the video after each question, try and answer it yourself, then see how much aligned or challenged you are by the actual answers…
I hope you enjoyed this. Have a great week!
Fabrice
The 5-Minute Startup CTO: every Sunday, 3 top insights in 5 minutes for startup CTOs and Tech Leads. Hand-picked by Fabrice, a consulting CTO. Let me know if you need help with your startup!