🥪 Benchmarking, Prioritisation, Presence, Healthy Storming, Platform Engineering, Technical Writing, Self-Gaslighting: TMW #357

Hello, hello, hello!

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us last week in London for CTO Craft Con: Culture and the CTO - we had an amazing time, and judging by the amazing feedback, the attendees and all the speakers also really enjoyed their two days with us too.

As is customary, we had a live illustrator onsite taking ideas and inspiration from attendees as they passed by. This is the final version - did your idea make it up there?

Recordings and slides are being pulled together and tidied up at the moment, but they'll be available to everyone who had either an on-site or recordings-only ticket within the next week or so. They'll also be available to anyone with a Campus membership - if you're interested in learning more about what that is and how to get access, have a look here.

As we announced at the conference, we're already working on next year's event, which will be in a bigger space, The QEII Centre next to the Houses of Parliament in Central London. Speakers will include CTOs from Monzo, Trainline, Skyscanner, DX, Doist and MOO, with many more still to be announced. Tickets aren't on sale yet, but you can pre-register here to be the first to hear about them - the last two conferences have both sold out, so don't be left without:

CTO Craft Con: London | 8-9 May 2024

CTO Craft Con will bring together over 250 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, May 2024

CTO Craft Con London 2024

That's it - on with the links! See you next week

Andy @ CTO Craft

Campus by CTO Craft: The Go-to Resource for Senior Technology Leaders

Created for CTOs, by CTOs: A transformative learning community for senior technology leaders in startups and scale-ups

CTO Craft Campus

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft: Manchester Mixer

Network and learn with fellow CTO Craft members at The Old Monkey pub in Manchester.

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CTO Craft: Dublin Mixer

Network and learn with fellow CTOs, CTO Craft community members and aspiring tech leaders in Dublin, Ireland

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CTO Craft: Edinburgh Mixer

Join CTOs and aspiring tech leaders for an in-person CTO Craft Mixer in Edinburgh, Scotland!

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CTO Craft Bytes - ICYMI

Sorry - Sales is part of the CTO role

Register now for Sorry - Sales is part of the CTO role on crowdcast, scheduled to go live on November 3, 2023, 12:30 PM GMT.

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Reads of the Week

Benchmarking.

Many of the most important questions for running an organization don’t have clear answers. In most engineering organizations, both the teams working on infrastructure and the teams working on product feel they are undersized. It’s also true that most individuals feel they are undercompensated. In th…

Irrational Exuberance

It’s all just leadership after all - The Engineering Manager

As a senior leader, you’ll find yourself managing other managers and also senior individual contributors. How on earth do you do this?

The Engineering ManagerJames Stanier

From our Sponsors

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Thanks as always to all the amazing sponsors helping CTO Craft bring you resources like this newsletter, our events, community and more:

AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, HeadChannel, Google Cloud, Vention, Jellyfish, LinearB, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Swarmia, Uplevel, YLD

Leadership, Strategy & Business

Introducing DRICE: A modern prioritization framework

Boost your experiment win rate and help your team drive more impact

Lenny's NewsletterDarius C

I Promise I’m Not Avoiding You

I’m just prioritizing

Marc RandolphMarc Randolph

The Power of Presence in One-on-One Meetings

Have you ever found yourself in a one-to-one meeting where it feels like the other person’s mind is off elsewhere? Or perhaps you’ve been…

MediumAntonello Caboni

Your Small Imprecise Ask Is a Big Waste of Their Time

When managers and leaders don’t specify the expected time investment of an ask, the time that is invested is almost never what was intended.

Stay SaaSyStay SaaSy

Culture, People & Teams

Facilitating Healthy Storming

Some teams form and norm skipping storm, and consequently perform mediocrely. Other teams storm badly and norm chillingly with low team…

MediumTakeshi Yoshida

Musk’s 5 Step Algorithm to Cut Internal Bureaucracy at Tesla and…

Breadcrumbs list

Corporate Rebels

Tired of the drama storm? Effective managers write the rules of the road with their teams

Managers, eliminate the drama storm in the workplace by writing the Rules of the Road with your team.

Management Excellence by Art PettyArt Petty

How To Amplify Cross-Team Collaboration

Today, I want to delve into the world of innovative projects, where collaboration with external teams becomes a key part. I’ll share with…

Wix EngineeringOren Zakay

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Platform Engineering Maturity Model

This maturity model intends to provide tactical guidance to users seeking to adopt the patterns discussed in the Platforms Definition White Paper. That paper suggests why and what to build; this document will begin to describe how to plan to build it. The target audience is CTOs, Directors of engine…

CNCF TAG App DeliveryDownload PDF Version info

Engineer Time Saved

How measuring the cost of operations unlocked a quantification of efficiences and speed of engineering delivery driven by a platform team.

MediumAidan Donnelly

Technical Writing: How To Start — Squarespace / Engineering

An intro to technical writing, and a series on how to start.

Squarespace / EngineeringAnila Zaidi

How Agile Managers Use Uncertainty to Create Better Decisions Faster - Johanna Rothman, Management Consultant

Many of my middle-management and senior leadership clients want certainty about future work. That’s one of the reasons they create huge backlogs and long roadmaps. Yet, even those backlogs and roadmaps don’t offer certainty. One of these managers said, “I have so much uncertainty and ambiguity. I fe…

Johanna Rothman, Management ConsultantJohanna

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

TBM 254: Self-Gaslighting and the Doubt Loop

Are you gaslighting yourself? Many of the dynamics we deal with at work are not overtly toxic or unhealthy. We know people mean well and do their best, even when nerves fray and things don’t pan out. However, left unchecked, these situations (and how you respond to them) erode your sense of self-wor…

The Beautiful MessJohn Cutler

At work and in life we just want to be seen

ALSO: the single thing firms should do to fix culture

Make Work BetterBruce Daisley

Build a Deck of Heroes

A way to relate to inspiring people.

Allen PikeBrené Brown

How To Repair a Relationship If You Yell at Someone

After losing your temper and yelling, repair and strengthen relationships with self-compassion, sincere apologies, and open communication.

Relationship RepairJD

That’s it!

If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!

https://ctocraft.com/community

Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:

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Have an amazing week!

Andy