How to Rapidly Grow From Team Lead to Executive

Jeremy Brown has an unconventional career path to CTO. While he started as an engineer, he took detours in sales, motorcycling and starting a business in Cameroon, before becoming a CTO.

In this episode, we look at how Jeremy’s career unfolded, and what he learned along the way that prepared him for success as a CTO. We also get his advice for how you can level up and thrive at each step in your career from IC to Manager to Manager of Managers to Executive.

Show Notes:

• Learn about Conway’s Law here: https://medium.com/@williammeller/the-conways-law-7e09514741f8
• Conway's Law and the "reverse" or "inverse" Conway - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
  • The Inverse Conway - https://ctocraft.com/blog/how-can-the-inverse-conway-manoeuvre-help-drive-organisational-change/
  • Jeremy also highly recommends the book, Team Topologies if you’re looking at doing a reorg of your teams.
• On Open Space Technology: (Official Website and User’s Guide)
  • For this meeting to work the following conditions need to be present.
    • A good intro via Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
    • Keys:
      • A matter that is of very high importance to the group and a real possibility of conflict
      • Diversity in terms of people and positions involved
    • And some Youtube Walkthroughs: an Introduction, and How to facilitate one
• Learn why you should let that high performing jerk go and the rest of your team will perform better with the book: The No A***** Rule by Robert Sutton
• Learn about the concept of Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners here. It helps you understand how to lead at different scales for startups.  

Key actions for you to take today from the interview:

1. Repeat yourself more than you think you need to, in a variety of ways.
   1. Repeating yourself as a leader is key to instilling key ideas and concepts into your team. Learn more about the Power of Repetition here
2. Use your 1 on 1s to support your team
   1. Get Status Updates out of them, and instead give feedback, ask good questions and more. Learn how Jeremy used Lighthouse to help him here.
3. Be sure to praise your team when they do the right things
   1. Learn to thank your team and give praise in a variety of ways to motivate your team you can learn about here.   

Where to find and follow Jeremy Brown:

• Read his occasional posts on his blog - https://world.hey.com/jeremybrown
• Find him on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tenfourty/
• Follow him on Twitter - https://twitter.com/JeremyBrownTech