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Gem of an article. Question/opinion though: The CEO seems to manage the CPO & CTO relationship in these models as well, which seems like a risk given a CEO's v

Gem of an article. Question/opinion though: The CEO seems to manage the CPO & CTO relationship in these models as well, which seems like a risk given a CEO's value is investor and market / key customer facing, and any time they spend on managing the peers in the CPO/CTO relationship is opportunity cost against that value. It also means the CPO & CTO as peers will be jockying for the CEO's attention as a deciding factor, which seems like unnecessary friction. The CPO's key relationships are to the board and supporting the CEO activities and sales key accounts with strategic feature alignment that may include M&A. The CTO's key relationships are outward with technology partners, suppliers, vendors, etc. and downward in the org. A CTO should be a partnership with a COO role, as they are solving scale and optimization problems together. All that is to say, depending on org maturity, I don't think CTO/CPO should be peers under the CEO. IMO one of the CPO/CTO should report to the other, as otherwise you're going to get unproductive running battles between them that cost CEO time. If you have this model and are wondering why your staff aren't working well together, it's you. This is why it can be useful to keep a founder around as a facilitator with convening power, provided they aren't too marginalized or a loose cannon. That said, I've only consulted to orgs like this and see it across them, and this is not the view of a CEO.

joaofs 5y ago
You are on the money here. I guess who reports to whom depends if it's a tech company or not.
kalms 5y ago
I actually don't disagree with you on this. Can absolutely see how this can create friction, but it's also one of those cases when dealing in absolutes is fraught with peril. A CTO is not a CPO and having strategies being defined - or steered by a singularly technically-minded person can work fine in a lot of scenarios, but for others, it's important to foster a certain level of autonomy for managing, growing and building the product, feature set and roadmap. Same thing in reverse. There's definitely overlap between the two, but a collaborative approach works better in my opinion. As a disclaimer, I'm a CPO myself - and enjoy the working relationship and collaboration with the CTO, while reporting directly to the CEO and the board. Also, I guess that sometimes it really comes down to the types of personalities that are present in the management team - as well as the type of product being built.

joaofs 5y ago

You are on the money here. I guess who reports to whom depends if it's a tech company or not.

kalms 5y ago

I actually don't disagree with you on this. Can absolutely see how this can create friction, but it's also one of those cases when dealing in absolutes is fraught with peril. A CTO is not a CPO and having strategies being defined - or steered by a singularly technically-minded person can work fine in a lot of scenarios, but for others, it's important to foster a certain level of autonomy for managing, growing and building the product, feature set and roadmap. Same thing in reverse. There's definitely overlap between the two, but a collaborative approach works better in my opinion. As a disclaimer, I'm a CPO myself - and enjoy the working relationship and collaboration with the CTO, while reporting directly to the CEO and the board. Also, I guess that sometimes it really comes down to the types of personalities that are present in the management team - as well as the type of product being built.