A good beginning

IN THIS COLUMN, I have written regularly about how to become a CTO and the mind-set of the successful CTO. As I approach my one-year anniversary at InfoWorld, I have been reflecting upon the last year, and in doing so realized that one of the most important things a CTO can do in a new job is start off on the right foot.

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In most organizations, the arrival of a new CTO is met with great hope -- all existing technology issues will be wiped away quickly and decisively as the CTO takes control. The CTO must balance the high expectations with the realities of the new environment. Here's what I did first (and hopefully succeeded at doing).

Nothing: "Nothing" might sound passive on the surface, but being a CTO is somewhat like being a lead guitarist in a rock band; knowing when to listen to your band mates and not play is just as important as playing. The new CTO will encounter new competitive landscapes, systems setups, office politics, and most importantly, people.

Depending on the immediate mandates of your CEO, you might or might not have a lot of time to get the full "lay of the land," but make sure that you observe and listen in your first days on the job instead of simply telling your staff how things are going to be. The technology vision that you will need to communicate to the company should be informed by the realities of your new workplace, and the people who have been there are the only ones who can help you quickly sort through these realities.

Focus on tactical operations: I've written a lot about the strategic nature of the CTO role, but in the early days on the job, the new CTO needs to focus on the tactical operations of his new company. While conventional wisdom in executive circles dictates that C-level folks stay "above the fray," the successful new CTO has to hone in on the details to understand what infrastructure exists for new business initiatives and what infrastructure needs to be built to support those initiatives. If your CEO wants to triple the traffic to your Web site within the next 12 months, you will need to know if you are maxing out the bandwidth in your hosting facility and if your routers are at 90 percent utilization, because that might hold you back. If backups of key systems are haphazard, it doesn't make much sense to aggressively build out new infrastructure until that issue is addressed. Your strategic moments will come soon enough, but first make sure that the operational infrastructure will adequately support the ultimate vision.

Build a 90-day strategic plan: For the new CTO, there are many advantages to building a 90-day strategic plan after gaining a sense of the new workplace and getting a basic handle on operations. The 90-day plan is a workable framework that provides an initial vision with achievable short-term goals that you can share with your executive team and your staff, giving your early efforts some necessary focus. Initially at least, a strategic plan with a longer outlook than 90 days might get bogged down in prognosticating an uncertain future, so in my opinion it's best to limit the scope, especially in uncertain times where budgets come and go and new business opportunities emerge regularly. Of course, a CTO should always be thinking beyond the 90-day plan, but keep it simple and digestible in the beginning.

The initial actions of a new CTO and his communications to management and staff form the framework for future successes. Approach those first days on the job wisely.