Philipp Deutscher: Empowering tomorrow's tech leaders

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My name is Leszek Knoll, and I will be talking with Philipp Deutscher about CTO role, expectations, and operational excellence.

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So Philip, can you share with us your professional journey from being a developer to becoming

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a CTO and now a CTO/CEO, coach, advisor?

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What were some of the pivotal moments in this transition?

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Cool. Yeah. I mean, first of all, thanks for having me.

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It's a pleasure to be on your podcast.

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I I actually, I was following some of your episodes in the past, and you also already had one

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of my former colleagues, Martin Rusnak.

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I think he was joining the 10th episode, very early. So yeah.

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I'm I'm listening into your podcast from time to time. It's very good.

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So, yeah, I started my my journey, roughly 22, 23 years ago. I studied computer sciences.

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And then I I yeah.

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As many others, I started my professional career as a software developer in various industries

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from ecommerce to aviation, to sports betting, to health tech, to insurtech, B2B SaaS, b

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to c SaaS, and so on.

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So I have various experiences in very different industries.

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And, but, yeah, I took over more and more responsibility relatively early in my career.

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I became a senior engineer.

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I became a scrum master later on.

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I took over leadership roles at typical where I became director IT operations.

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I, became director engineering at at TeamViewer.

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I was promoted VP engineering at TeamViewer.

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And then I took also non engineering leadership roles.

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I also, yeah, took over the managing director role at TeamViewer.

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I was helping them to build up a new subsidiary in Greece, a new engineering hub, yes, that

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we that we built up from scratch.

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We founded the new subsidiary there, and, yeah, we we raised it up to, I think, 70 engineers.

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Up until then, I was founding my own company.

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Yeah, I took over later on when I returned back to to Germany, I left TeamViewer.

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I I I took over my own business.

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Oh, I I founded my own business, and I took over interim and fractional CTO roles.

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I started to provide consultancy advisory to CEOs from actually from startups to to scale ups

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to enterprise in various very different situations.

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Not only that, I also found out that, like, I actually I liked a lot supporting engineers in

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their growth journey, helping them to become leaders.

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So I thought, hey, maybe this is something I could also do and start talking to engineers, helping

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them to understand where they are at their journey.

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Do they have the ambition to become CTO one day?

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And, maybe I can help them getting there because what I did and on my own journey, like, it

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took me like more than a decade to to fulfill this path.

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And there are no mentors out there or just a very few mentors out there.

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And all everything that people can actually do is start learning by practising, or from books

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or now from from some podcast, but it was very different back then.

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So, yeah, that's why I also decided to to support ambitious engineers to become tomorrow's CTO,

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I I as as I usually say.

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Mhmm. Mhmm. Nice. Out of curiosity, did you, were in a were were you in a situation where actually,

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a person who initially wanted to become a CEO or or a basically tech leader decided after otherwise,

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after, you know, discussing with you what's it like, what's needed, etcetera.

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Because, apparently, it's not a role for everyone.

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And, sometimes there's a organizational pressure, sometimes there's inner pressure to go up

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the ladder, towards the managerial, roles.

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And sometimes, like, people realize that it's actually not for them.

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And I'm wondering if you had a if you were in a situation where where, this occurred early on

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and and somebody changed his mind or not.

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I mean, I'm asking out of curiosity actually.

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Yes. And that's happening quite often.

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And, especially in the first qualification call where I also try to understand if someone already

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at a certain level that I feel I can provide the necessary guidance for someone to make the step.

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And what I realize is there are a lot of misconceptions or false beliefs about the CTO role.

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And many people believe like a CTO role is like 80, 90% about technology.

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And they believe that they need to become just better in a technical field to proceed in their

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career and become CTO one day.

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And when they hear like that from my experience and also from the experience of other CTOs,

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that in the end, maybe only 20% of what they're doing is related to the field of technologies.

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And then there are a lot of other fields like strategic decision making, expectation management,

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risk management, management, hiring people, leading people, and so on.

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Then they realize, oh, this is not what I have in mind.

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And then they start dropping out. Right?

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This is this is the usual part where they they realize that the CTO role is not what they have in mind.

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But also, like, controversially, it's also like the other way around.

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A lot of people where I believe they would be would be a good fit in in in becoming a CTO one

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day, they say to me like, no, I never want to leave hands on engineering.

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And I want to, I still want code hands on, and I want to follow this path.

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Interesting. Interesting. So both false negatives, false positives, and, or

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Exactly. Quite a lot.

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Interesting. We you mentioned misconceptions, but I'd like to talk also about the challenges.

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What are the the most common challenges you've observed tech leaders facing today, especially when scaling their teams?

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It's a different aspect of the CTO role, not always the case.

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Well, I mean, many organizations, the scaling is actually not an, a priority these days.

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But I was wondering, if you could talk about a little bit about some general themes and the

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challenges that CTOs or aspiring CTOs face?

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Yeah, I mean, in I think I think in previous times, it was more mandatory for a CTO to be the

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best engineer in the company.

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I think that has already changed quite significantly over the last decades.

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I think even especially the CTO role is very you need to be very adaptable.

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You need to adapt to a lot of changes.

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And the question is, can you adapt to those changes by yourself?

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Can you moderate those changes? Can you communicate them?

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Can you sell them to to your team?

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There is a concept that was built by, I think it was Ben Horowitz, about wartime and peacetime CEO.

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And I think the same concept also applies to wartime and peace time CTO. Right?

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And this is like, you need to find the right balance between can you give your engineers and

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your teams a room for creativity and decision making, and you can empower them, or are you in

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a situation where you need to take over and you need to make those decisions?

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And ideally, as a CTO, you can play on both fields.

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But in reality, like, we all have an an a natural tendency to be more wartime or a more peacetime

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CTO or or CEO in the end.

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But also, like, recruitment is is becoming more important than ever. Right?

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Good talents are scarce, even though these days a lot of people are laid off.

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But finding good talents in the market which are a good fit to you and to your tech stack, to

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your company culture, to make them stay, to help them to grow, to empower them, and to retain

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them in the company, that is the ultimate challenge, right?

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Because I think what we always forgot is how expensive it is to replace a good engineer leaving the company.

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And that is one of the most crucial aspects, in my opinion, or challenges for a CTO these days.

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I'd like to do a follow-up to the recruitment statement you just made.

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And I like to know if there are particular tactics or strategies that help you with the recruitment.

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I mean, not specifically not attracting individuals to apply, but rather how do you actually hire the right talent?

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What worked for you in the past?

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Or what advice could you give to other CTOs who maybe are doing it for maybe not the first time

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but are struggling with the decision making process, whether somebody would fit the organization or not?

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Yeah. I think a very general rule of thumb is I usually value mindset higher than skill set,

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because I believe I could teach or and and you can you can teach an engineer literally anything

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in terms of technology, if he or she is a good engineer.

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And if she's interested, then, or he can learn a new technology, a new programming language

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relatively fast, but you will never be able to change as a leader is the mindset of someone you're going to hire.

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So if someone is not an ideal fit to the company culture, if he doesn't have like a can do mentality,

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If you see something someone having signs of, I don't know, passive aggressiveness or, those,

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like, learned helplessness, that's how I call it.

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I think it's also a term in psychology where people always say, Yeah, I couldn't do it because

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someone else was not doing this and this and that. Right?

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And I believe people who understand if as long as they're in the driver's seat and if they take

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the responsibility, then it's their responsibility also to to overcome those hurdles and and so on.

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And this is one indicator for me if someone is really a good fit for my teams actually.

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Mhmm. Some, I see some, resemblance to Extreme Ownership and that aspect of of of people attitude. Very interesting.

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Speaking of mindset and skill set, are there any particular indicators in that two areas, for

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a person that could indicate that he's a good CTO candidate?

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You've mentioned some of them, but we were talking generally about software engineers.

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But if we narrow down those skill set and mindset things, are there any specific things that

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you are looking for in a CTO or a potential CTO? I

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think it's especially the willingness to take over responsibility.

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And it sounds very simple, but it was also a big learning for me on my path for becoming CTO,

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because it's very easy to say, I want to become responsible for a certain project.

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But then really understanding what responsibility means, and that it doesn't mean, like, hey,

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I was I sent someone an email and he was not responding to me for the next 7 days, so it's his

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fault because he was not responding to me.

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This is exactly part of the learning curve where people need to understand what responsibility

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really means, and that the responsibility will not shift over to someone else just because you

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were asking someone for certain information or doing a certain task. Right?

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And this ultimate ownership, that will not shift the way.

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And this is something where I think a good city or a good leader in particular has this kind of ultimate ownership.

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Interesting. I think for like, would you agree to a certain extent at least that it's related

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you know, owning things that are actually beyond your control.

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I think that doesn't come easy to many people that are accountable for result, You're responsible

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for for or or responsible for the result, but it's usually beyond your control.

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It's under your influence, but you don't control the those tiny, you know, things like other people tasks, right? Absolutely. 100% agree.

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I'd like to, switch gears a little bit and talk about operational excellence.

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I love this phrase, by the way. I I don't know.

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I I maybe I abuse it a little bit too much.

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But you emphasize guiding CEOs, CTOs toward operational excellence.

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Could you describe what operational excellence looks like in a TAHAN environment and how can it be achieved?

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Actually, it's about, it's a lot about sense of urgency. It's about efficiency.

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It's about having the right processes in place.

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It's about environments having necessary robustness and reliability.

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So question is always, can I scale with not only my technology, but also with my teams?

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Can I recover quickly from setbacks, from from incidents?

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Do I have the necessary metrics in place so that I understand where I am on my path to operational excellence?

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Can I is there anything left that I can automate?

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Is, do I have infrastructure as code in place?

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Do I already work with DevOps?

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Do I already work with site reliability engineering methodologies? Do I work agile?

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Actually, do I have already the right measurements in place?

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Do I measure the right things?

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And do I have the processes that support me, to to keep things up and running?

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I think, yeah, I was there was, like, it's it's a mix of a lot of things that need to come together

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so that you actually can achieve operational excellence.

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And usually operational excellence in technology turns out, the consequence is if you're not

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operational excellent, then you might have either, a very low time to market, or you will face

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incidents in production because you cannot keep the system up and running.

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Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. It's not like I understand that that's a mix, as you said, agility, project

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management, having, like, at least introducing mechanism of control, observability, all that

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stuff, that resonates with me very strongly.

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But if we could dive a little bit deeper, do you look at things in the tech industry, tech environment?

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Do you look things beyond the Dora metrics,

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or, things you observe to know whether you are on the right track, whether you're in control,

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whether things are heading the right way?

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Yes. I mean, very obviously first thing you need to look at is, I mean, metrics are usually following a cascade, right?

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To start on top with one thing which is very important.

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Maybe it's your availability or your uptime.

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And there are certain other measures that you have in place.

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How quickly can you recover from incidents?

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So what is your mean time to recovery?

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What is your mean time to resolve?

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What is your mean time to solve a problem after you fix an incident?

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What is the what else?

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In the meantime between incidents, so to say, those are very operational metrics.

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But when you also go one step back into the software development life cycle, then you have metrics

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like, lead time and cycle time, which are giving you an indication about how good are you in

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delivering and and new stuff and bringing into your production environment. Right?

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So this is very important.

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And just one one quick example about, because I mentioned sense of urgency as one of the key

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indicators, which is very important for having operational excellence.

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There was a time at at TeamViewer a couple of years ago where the company had some issues with

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production environment failing from time to time, customers were not happy, and so on.

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And what we realized back then is there were, like, uptime and and availability was not measured properly.

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So what we did is there was a huge ticker in the in the in the in the entrance of the headquarter,

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which was always showing, like, the the, like, the sales numbers from the last day.

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And what we did in the very beginning, we just added the availability number on this ticker as well. Nice.

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And this change alone created a huge sense of urgency in the whole organization because everyone

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entering the door was looking at those ticker.

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And if the availability is not where where it should be and there was an incident yesterday, everyone was asking questions.

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The CEO was asking questions.

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So, of course, we added it to monitoring walls and so on, but this change alone was creating

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such a sense of urgency that it helped us to to turn the ship around very quickly.

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And that was not about technological change.

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It was not about changing, yeah, teams or processes.

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It was just creating awareness.

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It's actually you improve what you measure. Right?

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Exactly. I mean, it's a very like, it touches on many aspects.

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It creates sense of urgency.

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It sort of links technology with the business. Business requires availability.

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But it also, this creates this ownership mission. Very nice. Very nice.

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Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about coaching and your approach to coaching.

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And my question here is, how does your approach to coaching differ when working with established

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CTOs versus those who are newly transitioning into this role?

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Yeah, it's true. I'm providing coaching and also a masterclass for ambitious engineers who want to become CTO.

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I'm not really working with already existing CTOs.

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I'm working more with the CEOs. Right?

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It's usually a CEO who wants someone with CTO expertise at his side to support him in in some

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business areas or where I can fulfill temporarily a leadership role in his team.

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But on the other hand, I'm supporting, like, people I usually work with, and I'm helping them

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to grow into a position like mine.

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I have not as many touch points with existing and established CTOs, only, like, on conferences and so on.

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Could you share a specific case study or anecdote where you help to transform a struggling tech

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leader into somebody who's successful and a successful powerhouse, if you will?

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Yeah, I, it's actually a former employee of mine who was also just recently finishing with,

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with with the master class.

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And the first thing that he learned because he was coming to me, he said, okay.

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I put up I want to become CTO one day.

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And first of all, I needed to to manage his expectations that even though he he would take the

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the my master class, he would not ultimately immediately become CTO afterwards. Right?

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So we are working more on the CTO readiness of someone.

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It's more about helping them to create the right personality, understanding concepts that are

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necessary for becoming a CTO. Yeah.

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Learning leadership, learning about communication, learning about especially about expectation

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management, which is still overlooked quite quite a lot in in not only in engineering, in many

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aspects of, in the company that people are not communicate clearly about expectations.

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And this is what is really helping them to to prepare themselves for later on taking over more and higher leadership roles. Yeah.

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You have to understand your own personality and your own your own your own aspect of your character,

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if you want to lead others. Right?

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And that is also part of of of the the coaching journey that I try people, that I help people

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that they understand better who they are, where they need to look at, what are their weak spots or their applying spots.

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But as you also mentioned, it's it's a lot about confidence.

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If someone already has the confidence, he would immediately go out there.

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He would prepare his CV.

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I mean, there are a lot of open CTO positions on LinkedIn. Why don't they apply? Right?

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What do they have to lose? Nothing. Right?

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And the the concept that people always often have in mind is, Yeah, I'm in a company.

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The company already has a CTO, so there is no path for me to become a CTO. CTO.

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And that's not true actually. Right?

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There are thousands of ways how you can become a CTO.

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You can join a startup where you can actually be still in in the first phase of a startup.

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You can be more an engineer than a CTO, and later on grow more and more into the leadership

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role and the more strategic part of the role.

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While in the beginning, you can focus on what you are already good at, and this is engineering. Right?

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Or if you are already more experienced in leadership because you have taken over already like

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a a tech lead role, a team lead role, a director role, then maybe other companies like Scaleups

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are already looking for a CTO who already has some leadership experience.

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And then you have enterprises.

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And an enterprise like a CTO role is not comparable with a startup CTO role at all. Right?

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So there are very different things that make it make a difference in in in the CTO role.

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And then it's also not every every CEO is looking for the same CTO.

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There are different aspects of leadership or of culture or of technical proficiency, which are needed by a CEO.

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Someone is also having some engineering knowledge, so he needs someone else by his side who

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is more like an architect.

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The The other one has no understanding about engineering at all, and he needs a CTO who has

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also business acumen and he can explain things so that he can understand. Right?

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And, this is like, there is no just one, yeah, one model for a CTO out there. Totally

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agree. I've got 2 more personal questions for you.

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The first one is, like, how do you continue to grow and learn in the field?

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Are there any specific resources that you use or practices you recommend?

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I I can only imagine that your coaching, mentoring work drives you a lot of maybe challenges

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or way to grow, different cases, different people, probably that drives some of the learning.

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But first of all, is that true?

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And secondly, are there any specific method practices you'd recommend for people like yourselves

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to grow and continue learning?

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Yeah, there are several aspects to this question.

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I mean, first of all, I put myself into situations where I can learn.

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So new companies, new roles, new industries.

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I recently took over the advisory board role in in a startup.

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That's my first advisory role in in a startup. Right?

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Of course, I have a lot of experience left and right, but it's the first situation.

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So I I'm definitely learning from this as well. Right?

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Secondly, if you have a growth mindset and you have the ambition to say, I never stop learning,

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you are always curious to find out what's next. Right?

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I'm reading 50 books per year for the last 5, 6 years at least.

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I'm still doing Udemy courses or Coursera courses if I have some time to to to finish them. Yeah.

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And then it's it's about reading the right literature on on blog posts or following YouTube videos and so on.

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And, yeah, there is a lot of information out there.

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You need to filter, and you need to figure out what is the the next best thing that you can

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learn and you can where you can grow. Nice.

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Nice. Nice thing. Very nice.

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That's great advice. That's the most crucial question.

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So sometimes I it's like I find a book and it's about a field where I read already 10 other books.

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And then like, so my first instinct is, okay, I I would like to read this book as well, and

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then I need to hold myself back.

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And so, no, no, but what are you really expecting from this book? Is this, like, groundbreaking?

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And are you expecting to gain knowledge from this book that you have never heard before?

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So maybe you focus on something else where you might have the weak spot. And

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Okay.

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Me transitioning from an employee role to to an also entrepreneurial role that also created

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a lot of tension, and I needed to learn a lot about sales, about marketing, about how to promote

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myself and make myself visible out there.

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So, yeah, this is this is how growth works.

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So put put yourself in situations where there are things that you do not know yet.

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In the situation of discomfort?

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To an extent. Okay. And my final question is, could you share the most valuable lesson you learned

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along the way, if there's such, maybe lessons you learn along your professional journey?

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I think there is one saying in English.

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It means, If it is to be, it's up to me.

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And this is very powerful for me because it puts me in the driver's seat for literally anything or everything.

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That doesn't mean that I need to do everything, but I ultimately feel accountable for everything.

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And I feel if I want that something is going to happen, then I'm the one who can steer the ship in the right direction. I can still delegate. I can still manage.

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I can still help people, okay, this is what we need to focus on.

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But I always need to tell myself if it is to be, it's up to me.

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And, then you still need to find the right balance between empowering people and giving them

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direction and not micromanaging them if you exactly know what you want to have.

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And this is this is, yeah, the the essence that you need to figure out by yourself. Very nice.

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It resonates with me a lot. Alright.

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Philip, thank you very much.

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It was it was great great advice and, well, thank you for the words of wisdom.

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Thanks a lot, Les Schick.

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