If you are in the C-Suite, you should be on the Manager schedule. That’s it. There’s a different mindset required than that of a “Maker.”
There are plenty of startup CTOs out there who have a Maker type schedule, but that’s where they end up letting things slide – if you spend all of your time working on one particular feature, you lose the optics for the big picture. You need to stay at the 60,000 foot view as a CTO, and lead from above. If you don’t have a team, and you’re doing all the code yourself, then you’re not being a CTO.
That said, for the purpose of this question, my idea of a useful productivity hack would be to do the following:
Remove any daily SCRUM.
Kill it. It’s useless for a small team and just pulls away from making time. Instead, add an iDoneThis subscription, set up Slack and Asana, and integrate Google Calendar. Have Zapier record every time you start and finish a task to iDoneThis.
The daily SCRUM will be replaced with a daily digest of the iDoneThis checkins for everyone on your team. (If its just you, then fine.) Anyone who cares to will be able to comment. Or not.
Stop Meeting Madness
Have one weekly team meeting that is required. Make it no longer than 1 hour and have a set agenda. Stick to it. Do not spend time going over things that happened last week or giving updates (since everyone’s already got the daily updates.) Talk about what needs to be done this week and by whom. If there are any bubbling issues, bring them up here. Now’s your time.
Set “office hours.”
Have specific hours where people can contact you about whatever is on their mind. It can be work, it can be venting, it can be whatever. It just has to be during those hours.
If they try to bug you outside of those hours, ask them if it is an emergency, and if it isn’t refer them to your office hours.
Be Polite, but Firm
If they declare it is an emergency and it isn’t, politely explain what you feel an emergency is.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/What-are-productivity-hacks-for-startup-CTOs
Originally Posted On: 2016-01-03