The Dangers of Being Indispensable: A CTO’s Rescue Mission
When an irreplaceable leader left behind potential chaos, I stepped in and discovered two ways to be indispensable.
This guy was indispensable. He kept resigning, but they couldn't let him leave.
Periodically, "Tom" would have a raging row with the CEO. And in a fit of anger and emotion, Tom would resign.
After calming down, the CEO would concede to one of his demands. Tom would back down, and continue for a little longer.
Eventually the CEO decided this couldn't continue. The next time Tom resigned in anger, it would be final.
Tom headed the company's core engineering group. 40 people. He was a talented technologist, but not such a gifted manager.
Tom was extremely dedicated to his job and his people. They loved him. He was intimately familiar with the minutest of details in every project. Nothing moved without his approval — he was involved in all decisions.
Extremely hands-on, he often did a lot of the challenging work himself. As you can imagine, he worked around the clock and hardly slept.
Anyhow, as you can guess, he had another row with the CEO. This time, the CEO was ready. He accepted Tom's resignation on the spot. There would be a price to pay, but the bill was due.
The CEO asked me to step in at short notice. My job would be to keep the department running smoothly ... without the only person who had seen the cover of the jigsaw box.
Challenge accepted!
CEO: "Oh, by the way, you need to fire 10 people by the end of the week — the department is too bloated. It costs too much and delivers too little."
Me, to myself: "As if I didn't already have a tough enough problem ..."
I said: "’Too bloated’ might well be true. However, I'll know where any potential bloat is only once I've figured out these 5 things:
What business outcomes is the group expected to support?
What is the group doing, and why?
In order to bring about the desired outcomes, what should the group be working on?
What is the appropriate size and structure needed in order to deliver the desired outcomes?
Who are the appropriate people with skills and domain knowledge that match the above size and structure?
The CEO turned out to be right! But he needed me to pinpoint the reason, and then to fix it. I even ended up letting a few more than 10 people go.
During the first week I discovered things that blew my mind, such as:
A 5-person team dedicated to projects that had no commercial benefit.
Excessively complicated solutions, requiring rare skills to develop and maintain.
No cross-team communication, coordination or collaboration — it had all gone through Tom.
It took quite a few months to restructure and rebuild the department on a new set of values and behaviours.
Together, we had to:
Process the change in leadership, as well as understand and learn to accept the reason 13 people were fired.
Spark an environment of collaboration and teamwork, and boost employee morale. Changing an organisation's culture can be difficult, but in this instance they embraced it.
Discover and piece together operational knowledge that until then had been only in Tom's head.
Stabilise the high-maintenance operational environment — we worked systematically to reduce what was a constant stream of incidents, first to a slow trickle, and then down to to rare exceptions. This bought back time for uninterrupted and creative development, and this, too, boosted morale.
Within 6 months, the organisation was unrecognisable. Mainly the same people, but with smiles on their faces — more capable, and shouldering more responsibility. And most importantly, driving outcomes with clear business value.
The group could now function smoothly without me; I had even trained my replacement. Yet I was considered indispensable, but in a positive way — my replacement moved into my spot, and I was promoted to become CTO.
Conclusion
Don't be indispensable. At least, not in the way Tom was. If they simply cannot manage without you, you become a single point of failure.
That can be an exhausting situation, which has further disadvantages:
If you're indispensable, you can't be promoted.
You also can't be fired, but you'll be resented for it.
Nobody is indispensable forever — it's temporary. Single points of failure must be eliminated.
The right way to be indispensable? — Be a catalyst for providing significant business value.
Be a CTO who thinks strategically; leverage your technical knowledge, product mindset and business acumen to collaborate with the other executives, and run engineering as a profit centre instead of a cost centre.
P.S.
Which of Tom's mistakes can you spot?
P.P.S.
As a manager, which of Tom's mistakes have you NOT made?
BTW:
Are you in Tom's predicament? — I'll help you fix it.