Should the CPO & CTO report into the CEO separately?

Or should one of them report to the other? And thus only one of them reports to the CEO and is solely responsible for tech?

So i’ve seen a lot of different models to this… and in my view the answer is clear. They should not report separately to the CEO but rather only one of them should report to the CEO. Now let me explain why.

In many orgs the CPO and CTO report to the CEO separately

I would say that this is the traditional setup. The CTO has an engineering and QA team under him and the CPO has the product and design team.

They each report separately to the CEO and so alignment is key.

When they can’t align they often align via the CEO who gets caught in the middle. And given that the CEO is often not the most tech-savvy person.. this can sometimes not be the best way of making a decision.

And can lead to a lot of misalignment throughout the tech team. For example.. i’ve seen in these types of org’s a lot of instances where product and engineering generally have a bad relationship.

And you’ll find processes where PM’s create these big, overly written PRD’s (Product Requirements Docs) that then need to be reviewed by engineering leadership before they go into dev.

This usually slows things down massively, leads to politics, and typically means that product & engineering folks do NOT act like a single team.

I’ve had an inside view into close to 15 tech companies and here’s what i’ve seen

I’ve seen a mix of org’s, particulary having contracted with 10+ tech companies in the past 5 years. And i’d say about 70% of them had CEO & CTO reporting separately whereas 30% of them had only one of them reporting to the CEO.

For example the most common i’ve seen is where the Head of Product reports to the CTO. I, myself, was in this position for awhile in Lazada back in 2016-17.

And initially I was like.. “hmm why I am reporting to this engineer? He knows nothing about product.” But after a few months I completely saw the benefits and actually much preferred it.

Why? Because alignment was strong by default.

You see I was on the Ops side of the house and when i peered over in late 2016 at the Customer-facing product side of the house there was massive misalignment for awhile. Because the previous CTO and the new CPO did not get along. Like at all.

And so eventually they restructured that side so that the CPO also had his own engineers and alignment improved massively.

I have also had engineering report to me in a few contracting engagements and I reported to the CEO.. and always found this wayyyy more efficient than if i had an engineering leader counterpart that also reported to the CEO.

So in my view it’s always better for only EITHER CTO or CPO report to CEO and not both

Its just far better for alignment between engineering and product. And you don’t get into a political tussle.

Even when the CTO and CPO get along really well, which i’ve also seen a number of times, it is just far far less efficient. Why?

Because they need to constantly align with each other. And alignment to me is like the Democrats and Republicans in US politics….

Yes they’ll agree on some things but it will far from be the most efficient way of doing things. Because each will give ground and you’ll get to these non-ideal decisions that account for a bit of what each person wants but is no longer the ideal solution.

Compare that to the situation where one of them decides, eg. the CPO, and when he makes a decision he can just implement it immediately. No wasting weeks of time trying to sell it to the CTO.

This is how organisations move fast. Clear leadership.

Now comes the question.. which one should report to the CEO? Does it even matter?

So I would say that its more common that the CTO reports to the CEO and my personal view is that this is a very bad strategic mistake. Not just because i am a product guy.. but from numerous logical and strategic perspectives.

First let’s understand who a ‘CPO’ typically is:

• A person who typically has a strong commercial understanding and has to know how to think like a commercial person.

• A person who has that strong helicopter understanding of everything that is going on in the business side of the house

Compare that to who a ‘CTO’ typically is:

• A person who grew up the ranks talking mostly to engineers

• And so they just see the world differently.. they’re often not exposed that much to the commercial folks

• And so decisions will be less from a commercial perspective and more influenced by the world they grew up in

Now think about who the CEO will more easily understand and be understood by.

So in my view its clearly the CPO that should report to CEO, and not the CTO

Because they both speak the same language and look at the world in similar ways.

Whereas what I’ve often seen when the CEO has the CTO reporting direct is that the CEO will kind of throw up his hands because he doesn’t really understand the technical nuances and say… “I trust you.”

Not knowing that in doing so.. he may have implicitly taken a decision that goes against what the CPO wanted and what would have been a better decision.

The CTO often cannot do this with the CPO because the CPO knows enough of the technical stuff to understand and decipher what he is saying clearly.

And if you think of it from the CEO’s perspective… if he is now in a situation where he only has the CPO reporting to him what has he ‘lost’?

I honestly almost can’t think of anything. Meaning I see absolutely no advantage to the company of the CTO reporting to the CEO rather than the CPO. And anything you DO come up with is likely an indicator that the CTO & CPO were not aligned.

Thus even more reason they shouldn’t report separately.

Then if that CPO reporting to him does a bad job.. you replace him. Simple. But he will NOT have failed because of misalignment with engineering.

So the important thing is that there is a single direction that the team is marching in. Which is my experience is often not the case when CTO and CPO report separately.