Andrew Bird

Consulting CTO at Tetra Powered

Can you please provide a little introduction about yourself

Having been in sales for 10 years, I found a client who wanted software to run their sales team. (This was 27 years ago) I looked at a few companies and decided to show the limitations available and so suggested building a custom product. The client agreed to pay a large sum of money upfront and I went away and built a system in 9 months (3 months late) which was used for 11 years. My delay was caused by a friend’s son who had just left university with a first in computing who suggested Visual Basic wasn’t a valid programming language.  Switched to C++ and entered the world of pain. I found Visual Basic was 5x faster than C++, so I finally delivered a hybrid approach. This was the start of my technology journey

What has your journey to your position been like? What path have you taken?

Being from a sales heritage, I was always comfortable asking for money, so all technology investments had to be on the basis of sound financial justification. ( cos we always have to steal money from sales, so a good proposition is always necessary to justify investment) I have found the purpose of the CTO is to justify the investment.

Has it always been your vision to reach the position you’re at? Was your current role part of your vision to become a tech leader?

Being able to justify technology investment over other departments naturally promotes anyone to the lofty heights of leadership. You naturally speak the language of the boardroom and conversations with the business are swift. 

Have you had a role model or mentor that has helped you on your journey?

I have been very lucky. Very early on in my career, I challenged myself to become a professional and studying my craft. I have 10+ mentors in various industries including sales leaders. Finding a mentor in technology was hard finding a good one. Juval Lowy, the software legend (according to Microsoft) became my mentor 12 years ago and is still my friend and mentor. He made me realise it’s often counterintuitive. That the hurds all perform the same stupidity and couple their technology design to specific requirements, and when the requirements change there is a large coat of change. By decomposing a system based upon VOLITILITY. The impact of change is minimised. Further, when designing a system it takes about 50 random scenarios to get to a system that can withstand multiple decades of growth.

How do you see the role of the technology leader evolving over the next 5 years?

Until technology leadership is universally allowed a seat at the top table it will always be a second-rate citizen. Until it delivers on its promises regularly it will not be trusted. Our industry delivers between 66% and 83.9% partial or complete failure according to the CFO not seeing promised value delivered. Until these figures lower it’s unlikely we will progress

What skills do you think leaders of the future will need in order to thrive?

We need to study change and complexity. Not change management, the volatility within businesses. The forces upon businesses that cause change and design systems that encapsulate that volatility. That said industries are standardising yet we are only offering basic systems of record. We are not building an observable system that allows organisations to make credible predictions. Few systems are actually complex, but only complicated. Banking is simply complicated. Bearing in mind banking is pretty much standardised we should be heading towards cheaper banking systems. Yet we are cobbling together out-of-date systems and claiming it’s new technology. Which is simply not true.

How do you keep current with new skills, technologies and personal development?

I write presentations about the principles of technology to make sure I stay current. E.g. what is the decision-making process for a new database? What is a good API strategy? All too often there is no strategy or plan to make the organisation powerful. So I write about how to make organisations powerful. 

What do you see as the next leap in technology that will impact your business or industry in particular?

Personally, I feel better business architecture is the key to making an organisation more powerful.  All businesses want to be able to dynamically produce products and services on demand, but are never equipped to do so. Inertia is hard to deal with but we have to deal with it head-on. So the next leap should be about empowering the business to be able to respond to new opportunities it doesn’t yet know about.

“Observe your industry and work out what is moving and what is stationary.”

If you were mentoring a leader of the future, what advice or guidance would you give to help them on their way?

Observe your industry and work out what is moving and what is stationary. Create a strategy about being ready for immersing markets and not turning up late

Is there anything in particular that you would still like to achieve in your career or what is the next step on your journey?

I would like to work with a larger organisation that wants to respond to new opportunities but is disabled because of legacy systems. I would like to define a strategy that is powerful and enables the boards vision. I don’t believe in accepting huge legacy costs, but believe in creating win-win scenarios for suppliers to improve their value over time

If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

I would like to enable business people to be able to define business systems without their need for technology people. That would require a new discipline that understands processing but is completely achievable given the gigging economy

A big thank you to Andrew Bird from Tetra Powered for sharing his journey to date.