#363 Maintaining the North Star from a CTO Perspective: Francis Lacoste on the Inner Game of Leadership

The CTO Show with Mehmet Gonullu

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, we have a thought-provoking conversation with Francis Lacoste, an executive coach specializing in CTOs and VPs of engineering. Francis shares his journey from being a software engineer to taking on leadership roles at Salesforce and Heroku, and now coaching executives in scaling startups. He delves into the challenges faced by startups as they grow, particularly the transition from a small team to a larger organization. Francis highlights the identity shift that technical co-founders experience as they move from product builders to organizational leaders, emphasizing the importance of understanding and navigating this personal transformation.

Francis also discusses the critical role of culture in startup growth. He explains that as teams expand rapidly, maintaining a strong, cohesive culture becomes paramount to avoid chaos and dilution of core values. He provides insights into how leadership teams can champion and sustain the desired culture, ensuring everyone is aligned with the company’s North Star.

The conversation further explores the concept of the ‘inner game’ of leadership, which involves self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and character development. Francis links these inner qualities to effective leadership, particularly in fostering psychological safety within teams. He underscores the importance of vulnerability-based trust and how it can be cultivated in both in-person and remote work environments.

Francis shares his experiences with remote work, dating back 25 years, and offers practical advice on maintaining team cohesion and clarity of purpose in distributed settings. He touches on the impact of rapid technological changes, like AI, on startups and the pressure these developments place on CTOs to stay ahead. He advises balancing attention to external innovations with a firm grounding in the company’s core mission and values.

Throughout the episode, Francis emphasizes the importance of creating space for reflection and maintaining a clear vision to navigate the fast-paced startup environment effectively. He advocates for using frameworks like OKRs or V2MOMs as tools to communicate and align with the North Star but warns against overcomplicating them.

More about Francis:

Francis is an Engineering Leadership Coach who helps CTOs and VPs of Engineering at scaling tech startups nurture amazing work cultures and high-performance teams that build products and services that delight their customers.

Until early 2023, Francis was the Senior Director of Software Engineering, Culture, and Engagement at Salesforce, where he coached top engineering managers to be better leaders as they helped grow the company and build a culture of collaboration and innovation across the Salesforce Platform engineering division with 1200 people.

He has spent 25+ years working from home in the open-source and cloud developer tools industry and also previously worked at Heroku and Canonical, where he built successful high-performance remote engineering teams.

https://thevpe.coach/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/francislacoste/

01:09 Francis Lacoste's Background and Role

02:26 Challenges in Scaling Startups

03:35 Identity Shift and Cultural Challenges

06:55 Leadership and Accountability in Startups

09:43 The Concept of Inner Game

12:20 Balancing Business Needs and Team Well-being

17:54 Maintaining Culture in Remote Teams

24:56 Frameworks and Adaptability in Startups

34:25 Navigating Technological Changes

39:21 Final Thoughts and Contact Information