Stephan Schmidt - October 31, 2024
CTO Coach vs. Chess Grandmaster
How I can see patterns in your work
TL;DR: CTO coaching accelerates pattern recognition in software leadership by exposing coaches to diverse startup scenarios across industries, funding stages, and team sizes—enabling them to help CTOs identify winning moves and avoid common pitfalls faster than learning through isolated experience alone. The core value is training CTOs to recognize these patterns independently, similar to how chess grandmasters develop intuition through repeated exposure to positions.
Part of my CTO Coaching
What have chess grandmasters and CTO coaches in common? Patterns.
The key to becoming a chess grandmaster is to train your brain to understand chess positions and patterns. You play and play and play, and solve positions and solve positions and solve positions from a very young age until you see all these patterns in a position and how to win. How a position will unfold with your moves.
And the same is true for the CTO coach - perhaps except the very young age. I have been a coder for forty years now, and an engineering manager for decades. But my learning went into hypermode when I became a CTO coach. The key: Seeing all the problems of my clients in smaller and larger startups, in financed and bootstrapped startups, before and after investment, in many different industries, with many developers and few developers.
At one point I came to the conclusion, “everyone has the same problems, just different”. I started to see the patterns and positions of software development. I started to see the moves of CTOs on the chess board and how they affected their chances to win.
Though I like chess, I’m far far away from being a good player. But as a CTO coach I can see the patterns, positions and moves of my clients.
As a CTO coach I can see the patterns at play in your situation. I can see the board and where the king will end up. What moves are winning and what moves are losing. The deeper drivers for the way the game plays out.
As a CTO coach I can help you until you see those patterns yourself.
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About me: Hey, I'm Stephan, I help CTOs with Coaching, with 40+ years of software development and 25+ years of engineering management experience. I've coached and mentored 80+ CTOs and founders. I've founded 3 startups. 1 nice exit. I help CTOs and engineering leaders grow, scale their teams, gain clarity, lead with confidence and navigate the challenges of fast-growing companies.
