THE INTERIM CEO/CTO
Helping your organization adapt in a rapidly changing world
You must focus on making the most out of what you have, to execute and to get bottom-line results. I can bring decisiveness and proven expertise to your team: As a mentor, mediator and implementer.
With +30 years of experience in the technology industry (software, IT, professional services outsourcing, product development, R&D) and online communication & publishing companies, I am focusing on driving your organization's main values while bridging the skills and backgrounds of your different teams, ensuring your corporate culture is breathing purpose and shaping your organization for the next iterations and growth. I am often in the position to help you identify new, latent asset potential and market opportunities.
About you
You might be...
- ...a new organization in need of building up your team and you require an experienced C-level manager to be quickly in place to then hand-over in due time to a regular position.
- ...an established corporation bringing in new, lesser known technologies or processes, missing the skill set on the team for ensuring a smooth transition.
- ...missing the talent on the team that move your existing solutions from middle grounds to the forefront of your market.
- ...struggling with interpreting the current market situation and how to translate that into workable solutions and service offerings.
- ...an organization that is growing quickly, but your growth is organic and comes with severe organizational pain and the turnover rate of your employees is increasing rapidly.
- ...a distributed organization with delivery teams and competences geographically dispersed resulting in quality of deliverables, satisfaction on the teams and communication suffering.
Roles I take
I can be of use from an annual quarter on-wards:
- As a C-level interim manager where I bring in CXO-level team player experience
- Team lead where I can support the organization in critical growth phases, ensuring that the team delivers
For short-to-medium term commitments, I can be of use
- As a coach acting as support and a guide, mainly supporting founders, CEO’s or CTO’s, or
- As an analyst, helping your team creating assets in form of complete enterprise offerings, or authoring positioning papers in an early stage venture
The best match between your needs and what I can deliver is to be found in the following kinds of organizations:
- Software product and services delivery, also with complex setups and geographically distributed teams from different cultures
- IT-solutions and services delivery
- Online-media & communication
THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN COACH
Do you as C-level manager or founder need direct, actionable support?
Often a company may lack certain expertise, founders may struggle to identify certain opportunities, or to define objectives that align with their vision. It might be overwhelming for the teams to define measurable goals to work towards, or maybe the hiring process is struggling to identify the right talent.
If your organization is living a culture of purpose, you will notice how certain aspects of managing your different teams is improving, such as finding talent. The winners of tomorrow belong to this category of purpose-driven organizations. No matter how much luck and chance can drive you to certain heights, you will not get further than that without knowing and planning for tomorrow, a tomorrow which always comes.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT OF WORKING WITH ME
Your team will be "all hands-on deck" while keeping targets in sight
- Organizational management
- Business development
- Strategic decision making
The duration of my work can be as short as a few hours per week for a few weeks up to several months with anything between 2-20 days per month invested. After a shorter, initial phase capturing current status and objectives, the goals to be achieved should've been defined and a managed, tight focus on these over the engagement duration should deliver results.
After we have been working together for some time, you should be thrilled about the possibilities you and your organization have. You should be excited about your teams future and its capability of a more effective and robust delivery, all while you are contributing positively towards our environment and society.
CLIENTS
Generating assets over time
Staying focused is key to results
Throughout a typical year I am working on 2-4 projects, some are client projects and others will be my own, such as Nikonians. I try to stay true to the Pareto principle, also when it comes to focus: There are as few items as possible on the list of my active tasks, never more than 20% of all the potential items.
Often I am involved in helping my clients align their vision with reality, transforming sometimes fuzzy statements to clear, emotionally connecting objectives with goals the teams are truly committed to achieve.
A significant part of my work is spent on asset creation for my clients, growing your organization's net value. Such assets might be large, such as complete enterprise platforms or being components of such larger systems. But, they might be significantly smaller, still being important in propelling the organization forward. Such smaller, but still critical items might be where I can bring in my quite broad, technological background to write product white-papers and to author strategic positioning papers in early-stage ventures.
Focus
...only 20% of all potential tasks are being worked on.
Importance
... 80% of the items I work on for my clients are important, but seldom urgent.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Coaching, organizational management & content-collaboration ...
- Nikonians community re-organization
- entrilion content collaboration startup
- enprovia re-structuring
- Coaching a PR & Marketing agency in Bratislava, Slovakia
X-PROJECTS
Past projects & positions
- VP of Professional Services
- VP of Engineering
- Systems Architect
- Project Manager
- Software Developer
- Firmware Developer
Throughout the years I have worked in a large variety of projects and organizations, mainly with a technical and organizational focus, often with CEO, CTO, VP or PM hats.
This is definitely not a complete list, but should hopefully give you a good idea about my past work.
SOFTWARE
Sample of software I've been working on
Since I started coding at the age of 13 back in 1978 on the Uppsala University’s “Norsk Data” mini computers (Pascal, Basic, cross-assemblers), I have written more than a few lines. Lots of it has been in various cross-assemblers for e.g. 8085, 6800, Z80, 68000, 80x86, TMS320, lots of C and C++, Objective C, various flavors of Pascal, PHP and Java. I am mainly writing in Java as is.
Over the years I have made some code available as open-source and I am currently restructuring various code bases and libraries to make some of them available on github at a later date. Contact me if you are interested.
Unlock the potential within your organization.
MY BIOGRAPHY
Get to know me
My technological and managerial background, while wearing both CTO and CEO hats working with teams from different cultures often comes in handy.
My name is Bo Stahlbrandt, born and grew up in Sweden. I have had the chance to gather over 30 years of in-depth experience in the IT industry. I've founded Nikonians® and enprovia®
I am working hands-on coaching technology-intense startups & entrepreneurs in Europe, engaging with talented people to solve complex issues.
I am fluent in English, German and Swedish.
My interests
In addition to helping organizations thrive and adapt, I have a few other interests:
Deep adaption for climate chaos, Genealogy, History, Literature, Photography, Physics, Radio, Running, Sailing, Security and Software engineering.
HIGHLIGHTS
I am a member of:
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation, USA
- Österreichischer Versuchssenderverbandes (Austrian radio amateur organization)
- Free Software Foundation Europe (supporting member)
Sr Software developer, Project Manager & VP
living systems AG – Trading platforms, e-commerce, auction platforms. Heading +100 team members – Germany, Romania
Founder
enprovia® – Outsourcing specialist for Enterprise Software Engineering incl. enterprise content management and mobile device integration – Germany, Slovakia and Belarus
Interim CEO/CTO & Hands-on Coach
Working with technology-heavy startups: on-boarding, coaching founders, helping setting up the organization, hands-on team leading, business development.
Let's connect
The duration of my work can be as short as a few hours per week for a few weeks up to several months with maybe 2-10 days per month invested. After a shorter, initial phase capturing current status and objectives, the goals to achieve should have been defined and a managed, tight focus on these over the engagement duration should deliver results.
After we have been working together for some time, you should be thrilled about the possibilities you and your organization have. You should be excited about your teams future and its capability of a more effective and robust delivery, all while you are contributing positively towards our environment and society.
Get in touch
Working onsite, engaging with you and your team is a given. To be most effective, I am trying to stay within European time zones.
Should you be interested in discussing your organizations requirements and to see if there is a match with my capabilities, please do reach out. I am fluent in Swedish, German and English.
I am on Mastodon