The CTO You Actually Need
How to Hire, Work With, and Evaluate the Right Technology Leader for Your Business
The CTO title hides radically different jobs. A startup builder, SME technology leader, business-unit CTO, enterprise strategist, and fractional adviser can all be excellent, but not for the same company or moment.
The CTO You Actually Need gives founders, CEOs, boards, and business leaders a plain-English system for defining the role, gathering evidence, hiring the right person, and evaluating the appointment after 90 days, 180 days, and one year.
Every chapter includes prompts that adapt the book's tools to the reader's company with AI assistance, while keeping the final decision human.
The CTO title hides radically different jobs. A startup builder and an enterprise strategist can both be excellent, but never for the same company at the same moment.
Inside, you will learn how to
- decide whether you need a CTO, CIO, VP Engineering, adviser, or another leader;
- replace or reposition a founding CTO without creating a shadow role;
- choose among startup, SME, business-unit, enterprise, fractional, and full-time models;
- sidestep the classic hiring mistakes: interviewing for charisma, the famous-company halo, and hiring for the symptom;
- create a first-90-days agreement and a strong CEO and CTO working system; and
- evaluate the role with prescriptive 90-, 180-, and 365-day scorecards.
Details
- Category
- Technology Leadership / Hiring
- Series
- Fieldbooks
- Publisher
- Intellectual Frontiers Press
- Format
- 7x10 fieldbook
What's new
Latest: The interview work samples can be downloaded as a spreadsheet.
Online companion
The online companion to The CTO You Actually Need: the hiring dossier, checklists, AI prompts, scorecards, role cards, interview library, composite cases, and glossary.
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Working fit brief
Decide whether this work fits a real operating problem, partnership, license, or build.
- For
- Practitioners, researchers, founders, and operating leaders.
- What you keep
- A working fit brief you can review, revise, and send.
- What counts as sound
- Answers a named decision
- Separates evidence from assumptions
- Includes the strongest contrary case
- Names missing evidence
- Ends with a test, owner, and date
A promising fit still needs evidence from the intended setting.
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