The CTO You Actually Need

The work-samples page in the online companion at intellectualfrontiers.com now offers its scoring table as a spreadsheet download, so you can score candidates side by side in the tool you already use. The page and the rest of the hiring kit are unchanged, and your printed copy does not change.

The book's workbook is now a 32-page online companion at intellectualfrontiers.com that takes you from defining the role to evaluating the appointment. The hiring dossier has seven documents: a need statement, a role-type diagnostic, a decision inventory, a two-page mandate, a hiring bet memo, a known-risk plan, and a first-year evidence file. Eleven checklists and a fieldbook of 14 AI prompts help you do each step with your own company's facts. Eight scorecards cover the startup first CTO, replacing a founding CTO, the growth and scale CTO, the SME CTO, the business-unit CTO, the enterprise CTO, a regulated overlay, and the fractional or interim CTO. Twelve role cards, an interview library with four work samples, six composite scenarios (including "A CTO Appointment That Begins to Fail") and a glossary finish the set. The preface now points to the companion instead of a separate volume.

The CTO title covers very different jobs. A startup builder, an SME technology leader, a business-unit CTO, an enterprise strategist and a fractional adviser can all be excellent, but not for the same company at the same time. This book gives founders, CEOs, boards and business leaders a plain-English process for defining the role, gathering evidence, hiring the right person, and evaluating the appointment at 90 days, 180 days and one year. You learn to decide whether you need a CTO, CIO, VP Engineering or adviser, replace or reposition a founding CTO without creating a shadow role, choose among startup, SME, business-unit, enterprise, fractional and full-time models, avoid the common hiring mistakes such as being swayed by charisma or by a famous company's results, and write a first-90-days agreement. Thirty-three "Ask your AI for help" exercises adapt the tools to your own company and leave the final decision to a person. It has 12 chapters.