CTO 30-Second Mindset Shift: If You’re Questioning the Leadership Team, the System Is Talking

Read time: 2.5 minutes

CTOs Should Read Leadership Friction in the Correct Ways to Succeed:

1. Questioning the Leadership Team is Data, Not Doubt.
Typical early-year hesitation shows that there is a mismatch between the system and the moment in time.
CTO Action: Treat friction as diagnostic feedback rather than confidence issues.

2. Time Alone Does Not Solve Leadership System Design Issues.
Time does not change the decision rights, incentives or ownership. Pressure tests whether those elements are working throughout the organisation.
CTO Action: Ask, "What does the pressure reveal that time cannot solve?"

3. Phase Fit is More Important Than Capability.
The question isn't "Does this leadership team have strong leaders?" The question is "Are these leaders designed to lead the organisation through the current phase of change?"
CTO Action: Separate the individual capacities of leaders from their ability to fit within the organisational leadership system.

4. Leadership Breakdown Begins Quietly.
Leadership breakdown shows up initially in behaviours such as time for decision-making, lack of clarity about who owns decisions, and loops of alignment...
CTO Action: Identify where the decision-making process is stalled and who lacks clear authority for any given decision.

5. If the CTO is Carrying Others' Decisions, Then the Operating Model is Not Working.
That is not a failure of the team members but a failure of the organisation's operating design as a whole.
CTO Action: Identify which decisions you are carrying for members of your team that do not belong to you.

6. Great CTOs Do Something Before Failure Makes Them Do It.
Delaying this kind of action simply increases the amount of resistance and emotional costs involved.
CTO Action: Reset decision-making responsibilities, decision rights and support structures as soon as possible; the longer the time frame for getting this done, the more difficult it becomes.

💡Key Takeaway: 

As a CTO starts to question the leadership team, the system is already pushing back. The incorrect decision is to not recognize this and wait until near the end to fail, before realizing what the data has already said.