Podcast
The CTO Playbook
Hosted by Adam Horner · EN
Join Adam Horner, a CTO with over 30 years in the tech industry, on The CTO Playbook — the podcast dedicated to helping CTOs excel. Perfect for CTOs and tech leaders navigating the complexities of their roles, each episode offers clear insights, innovative strategies, and practical advice from top leaders in tech.
With Adam’s extensive experience mentoring engineers and tech leaders, and over a decade as a CTO, you’ll gain the tools and knowledge to build and refine your own CTO playbook. Whether you're tackling complex projects, fostering innovation, leading teams, or shaping your company's tech strategy, this podcast is your go-to resource.
Adam’s journey from engineer to strategic CTO was challenging. He learned through the school of hard knocks, making avoidable mistakes and facing countless challenges. Often out of his comfort zone and wishing for more guidance, he created this podcast to provide the support and advice he once lacked.
Tune in for engaging interviews, leadership tips, and the latest in technology strategy. Each episode is designed to help you lead with confidence and level up as a CTO.
Listen now to start your journey with The CTO Playbook and build your own playbook to excel in your role.
19episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
99: Why Transformations Die Just Before They Succeed
1w ago00:58:28Tap to summarizeThe most dangerous moment in a transformation isn't the start, it's the stretch right before behaviours actually start sticking.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.My guest is Anders Wengelin, partner at Friktion in Malmö, who spends his weeks inside large Swedish healthcare organizations trying to help them build new core capabilities without reaching for a neat plan.Leaders kill change at the exact moment it's about to take hold. Not because the work is failing, but because nothing visible has shipped yet.Anders walks through how his team thinks about behaviours as the only concrete thing in an organization, and why operating models, maps and rollout plans are abstractions people hide behind. If you've ever felt the pull to add structure the moment ambiguity shows up, this one will sit with you.Three questions, nine parts, and one uncomfortable truth about what real change looks like inside large, regulated organizations.You'll Learn:[0:00] Introduction[2:40] Why large, compliance-heavy organizations struggle most with acquiring adaptivity[6:00] The detour every tech-heavy org takes before talking about what actually matters[14:06] Why leadership teams grasp for maps and plans the moment complexity shows up[21:13] The three questions behind Friktion’s transformation strategy playbook[30:00] The camera test for behaviours, and why curiosity isn't a behaviour[33:45] How behaviour spreads like a virus, and why rollouts never work[38:26] The three nested loops that keep continuous change moving[41:11] Success looks like nothing is happening right before momentum kicks in[45:41] Why you don't need a majority before behaviour change tips[52:34] The trap of sneezing at a crowd instead of infecting one context properlyWant to go deeper on everything Anders covered? Friktion's sandpapers are free to download at friktion.se/sandpapers.Find more from Anders on LinkedIn.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →98: The Office of the CTO at RevenueCat, with Miguel Carranza
2w ago00:47:46Tap to summarizeWhen do you stop being the CTO with all the answers and start being the one who asks better questions?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Miguel Carranza built RevenueCat into critical infrastructure for thousands of mobile apps, and he'll tell you straight that he never wanted to be a manager.He got his first computer at age eight and moved from Sevilla to Silicon Valley to build things. Somewhere along the way, he had to stop being the best engineer in the room and start hiring people better than him.His worst hire is already on the team. That's not a red flag, it's the whole point of how he builds. The Office of the CTO, which he set up, exists precisely to keep that bar moving.The engineering managers who never wanted the job are the ones who work out. The smallest pull requests have caused the biggest outages. And AI is making his teams smaller, not larger.If you're a founder CTO trying to figure out when to delegate and when to dig in, this one will sit with you.You'll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[01:12] From Sevilla to Silicon Valley: what drove Miguel to chase computers over everything else[08:15] Building Elevate revealed a mobile subscription problem nobody had solved yet[10:48] What changed Miguel’s mind when he doubted himself as a CTO[17:16] Why engineering managers at RevenueCat must be ex-engineers first[20:31] The mental model Miguel uses to hire people better than himself[22:23] How AI is shrinking team sizes and who it benefits most[29:45] The small internal team Miguel deploys to new bets and stuck projects[35:49] The five rules Miguel refuses to bend on as an engineering leader[42:01] Why RevenueCat's biggest outages came from one-line pull requests[43:39] What actually makes RevenueCat's engineering culture distinctConnect more with Miguel on X and the RevenueCat website.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →97: Stop Hiring More of the Same — Michelle McDaid, The Leading Place
3w ago00:46:45Tap to summarizeWomen weren't pushed out of tech once. There were multiple waves, and the patterns are still showing up in how teams get built today.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com - the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Most engineering leaders think their hiring process is neutral. Changing the job spec brought my guest three women applicants the following week, and her team hired two of them. Michelle McDaid spent two decades leading globally distributed engineering teams, became the first female director of engineering at her last company, and left it with 50% women in that role.She then went back to university to put the evidence behind what she'd already seen on the ground. We sat with some of these ideas together at CTO Craft Con in London a couple of weeks ago, and the conversation was good enough that I wanted to bring it here. She's unusually calm about uncomfortable truths, and that's exactly why this matters. If you believe in diverse teams but keep ending up with more of the same, the gap isn't your intent. It's what you don't even know to look for. This one challenges the default assumptions most technical leaders never examine, and gives you something practical to do about it.You'll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[02:29] What trust actually has to do with uncovering the real problem in any organization [06:50] What Michelle's career across banking and tech revealed about leadership and self-worth [15:56] Why the gender gap in tech is neither natural nor inevitable [24:36] How the language in your job spec is quietly filtering out the people you want to hire [28:36] The smallest changes that move teams from fearful to collaborative and how AI fits in [33:47] A 10-point framework for intentionally broadening your talent pool [44:20] What women lose in meetings every day and how anyone can change it Resources Mentioned:The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart | BookWhere Did the Women Go? by Michelle McDaid | ArticleTextio | WebsiteGender Decoder by Kat Matfield | WebsiteLearn more from Michelle on her LinkedIn and The Leading Place website.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →96: Why the Best CTOs Don't Have a Playbook — Ric Hill, Ghyston
May 1800:41:40Tap to summarizeMost CTOs are promoted for technical judgment, then get stuck trying to lead people with the same playbook that got them there.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Ric Hill has spent 14 years running Ghyston with his wife, CTO'd for startups and mid-corporates, and earned a spot on the CTO Craft 100. His central conviction is that there is no playbook worth following blindly.Most CTOs are promoted on technical skill and then judged on leadership. The reflex is to import what worked last time. Ric argues that reflex is the problem.What replaces the playbook is a sharper version of listening, knowing how long your "fresh eyes" window actually lasts, reading the difference between an unhealthy political culture and an unhealthy apathetic one, and noticing which person on your team has gone quiet.This is a conversation about staying flexible without being indecisive, and delivering results without forcing a template onto a situation that doesn't fit it.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[11:29] Why bespoke beats cookie-cutter software[13:50] The first few weeks decide everything[16:23] How long until you're part of the furniture[18:19] Health versus outcomes in tech leadership[20:21] The sticky note roadmap that changes everything[25:38] Disagree and commit without losing trust[28:40] When stubbornness becomes a liability[30:35] Listen for the silences in your team[32:59] Why engineering culture can stand apart[40:20] The one tip every new CTO needsCheck out Ghyston for your software development needs.Find more from Ric on LinkedIn.Listen to Ric’s podcast, Giant Minds: From The Bristol Tech Community, on Spotify or Apple.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →95: The Leadership Signals CTOs Send Without Realising It with Paul Kinkaid
May 1101:09:26Tap to summarizeWhat if the biggest impact you have as a leader isn’t the strategy you set, but the signals you leave behind in every interaction?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.In this episode, Paul Kinkaid, a former British Army officer, founder of Forensic Outcomes, and executive leadership coach, introduces a principle from forensic science: every contact leaves a trace. Those small moments, the way you listen, the way you respond, the way you make decisions, shape how your leadership is experienced across an organization.The focus is on the smallest behaviours that most leaders overlook, and how those behaviours shape trust, culture, and performance.Leadership isn’t just about decisions or strategy. It’s about the signals you send every day.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[00:06:02] What leadership presence is and why people listen before you speak[00:09:10] Why pressure exposes the difference between real and performative leadership[00:12:04] How small behaviours shape trust, clarity, and psychological safety[00:21:36] What happens when leaders send the wrong signals without realizing[00:34:12] Why the gap between intention and impact grows over time[00:48:27] How communication patterns shape culture more than strategy[01:02:14] What it takes to notice and shift the signals you sendResources Mentioned:Locard Exchange Principle by Saferstein, R., et al. | ArticleGet Paul’s book, Forensic Leadership, in print or audiobook and start noticing the signals you’re sending every day. Find more from Paul on LinkedIn, and visit his DactoApp landing page at Forensic Outcomes.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →94: Execution Beats Strategy? Rethinking the CTO Role in the Age of AI
May 400:44:10Tap to summarizeWhat happens when execution matters more than strategy?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Adam Spector is a four-time founder and investor in over 200 startups. He has seen firsthand how quickly expectations have shifted, and why what worked even a few years ago no longer holds up. The bar for startups has moved. Companies that once raised capital on early traction are now expected to show real revenue, working products, and meaningful growth almost immediately.AI is beginning to change what teams can produce, even if it has not fully transformed day-to-day work yet. The pace is increasing, and the gap between what is possible and what most teams deliver is widening. Rigid strategy is becoming a liability. Founders who cannot adapt in real time are more likely to fail as conditions shift underneath them.Efficiency is under a new lens. Metrics like revenue per employee are becoming signals of how well a company actually operates. The underlying question is harder to ignore: what is your role when code is no longer the constraint?You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[06:12] Why the bar for startups has changed faster than most founders realize[10:47] What investors expect now and why early traction is no longer enough[14:33] How AI is starting to affect workflows without fully replacing them[18:05] Why time is becoming the only truly scarce resource[22:41] What happens when startups grow fast but lack a real moat[27:18] Why rigid strategy increases your risk of failure[31:56] How revenue per employee is becoming a key efficiency signal[36:22] What breaks when competitors move faster than you[40:08] How to think about your role when code is no longer the constraintFind more from Adam Spector on LinkedIn and the Chore Website.Find more from Adam Horner on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →93: From SDLC to ADLC: How Engineering Teams are Actually Adopting AI
Apr 2800:24:39Tap to summarizeA CTO hired a star engineer to push AI adoption forward, and within months, the team had lost its momentum, the new hire, and any sense of where they actually were.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Almost every CTO Adam speaks to right now is carrying the same thing: exhaustion beneath loud pressure. The board wants speed. Investors want an AI strategy. The voice in their own head says everyone else has worked something out that they haven't.The pressure to go faster with AI is usually the signal that the real work is somewhere else. Adam has watched organizations try to leap from pure experimentation to mature AI practice through a single hire, and watched what breaks when they do.The fastest engineering teams aren't tuning the engine first. They're upgrading the brakes and tires, the testing automation, the review systems, and the people around the work, before they touch raw speed.Tune in to learn about the three-stage pattern of AI adoption, two contrasting examples that show what acceleration actually costs, and the three postures that separate the CTOs making real progress from the ones spending money to look busy.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[01:08] Why CTOs feel behind even when they’re moving fast[02:48] The three stages of AI adoption and where most teams get stuck[05:12] Why skipping stages creates friction that slows the whole team[08:34] How lack of standards turns fast progress into team-wide frustration[15:06] Why slowing down in the right way is what actually moves teams forward[23:11] How to spot your team’s real stage and decide what to do nextFind more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →92: The CTO Playbook: How to Build Trust, Consistency, and Psychological Safety in Engineering Teams
Apr 2000:43:39Tap to summarizeThe difference between a good CTO and a trusted one often comes down to a personal playbook.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Sam Boswell is the CTO of Terralayr, an energy tech company focused on solving global energy storage challenges. With a background in high-risk infrastructure and scaling engineering teams, he brings a practical lens to how leadership actually works.At the center of that philosophy is a simple idea. Engineers don’t follow leaders because they’re the most technically brilliant person in the room. They follow leaders who are consistent.That consistency doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from a personal playbook. A set of lived principles that shape how decisions are made, how problems are approached, and how people are treated.We get into how that playbook forms over time, why documenting how you think matters more than most leaders realize, and what happens inside teams when that consistency is missing.The result is a grounded look at leadership that moves beyond theory. It shows what it takes to build trust, create safety, and lead in a way people actually want to follow.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[05:12] The shift from coding to leading people[07:45] Turning ideas into outcomes without touching the code[12:18] Why consistency earns trust faster than brilliance[15:42] Writing as a tool for clearer thinking and better leadership[18:36] What breaks inside teams when leadership is inconsistent[22:04] The power of a personal user manual for faster trust[26:31] There’s always a move, even when you feel stuck[30:12] Small principles that compound into better decisions[36:48] Psychological safety as the foundation of real performanceResources Mentioned:OODA Loop | WikipediaThe Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code | WebsiteNotion | WebsiteKnolling | WebsiteTom Sachs’ 10 Bullets | WebsiteTime Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein | Book or AudiobookJoyful Militancy: Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times by Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery | Book or AudiobookEve Online | Video GameKanban Tool | WebsiteFind more from Sam on LinkedIn.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →91: The Hardest Upgrade for Technical Leaders: Leading Without Losing Your Edge
Apr 1300:38:52Tap to summarizeWhat if leadership isn’t about managing people, but about owning decisions?Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.I’m joined by Michael Di Prisco, who describes himself as “a software engineer struggling to realize that he became a tech leader”.Michael was pretty reluctant to become an engineering manager and leave the keyboard, but he started moving outside his comfort zone one step at a time. He gradually found a balance where he still writes code, but it is not expected of him.We explore how authority and responsibility actually work inside a team. He explains why every engineer should understand the business, and what changed when he started delegating code instead of doing everything himself. That shift did not slow the team down. The quality of their coding was becoming better, and people could focus on what they wanted to do more.We also get into documenting technical debt and how his team reached a point where they solved more debt than they created. If you are thinking about the move into leadership, this is a grounded look at what that shift might actually involve.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[02:05] Stepping into leadership felt like losing his edge as an engineer[06:45] A small move outside your comfort zone can shift your entire career path[08:30] Coding stopped being expected and started becoming a deliberate choice[12:10] Teams can improve when a tech lead stops doing all the coding and starts delegating[16:20] The hidden gap between responsibility and authority most teams never fix[20:15] Engineers make weaker decisions when they don’t understand the business[24:40] Letting go of best practices can reveal what actually works in your context[27:10] Documenting technical debt can lead to actually reducing it over time[31:25] Small steps and honest feedback often outperform big career movesResources Mentioned:The Software Architect Elevator: Redefining the Architect's Role in the Digital Enterprise by Gregor Hohpe | BookArchitectural Decision Records (ADR) | WebsiteGitHub | WebsiteAstro | WebsiteCodeMotion Conference | Websitejsday - The Italian JavaScript Conference | WebsiteItalian Agile Days Conference | WebsiteDive deeper into Michael’s ideas on software engineering and leadership on his blog.Find more from Michael on LinkedIn.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
Transcribe →90: Data Is a Leadership Problem, Not a Technical One — A Playbook for CTOs
Apr 600:38:26Tap to summarizeMost teams don’t have a data problem; they have a decision problem.Build your own CTO Playbook at www.theCTOplaybook.com — the leadership platform built for the full CTO journey. Coaching, podcast, and community to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.Nic Granger, Chief Information and Financial Officer at the North Sea Transition Authority, joins me to share her perspective from the intersection of data, finance, and transformation in a highly complex, regulated industry.Nic leads a multidisciplinary portfolio spanning digital, data, and core services, with a focus on enabling better decisions across the energy transition.We get into why data strategy is fundamentally a human challenge, not just a technical one, and how data-driven decision making only works when people can actually access and trust the data. You’ll hear how data leadership shifts when the goal isn’t dashboards, but real-world outcomes like energy security and decarbonization.We also unpack why jumping straight to AI in business often misses the point, and what it really takes to build strong data foundations that support scale. If you’re responsible for digital transformation or shaping CTO strategy, this will likely reframe how you think about value, not just volume.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[03:15] The value of data has nothing to do with the data itself, and what it actually comes down to[07:30] Nic's realization that turning petabytes into value is a people problem, not a technology problem[10:05] The mistake most organizations make with data is jumping to AI before they've solved anything[13:00] What decades of vital data trapped in unreadable PDFs look like, and what AI is doing about it[16:45] Making industry data freely available unlocked competition from smaller players and academia in ways nobody expected[21:20] Your team is probably already asking the right data questions; you just have to listen for them[27:45] The reason Nic's team swapped the word "process" for "workflow" and what the language shift actually changed[31:20] Digitizing a paper trolley process revealed hidden data that now predicts industry trends[37:00] The one thing Nic says every CTO should prioritize in the next 90 days to unlock data valueIf you want to support the work Nic mentioned, become a member of the Bat Conservation Trust. Resources Mentioned:CTO Craft | WebsiteUK National Data Repository (NDR) | WebsiteBat Conservation Trust | WebsiteFalklands Conservation | WebsiteLovable AI | WebsiteBase44 | WebsiteIf you want to support the work Nic mentioned, become a member of the Bat Conservation Trust. Find more from Nic Granger on LinkedIn.Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and explore coaching, cohorts, and how you can stay up to date at theCTOplaybook.com, helping you build your own playbook for your path at your pace.
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