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.
16episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
96: Why the Best CTOs Don't Have a Playbook — Ric Hill, Ghyston
1w ago00:41:40Tap 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
2w ago01:09:26Tap 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
3w ago00:44:10Tap 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
4w ago00:24:39Tap 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.
Transcribe →89: Engineering Velocity for CTOs: How Superhuman Moves Fast Without Sacrificing Quality
Mar 3000:48:43Tap to summarizeIf your team feels busy but nothing meaningful gets delivered, this might explain why.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.Loïc Houssier, an engineering leader with two decades of experience across startups, scale-ups, and global companies, joins me today to explore how engineering velocity really works beyond output metrics.We get into why decision-making speed is often a better indicator of performance than output, and how long feedback loops kill momentum, even in teams that look productive on the surface. You’ll hear how product-led SaaS organizations sustain speed without sacrificing quality, and why reducing the cycle from idea to impact matters more than optimizing coding time.Loïc shares how career ladders and incentives shape behavior in ways most leaders overlook, along with a practical way to spot whether your team is truly fast or just performing speed. We also unpack how user empathy becomes a strategic advantage, not just a design principle.If you’re trying to scale without losing control, this will change how you think about speed, decisions, and what actually drives results.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[8:52] Why velocity isn't really about writing code faster, and where the time is actually going[17:00] The costly mistake Loïc made at DocuSign that he'd still fix if he could go back[21:55] The career ladder is slowly shaping engineer behaviour, and most CTOs aren't using that deliberately enough[31:55] Moving fast without losing quality; what aligned autonomy looks like in practice, and the hiring filter that makes it possible[38:57] How Superhuman's founder uses game design thinking, a 100ms rule, and an 11-star standard to build experiences people actually feelSave 4 hours every week with Superhuman Mail.Find more from Loïc Houssier 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 →88: The CTO Role Has Changed — Why Doing More Isn’t the Answer
Mar 2400:17:21Tap to summarizeWhy does the CTO role feel heavier after you start winning?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.Many leaders in CTO leadership roles are shipping products, raising funding, and hiring well, yet describing a new weight in the role. Decisions feel more loaded. Progress becomes harder to define. The work carries more consequence even when the calendar looks the same.The modern Chief Technology Officer now sits at the intersection of strategy, narrative, and emerging AI strategy expectations. Boards want direction. Executive teams want clarity. The scope expands faster than it is redefined. Pressure no longer replaces pressure. It stacks. That stacking changes the nature of technology leadership.This episode focuses on leadership orientation as the skill that restores executive clarity. Orientation answers two questions before speed: where you are, and which way you are facing. Without it, motion creates confusion at scale. For startup and scale-up leaders navigating CTO career growth, this reframes heaviness as a threshold moment that requires recalibration before acceleration.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[00:46] Why feeling heavier after success can mean the role itself has shifted into a new level of leadership[02:12] What it means when momentum is strong but you are no longer sure where the role is taking you[03:18] How the CTO role crosses a threshold from execution into something more abstract and executive[05:32] Why stacked pressures are changing the nature of the work rather than simply increasing it[06:34] How expanded scope and collapsing time to credibility create hidden cognitive load[09:42] What the treadmill metaphor reveals about working harder without changing your position[11:02] Why reorienting before accelerating is the maturity move most CTOs resist[14:32] The four diagnostic questions that expose where you are still leading from old metrics[15:47] Three practical orientation shifts that reduce friction and restore clarity in real timeFind 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
Transcribe →87: AI Governance for CTOs: Turning AI Risk Into Competitive Advantage
Mar 1700:45:04Tap to summarizeWhat if the biggest risk in your AI strategy isn’t the technology, but the assumptions you never question?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.Today I’m joined by Jill Heinze, an AI Foresight and Strategy Architect who helps mid-size organizations turn AI risk management into sustainable competitive advantage. With a background spanning academic librarianship, market research, digital product strategy, and executive AI governance, Jill has built responsible AI frameworks for Fortune 500 clients and led the creation of a formal governance committee inside a major consultancy.Many executive teams default to speed and competitive pressure when shaping AI strategy, often without structured reflection on downstream impact. Jill explains how anticipatory thinking and structured empathy exercises surface risks that technical teams rarely identify in isolation. She introduces her anticipatory AI horizons and outlines how reframing responsible AI from compliance overhead to strategic discipline strengthens long-term positioning. If you are a CTO balancing board expectations, generative experimentation, and operational deployment, this episode sharpens your thinking around AI leadership, foresight, and building technology that accounts for the human systems it touches.You’ll Learn:[00:00] Introduction[03:18] Why generative AI felt like a whole new animal and the moment that forced a rethink of responsible deployment[05:12] The pattern of we need to be first we need to be fast and what that urgency costs organizations[06:47] How direct user research exposes risks teams never see when they focus only on the technical problem[09:08] What shifts when you treat risk evaluation as part of every AI proof of concept instead of a brake on progress[12:14] The reason some risks are endemic to generative AI itself and how that reframes acceptable use cases[17:36] Why checklists create false confidence and how thinking in horizons changes the way you design and deploy[33:02] The question how do you know that’s true and why challenging embedded assumptions can alter the trajectory of a project[40:18] Where to start if you already have a live AI system and a concern you can’t quite articulate[44:07] The grounding question every CTO should ask before the next AI initiative what are we hurrying up forResources Mentioned:NIST AI Risk Management Framework | WebsiteDownload The Four AI Horizons Guide or schedule a free consultation with Jill Heinze.Find more from Jill on her LinkedIn, YouTube, and 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.
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