The No CTO Flaw

Of all the sins of companies starting new digital consumer or partner-facing initiatives, there is a major flaw and misunderstanding about how innovation happens to support the business. This flaw is so rampant and obvious, it's a wonder more people haven't gotten there yet.

The flaw? No CTO.

The job of a CTO is to help the company grow revenue faster through innovation. Period. No more goals. The goal of IT is to keep answering the Helpdesk when some executive has forgotten their Salesforce password for the 20th time.

See the difference?

If your new D2C (it can be B2B too) initiative starts with marketing or sales they will go to the IT team to make it happen.

This blows up because it's the IT's team job to reduce risk. What's the point of innovating? You can't maintain control and compliance in a system that's changing. No incentive.

All it does is make your job harder, because when the system breaks you will be up at night, likely being yelled at.

If the transformational change doesn't come from the Board, the initiative is ultimately doomed to fail in any number of ways - even when it might be successful - because there is no mechanism to change the company enough to adopt the changes that may be necessary for the company's survival.

Sebastian Brain del Rio asked if it’s “CTO or CDO? Do they fulfill the same role, or are they any differences?” Good question. Often it can be the same person, it almost depends on the company. I find sometimes what used to be called a CMO is now a CDO. Sometimes former CTOs are now called CDOs. It's almost less about the role than it is about the person. They key point is this: if there is one person who thinks about the corporate IT infrastructure like the network, wifi, email, phones, and software needed for employees, it should absolutely be a different person who wakes up every morning thinking about the technology infrastructure needed for the customer's experience with their products.