67: People, Process, Technology: The Leadership Formula Every CTO Needs

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What if the real lever isn’t the tech at all?



In this episode, I sit down with Matthew Carr, who does interim work and often comes in as the firefighter when a company has taken a wrong turn. He lays out why people come first, processes second, and technology follows.

He started in classic ASP and built a loyalty program for the heating and engineering sector. Real-time results beat long compile cycles and changed how he delivered. A private-equity buyout couldn’t get the startup’s tech delivered, so he sat one-to-one with everyone to map the problems. Turns out, fixing broken delivery isn’t about new tools. It’s about people, trust, and having the guts to act fast.

You’ll Learn:

• The reason putting people first makes process work and technology follow
• What happens when you plan three sprints ahead and tie outcomes to business value
• The link between quick wins and winning trust in the first 30 days
• The damage of being six to twelve months off on deliverables after a PE acquisition
• What it feels like to inherit a program that hasn’t shipped in 18 months
• The link between weekly iterations, monthly demos, and a product becoming a bedrock of the business
• The reason trust, leadership, and alignment are the core enablers of the people pillar
• What happens when you play their game first by showing a six-week plan the board can approve
• The reason “believe in yourself” is the sharpest one-line tip for new CTOs

Timestamps:

[00:00] Introduction

[05:12] Why people come first before process and technology

[10:46] Lessons from early development work in classic ASP and loyalty programs

[15:58] How a private equity acquisition exposed major delivery delays

[21:37] Running a massive retrospective and uncovering 110 problems

[28:04] The importance of quick wins and building trust in the first 30 days

[33:41] Planning three sprints ahead and reporting outcomes instead of outputs

[38:22] Turning around a project that hadn’t shipped in 18 months

[45:09] How weekly iterations and monthly demos rebuilt momentum

[51:28] The one-line advice Matthew gives every new CTO

Learn more from Matthew on LinkedIn.

Find more from Adam on LinkedIn and YouTube, and check out Adam's CTO coaching company here.