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