Stop Doing These 14 Things If You Want to Be a Great CTO



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I’m not adding to your to-do list—I’m flipping it. These are the habits that keep you reactive, overwhelmed, or straight-up invisible to the rest of the exec team. I walk through the traps that I see CTOs fall into again and again, from packing your calendar like a bad game of Tetris to leading every decision and chasing every shiny trend. These aren’t theories. They’re mistakes I’ve coached dozens of tech leaders through—and screwed up myself too.

You’ll Learn:

• The real reason packing your calendar wall-to-wall kills strategic thinking
• What happens when you delegate tasks but not decisions
• The quiet damage of assuming your team understands the company vision
• Why translating tech into business outcomes changes your exec team influence
• The simple phrase that makes hard feedback easier to hear and act on
• What it feels like to stop chasing trends and start trusting fundamentals
• The surprising link between avoiding trade-offs and leadership gridlock
• How overusing jargon weakens your clarity and authority
• What most CTOs get wrong about culture—and how to fix it
• Why punishing mistakes kills innovation faster than any bad process

Timestamps:

[00:00] Introduction

[03:06] Why filling every hour kills your ability to lead

[04:15] The problem with working without strategic alignment

[05:01] Delegating tasks vs delegating decisions

[06:41] What happens when people don’t understand the vision

[07:50] How to translate engineering into business language

[08:55] Why leading with opinion weakens your credibility

[10:00] The cost of chasing every shiny trend

[11:00] You can’t scale if you lead everything alone

[12:58] How to have hard conversations and handle feedback

[13:54] Why jargon destroys clarity and influence

[14:50] What culture is actually made of

[15:36] Stop punishing mistakes if you want innovation

[16:31] The danger of forcing rigid frameworks

[17:29] How indecision leads to gridlock

[18:49] Quick-fire recap of the 14 habits to stop

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.