CTO · VP Engineering · Head of Engineering
New CTO: Your First 90 Days in an Inherited Org
Ninety days is what you get. Not because a book says so, but because that is roughly when the CEO stops hearing "still mapping the org" as diligence and starts hearing it as drift. An inherited org makes it harder: the person who knew where the bodies are buried left, and the org kept running on habits nobody chose.
This is one of the six situations CTOs bring to me most often. The pattern below comes from sitting next to leaders in exactly this seat.
The situation, from the inside
Prior CTO left three months ago. Nobody documented anything. Two engineering directors are interviewing at competitors. Tech debt is three years old and nobody can quantify what it costs. First 90 days are halfway gone and I still cannot answer "what do we own on the platform" without a caveat.
You have probably tried
- Setting up 30 intro 1:1s (learned nothing new after the first 8)
- Asking the outgoing CTO for a handoff doc (he wrote a paragraph)
- Reading the last 6 all-hands slides for context
- Deferring every strategic call to "after I understand the org"
How we tackle it
Structured 90-day intake: stakeholder map, delivery diagnosis, retention risk ranking, tech-debt impact score. We identify the two highest-leverage moves and I coach you through defending them to the CEO. Everything else waits.
Target: By day 90: two committed initiatives with owners, dates, and metrics. Retention risks named and addressed. Everyone stops asking "what do we own."
Working it 1:1
Bi-weekly 60-minute sessions, weekly while the fire burns. I have sat in the seat: built Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn from 8 to 80 teams, led engineering at Manta before IBM acquired it, and spent 4+ years in the Bay Area as Principal Software Architect at Databricks. The pattern data comes from 3,400+ unique sessions with engineering leaders in 17+ countries. Rated 9.17/10 on average across 300+ reviews.
Pricing is public: 430 EUR per session, 361 EUR per session for ELC members, or 2,580 EUR per quarter (6 sessions over 3 months). You only pay for a session you rate 7 out of 10 or higher. Full pricing.
Related reads
The other situations CTOs bring
- The board wants a delivery number →
- Technical due diligence before a raise →
- AI adoption pressure from the board →
- Every decision routes through you →
- A sounding board without politics →
All six, plus the questions CTOs ask most: CTO coaching & mentoring