CTO overrule

I’ve written blogs about how our CTO tried to change our release process and announced it on a “Town Hall” call with the entire department; then loads of teams told him it couldn’t be done, so he had to back down.

Then later, on another Town Hall, he tried to change the Change Control process, but wouldn’t back down when we told him it wouldn’t work. He made the claim of it being a sackable offence if we didn’t follow it. Then a month later, he found out someone couldn’t turn a server on because of the Change Control process. He said it was “malicious compliance” and that will be a sackable offence in future. Within a few months, nearly the entire process had been reverted.

Last week, he was talking about how we needed to move a Data Centre to a new location. He said he preferred to move to the Cloud since it is “inline with our strategic targets”. However, after having several meetings with the experts involved in the Data Centre, they decided the best solution would be to move to another data centre. However, the CTO didn’t like this because it wasn’t inline with their strategy and he thought the move would be too slow.

Therefore, he took the executive decision to overrule them and demand they move to the cloud.

“Do I know we can move all servers to the cloud in time? No. But I was prepared to take the risk. I would rather make decisions and be wrong, than sit by and not make any”

CTO

It seemed strange to me to claim that moving to a physical data centre would be slow, but then moving to the Cloud probably couldn’t be done in time.

He then claimed that

“we have wasted enough time deciding what the plan should be; to move to the cloud or to move to a physical data centre”.

CTO

Isn’t this the worst scenario though? He could have made the decision before any meeting was arranged. But it sounds like they had debated the decision, came to a conclusion, then he told them he didn’t like their conclusion. Then he moaned that they wasted time debating.

So they have had meetings with the experts, and conclude the data centre is the best decision, but since the CTO loves the cloud, he has overruled them. So what was the value of the meeting? And will the staff be motivated to do something they don’t believe in?

“I think I’m compassionate with my team. It’s what binds us together as a team. Otherwise we are a bunch of individuals.”

CTO

I don’t get how he can make these statements and not realise the hypocrisy. How can you be compassionate if you have shown no confidence in their opinions and decision making?