Are You a Peacetime or Wartime CTO? Your Company Needs Both

Have you ever noticed how different CTOs seem to have completely different jobs?

Some are deep in the code, making rapid-fire decisions about architecture and deployment.

Others spend their days in strategic planning meetings, carefully weighing every technical decision.

They're both right.

As a founder and CTO who's built and sold successful software companies, I've lived through the evolution from wartime to peacetime leadership.

I've made the journey from being the guy writing code at 2 AM to launch a critical feature, to being the executive carefully planning our technical roadmap quarters in advance.

The transition isn't always smooth, and many technical leaders struggle to find the right balance. In fact, this might be one of the most misunderstood aspects of technical leadership - knowing when to charge ahead at full speed and when to pump the brakes.

Some CTOs get stuck in permanent wartime mode, treating every decision like a do-or-die moment. Others shift too quickly into peacetime, losing the innovative edge that made their company successful in the first place. The real art is knowing when to deploy each style.

Let me share some insights from my journey that might help you navigate this balance in your own organization.

The Wartime CTO: Innovation at Light Speed

Every startup begins in wartime.

You have to move fast and make quick decisions.

There is no time for lengthy deliberations about tech stack choices or database architecture.

A wartime CTO needs to be hands-on and ready to jump into the trenches.

You're not just making technical decisions - you're often writing code, architecting solutions, and doing whatever it takes to validate that customers actually want what you're building.

In wartime, innovation is required for survival.

If you're in peace mode during the startup phase, you're essentially a walking zombie, and your startup won't make it.

The key lesson of wartime leadership is speed over perfection.

The Peacetime CTO: Stability and Scale

Everything changes when your company starts generating millions in revenue.

The peacetime CTO's primary mission is protecting and scaling what works.

In established companies, radical innovation becomes risky.

You can't just move to the cloud on a whim when it might disrupt thousands of customers.

You can't completely overhaul your product when it would require retraining your entire user base.

Peacetime CTOs focus more on management and operations than hands-on technical work.

Their decisions are more calculated, more measured, and inherently more conservative.

The key to peacetime leadership is calculated growth without disrupting what works.

The Hard Part: Leading in Both Modes

Here's where it gets tricky - most growing companies need both modes simultaneously.

You might have a stable core product that needs careful maintenance while also building innovative new features to stay competitive.

This dual-mode reality creates significant challenges:

• How do you maintain different development velocities within the same organization?
• When do you choose stability over innovation?
• How do you keep your best technical talent engaged when parts of the system need to move slowly?

I've seen many companies struggle with this balance.

You might have one team moving slowly on your legacy product while another team is trying to innovate quickly on new features. This creates cultural challenges and can lead to confusion about your company's true technical direction.

The success of your technical leadership depends on recognizing which mode each initiative requires.

Finding Your Balance

As your company grows from startup to scale-up, you'll need to master both leadership styles.

The trick isn't choosing between wartime or peacetime - it's knowing when to deploy each approach.

The best CTOs I've worked with can seamlessly switch between both modes.

They know when to push for rapid innovation and when to slow down for stability.

They understand that different projects and different teams might need different approaches simultaneously.

There's no perfect balance - only the right balance for your company's current stage and goals.

Want the full story? This article is based on my latest Product Driven episode.

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Matt Watson is the host of Product Driven and co-founder of Full Scale, a global staffing company that helps businesses build and scale their engineering, finance, marketing, and admin teams. A three-time founder, he grew VinSolutions to $30M ARR before a $150M exit, later sold Stackify in 2021, and continues to share insights from his entrepreneurial journey through his podcast?and this newsletter.

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