Stepping into a CIO or CTO role can bring immediate pressure to make an impact. But before launching a major initiative or overhauling existing systems, new tech leaders need time to understand the organization’s priorities, technology environment, stakeholder expectations and day-to-day challenges.
That early groundwork can give leaders a clearer picture of what truly needs to change, what’s already working and where their efforts can have the greatest impact. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council share what new CIOs and CTOs should do before trying to prove themselves with a major change.
Set Clear Boundaries On What Won’t Change
My first move was not a change. It was a list of what I would not change for 12 months. New leaders underrate how much fear they walk in with. People are not resisting your idea. They are protecting their peace. Trust is cheaper to buy before the change than after. – Jeetendra Gangele, BluePill
Build Your Own AI Fluency
Before you study the organization, study your own practices. Within a year you will be asked to lead AI adoption across the organization, and you cannot mandate a fluency you have not built yourself. So start at your own desk: Audit how you actually use AI in your decisions, briefings and preparation. Model the change before you ask anyone to follow it. – Anna Drobakha, Groupe SEB
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Meet With Key Stakeholders
The most powerful thing a new CIO or CTO can do before making any major move is to schedule one-on-ones with every key stakeholder—engineering leads, business unit heads and frontline teams—and do far more listening than talking. Ask what’s working, what’s broken and what they’ve been waiting for someone to finally fix. – Adarsh Naidu, Amazon Web Services
Listen To Frontline Teams
Before making a major change, I’d spend time listening to the people closest to the work. Understand where teams lose time, where decisions get stuck and which systems are actually creating value. Compare what leadership believes is happening with what employees experience every day. That context helps you make smarter decisions, build trust and change what truly needs changing with confidence. – Deniz Gezgin, Eightpoint
Study Organizational Context
It’s better to spend time on careful preparation than to waste money and nerves on corrections later. Before altering the entire landscape, new leaders should delve deeply into the current organizational context, consider professional opinions from technology teams, and grasp the insights on existing pain points. Only then can they make informed decisions on any future refinements. – Dzmitry Lubneuski, a1qa
Measure Technology Delivery Speed
Spend your first weeks measuring how long one small change takes to reach production—a rate table, a business rule or a new field on a form. I’ve worked with carriers where that number turned out to be six to nine months, and nobody on the leadership team knew it. That figure tells you more about what you can realistically promise than any architecture review or vendor assessment. I’d recommend getting it before you commit to a roadmap. – Marcin Nowak, Decerto
Map The Existing Technology Environment
Inventory what you actually inherited before you touch it. Most new CIOs come in with a transformation thesis and a 90-day plan. What they skip is the audit of every SaaS app, service account and integration already running. You cannot rearchitect a system you have not mapped. The best first move is quiet: Spend the first quarter finding out what is really there. – Nidhi Jain, CloudEagle.ai
Understand Why Existing Systems Persist
Before changing anything, understand why it exists. Spend time tracing a few critical systems, processes and even workarounds back to the business decisions that created them. What looks outdated may be solving a problem no one has documented. New leaders can lose credibility by fixing the visible technology before understanding the invisible dependencies around it. – Osborn Gomes
View The Organization As Your Customer
When changing roles, expectations change, and one’s perspectives must likewise change. In a CIO or CTO role, the whole organization is a customer whose needs and requirements are different from what you knew before. Talk to your peers, feel their needs and understand their pain. This way, your strategic plan will be focused on the highest positive impact results and the best proof a leader can have. – Fernando Fainzilber, Start Campus
End Work That No Longer Adds Value
New leaders think they can prove themselves by launching something. You prove yourself faster by stopping something. Every organization has a project running on pure inertia that everyone quietly knows should die. Kill one well, with a clear rationale, and you show judgment, free up real capacity and signal that you’ll spend your team’s energy carefully. – Shubhangi Srivastava, NEP SERVICES
Audit Technology Spending And Compliance
Before making bold moves, a new CIO or CTO should map their technology stack and spending in alignment with their organization’s key compliance frameworks to fully understand where they are over- and underinvested. This compliance-mapped audit exposes hidden risks, redundant tools and critical security gaps, giving leaders the baseline needed to make targeted, high-impact changes with confidence. – Sivan Tehila, Onyxia Cyber
Stay In ‘Observe Mode’
Really ensure you listen before you act. Quite often, when people are joining an organization in an executive role, they talk about being in “observe mode” for the first 30/60/90 days. The purpose of this is always framed as learning the lay of the land. I can’t tell you how many execs leave that period without actually fully understanding the problems the business is facing and what has already been tried to solve them. Understanding the problem/solution landscape is critical to succeeding. – Hanah-Marie Darley, Geordie AI
Fix What’s Broken First
Make your first win an unglamorous fix, not a signature launch. New leaders often feel they must prove themselves with something big and swing hard on ground they don’t understand yet. I inherited a system crashing daily. The win wasn’t a bold new platform. It was hardening what was there, cutting login times from minutes to seconds. That earns what flashy launches only promise. Real transformation is a sequence of steps. Fix what’s breaking before you build what’s new. – Corey Ercanbrack, Vasion
Earn Trust Before Leading Change
New leaders often feel pressure to prove themselves by moving quickly, but persuasive leadership starts with trust. Take the time to understand the organization, build genuine relationships with stakeholders and meet people where they are. Once you have earned that trust, you have the credibility to lead meaningful change rather than simply impose it. – Siva Nookala, Decision Lens
Learn to Translate Across Stakeholder Groups
Before pushing for changes, learn the different “internal languages” of an organization. The board, management and IT likely each use different language and phrases for the same projects. Thus, to sell the value, you have to become the translator between the different groups. – Kevin Korte, Univention
Learn From Recent Departures
One move I recommend is reaching out to a few respected professionals who left the organization in the past several months. Ask them what worked, what didn’t, what they wish leadership had understood, and what lessons they learned. Their perspective can uncover patterns and stories you may never hear in formal meetings. Listen to the people who are there, but also learn from the people who recently left. – Saby Waraich, Center for Transformation Mechanics
Align On Business Outcomes
A new CIO or CTO should never take on a major transformation unless the business is equally prepared to share the risk. Too often, if adoption lags or the financial models fall short, the effort is simply written off as an “IT failure.” The smartest move is to align early on the business outcomes and define clear success metrics. That way, the whole project is a shared commitment right out of the gate. – Kostiantyn Gitko, Devox Software
Define Milestones And Metrics Up Front
Before pushing their ideas forward, a new leader must lay everything out and explain it in layperson terms so that the decision-makers and stakeholders all know what the plan is, what the KPIs are and how results are measured. People often talk persuasively about a good idea only to fail in execution. One thing of utmost importance that leaders should remember is the journey from the start to the goal, as the goalposts may significantly shift forward or sideways. Define each milestone concretely, and iterate. – WaiJe Coler, InfoTracer