What I Learned Coaching CTOs in 2024: 5 Key Focus Areas for 2025

1. AI Guidelines: Don’t Wait to Put Them in Place

AI has firmly embedded itself in the enterprise, and its influence continues to grow. Many organizations are feeling the pressure to integrate AI into their offerings, but without clear guidelines, this can quickly lead to operational chaos or worse—compliance risks.

For instance, I’ve seen teams inadvertently share sensitive data with generative AI tools like ChatGPT during experimentation, exposing themselves to potential data breaches. On the competitive front, companies that have embraced AI-driven features, like recommendation engines or workflow automation, are already setting new customer expectations. Falling behind here is not just a tech issue—it’s a strategic one.

How to address this:

• Define where and how AI should be used in your organization. For example, automating internal workflows or enhancing user-facing analytics.
• Establish clear data policies that prohibit sharing proprietary or sensitive information with external AI tools.
• Build ethical guardrails to ensure AI outputs are explainable, bias-free, and aligned with your company’s values.

Why it matters:

Organizations without clear AI governance risk more than inefficiencies—they risk customer trust, security breaches, and falling behind in the competitive landscape. The time to act is now.

2. Operational Excellence: The Key to Doing More with Less

2025 is the year of doing more with less. Budgets are tight, and teams are expected to deliver results without expanding headcount. The product-engineering pipeline is where this pressure is often most visible. When feedback loops between these teams aren’t tight, inefficiencies creep in, leading to wasted effort and missed opportunities.

One CTO I worked with shared how their team spent weeks building a feature that, after launch, was deprioritized because it didn’t align with evolving business goals. These missteps are costly, not just financially but in terms of morale and focus.

How to address this:

• Strengthen real-time feedback loops between product and engineering teams. Use collaborative tools to flag blockers and reprioritize quickly.
• Align roadmaps to ensure every initiative supports measurable business outcomes, reducing churn and rework.
• Implement shorter planning cycles to adapt to changing priorities more effectively.

Why it matters:

When your pipeline is optimized, teams can deliver faster and focus on what truly drives value. For a deeper dive into aligning these pipelines, check out our book Ready Steady Grow, which explores how to maximize efficiency and unlock capacity.

3. The Tech Audit: Finding Hidden Cost Savings

As budgets come under greater scrutiny, many organizations are revisiting their tech stacks, processes, and training programs to uncover opportunities for cost savings and efficiency. This is where a tech audit can make a significant impact—not just by trimming costs, but by uncovering inefficiencies that slow teams down.

In my time at Unity, we ran an audit of our storage usage and settings. By standardizing usage practices and clearing out unused backups, we uncovered over $100,000 in cost savings. It was a simple but effective process: we started by analyzing patterns of usage, identified areas of waste, and implemented clear policies for how storage was allocated and maintained going forward. The results weren’t just financial—we also improved operational consistency across teams.

How to address this:

• Tech Stack Consolidation: Identify overlapping or underutilized tools. For example, do different teams use separate project management platforms that could be unified?
• Streamline Operations: Evaluate workflows and storage practices for inefficiencies, as we did at Unity, where unused resources were silently draining budgets.
• Training Programs: If tools are underutilized due to lack of familiarity, targeted training can unlock their full potential.

Why it matters:

A well-executed tech audit goes beyond cutting costs. It aligns teams, eliminates waste, and strengthens collaboration—ensuring your resources are focused on driving growth, not managing inefficiencies.

4. Tech-Enabled Product Roadmaps: Focus on Outcomes, Not Outputs

In the rush to deliver features, many teams fall into the trap of prioritizing outputs—features shipped, bugs fixed, deadlines hit—without connecting those efforts to meaningful business outcomes. But even more damaging is the lack of technical leadership at the table during roadmap discussions. Without early input from engineering, roadmaps are often built in isolation, leading to misaligned expectations, inaccurate timelines, and frustration across teams.

For example, I’ve seen product teams spend months planning a feature set based on sales requests, only to discover late in the process that the complexity and feasibility of their vision weren’t fully considered. This misalignment resulted in missed deadlines, budget overruns, and, ultimately, low adoption of the final product.

What does this look like?

• Outcome-Driven Planning: Instead of asking, “What feature can we ship next?” ask, “What problem are we solving for our customers, and how does this improve our business?” This ensures that both product and engineering are aligned on impact rather than deliverables.
• Proactive Alignment: Bring engineering leadership into roadmap discussions early. Their input on complexity, dependencies, and feasibility will better inform decisions and avoid costly surprises later.
• Customer-Centric Metrics: Focus on measurable outcomes like customer retention, revenue growth, or increased usage, rather than arbitrary delivery timelines.

Why it matters:

When engineering leadership is involved from the start, roadmaps become more realistic and actionable. This proactive alignment prevents miscommunication, reduces wasted effort, and ensures that every initiative delivers value for both customers and the business. Teams avoid the common pitfalls of misaligned timelines and resource misallocation, driving greater predictability and success.

5. Leadership Coaching: Stop Spinning Cycles and Start Leading

A recurring theme I hear from CTOs is the challenge of reinventing the wheel. Leaders often spend too much time validating ideas, chasing down feedback, or building internal processes from scratch, only to realize there were more efficient paths available. Coaching is one of the most effective ways to cut through this noise and accelerate progress.

We often recommend coaching as a booster in specific scenarios: when someone steps into a new role, takes on a transformative project, or begins forging a new path. Coaching is equally valuable when leaders feel stuck or stagnated in their current environment. It provides the clarity, confidence, and guidance they need to navigate these pivotal moments effectively.

How to address this:

• Early Validation: Coaching offers a sounding board to validate ideas quickly and align thinking with proven strategies, especially when peers or mentors aren’t readily available.
• Frameworks for Decision-Making: With the right frameworks, leaders can make faster, higher-quality decisions without unnecessary overanalysis.
• Confidence-Building: Coaching helps leaders develop the confidence to move forward decisively, even in uncertain situations.

Why it matters:

Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation, and coaching is one of the most effective ways to break through stagnation or uncertainty. It’s a critical resource when existing support systems are unavailable or stretched thin. By working with a coach, leaders can focus on high-impact work, avoid costly trial and error, and build the skills they need to guide their teams through crucial moments with confidence.

A Final Thought: We’re Here to Help

The challenges ahead in 2025 are clear: if you’re not focusing on AI governance, operational excellence, tech audits, product roadmap alignment, and leadership development, you risk falling behind in a tightening market. These aren’t just buzzwords—they’re the foundation of resilient, high-performing organizations.

At Ready Steady, we’ve worked alongside CTOs and product leaders all year, tackling these challenges head-on. If these points resonate with you and you’re ready to take action, let’s connect. Whether it’s a call , an email, or joining our Discord community, we’re here to help you build a strategy for success in 2025.