CTO Playbook: Leading Change Without Chaos — Giorgia Prestento

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Logic alone won’t land; people react to change emotionally.

In this episode, I sit down with Giorgia Prestento, a behavioral scientist and author of The Change Maze. She’s here to show why change so often derails and how CTOs can lead through it with clarity and confidence.

We break down why rational explanations fall flat, the different speeds leaders and teams move at, and how losing control sparks uncertainty and anxiety. A call center story shows how rewarding quick answers without customer outcomes skews behavior. A Hong Kong example proves that “ask your line manager” messaging failed culturally, so we rewrote it to a nominated peer contact. A pre-mortem setup surfaces blind spots by declaring the project failed and collecting reasons before execution. We run through an eight-step playbook from purpose and alignment to blind spots, impacts, resistance, indicators, validation, and finally execution.

You’ll Learn:
The reason logic-only change pitches backfire
What happens when leaders move faster than teams
The link between the metric you reward and the behavior you get
What it feels like to run layoffs twice
The reason pre-mortems work
What happens when you don’t set indicators early
The link between purpose, alignment, and smoother execution
What happens when a key trainer is missing
The damage of losing clarity at the top

Timestamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[05:18] Why logic fails when leading change
[10:42] The emotional side of resistance and uncertainty
[15:56] How leaders move faster than their teams
[20:11] The blind spot that halted a global SAP rollout
[26:27] Why bad metrics destroy good behavior
[31:03] Cultural barriers that derail transformation
[36:49] The pre-mortem method for spotting hidden risks
[42:08] The eight-step change playbook

Resources Mentioned:

Master the Change Maze by Giorgia Prestento | https://amzn.to/478ZYgR

Giorgia offers a short assessment 'Leaders: Are You Change Ready?' You will gain valuable insights across the categories of Leadership Style, Change Expertise and the Readiness of your organisation. It takes less than 3 minutes. You get readiness scores in a personalised report. Plus a digital copy of her book, Master the Change Maze. https://bit.ly/giorgia-click-here-to-...

You can connect more with Giorgia on   / giorgiaprestento  .

Find more from Adam on   / adamhorner   and check out Adam's CTO coaching company Synova Tech. https://www.synova.tech/

If you prefer listening check out his podcast. https://bit.ly/thectoplaybook