🍓 Curious Leadership, Context vs Silver Bullets, Updating Tuckman, Golem Effect, Tracking Interruptions, Being Bad at Stuff: TMW #460
Getting AI prototypes to scale is tough - join us on Dec 9th to learn how to survive it
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Massive thanks to Ten10 and The Scale Factory for sponsoring this week's issue! Join us all for a chat about production-ready AI on Tuesday
Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to the week
If you're based in London, we'll be gathering local members of the CTO Craft community for some casual drinks and discussions, along with our friends from the Bartech network, in Clerkenwell on December 16th. We'd love to see you there - drop us your details here:
CTO Craft Mixer: London
Join us for an exclusive CTO Craft Mixer in London, with delicious food and drinks generously sponsored by Vention. Connect with senior tech leaders in a relaxed, informal setting.
Not in London? We have a bunch of local Mixers in other cities coming up in January and February, and they're a great chance to network with peers and learn how others are coping with the challenges of leading technology teams. Take a look here to see everything that's coming up:
Free networking Mixers for tech leaders near you | CTO Craft
Join dozens of other CTOs and technology leaders in a relaxed environment for networking, chat, ideas, feedback and drinks.
That's it, on with the links! See you next Monday
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Con - Dates for Your Diary
CTO Craft Con: London
Join CTO Craft Con: London - an intimate, community-centered gathering for engineering leaders to connect, learn through insightful sessions, and build real peer relationships in a supportive environment.
CTO Craft Con: Toronto
Join CTO Craft Con: Toronto- an intimate, community-centered gathering for engineering leaders to connect, learn through insightful sessions, and build real peer relationships in a supportive environment.
CTO Craft Con: Europe | CTO Craft
CTO Craft Con: Europe 2026 Be the first to know CTO Craft Con: Europe arrives in Amsterdam, 29-30 September, 2026. Two days of real conversations, practical sessions, and peer connections designed for technology leaders across the continent. Register your interest today to get early updates, first access to tickets, and the latest speaker announcements. Register Your interest
SPONSORED
Two-thirds of organisations struggle to move AI proofs of concept into production. Why?
CTO Craft and The Scale Factory surveyed 200+ tech leaders to uncover the real blockers. Join Mike Mead, Ash Gawthorp, and Michelle McDaid as they unpack exclusive findings and discuss what’s truly holding teams back.
Leadership, Strategy & Business
Leadership is a Constant Experiment
why curiosity beats certainty, and how small tests make teams stronger.
Alan Page
The Future of Leadership Is Already Here—And It Looks Exactly Like Your Team - Organizational Physics
Summary Insight: AI agents and human teams fail for the same reason—context overload. Master the principles of context engineering, and you’ll lead both more effectively in this new era. Key Takeaways: Both AI agents and humans have finite attention budgets—overload either one with irrelevant context and performance degrades. The best leaders curate high-signal inputs, externalize […]
Lex Sisney
The question great managers ask instead of giving answers
A simple shift that turns you from problem-solver to leader
Kelly Vaughn
Stop Looking for Silver Bullets and Start Looking at Your Context - Yaniv Preiss
Still convinced there is a silver bullet for your business, architecture, team structure, quality and speed?
Yaniv Preiss
Culture, People & Teams
Tuckman’s Model vs Modern Teams: A New Five Stage Approach
Find out why Tuckman’s model falls short for modern teams and how a fresh five stage pattern can support leaders in building connection, collaboration and adaptability.
Andi Roberts
The Hard Thing About Decisions: Why Your Teams Are Struggling to Make Good Choices
Your teams aren’t bad at decisions. They’re drowning in them. Here’s how to make better decisions, faster.
Martin Eriksson
The Golem Effect in Engineering Teams
A story about one engineer, one manager, and the quiet ways we manufacture the performance gaps we complain about.
Taha Hussain
How To Deal With Difficult People At Work: 4 Secrets From Experts - Barking Up The Wrong Tree
Difficult people at work can drive you crazy. A clinical psychologist explains the best ways to handle them…
Eric Barker
Technology, Operations & Delivery
Everything New Has Bugs
Increasing velocity and quality
Mike Fisher
Don’t Track Tasks. Track Interruptions.
TL;DR: Instead of tracking your time, try tracking the interruptions instead.
AI is reshaping agile teams but collaboration matters more than ever - Mountain Goat Software
How AI is reshaping agile teams, why collaboration matters more than ever, and what leaders must protect to ensure high-performing teams in the AI era.
Mike Cohn
Building an AI-Native Engineering Team
How coding agents speed up the software development lifecycle
Stress, Wellbeing & Growth
The surprisingly freeing joy of being bad at something
On rediscovering the joy of being a beginner again
Kelly Vaughn
Why Making Your Employees Happier Pays Off
Recent research shows that understanding well-being and maximizing it through managerial practices not only raises employees’ quality of life—it significantly increases productivity and profitability as well. The investment firm Irrational Capital conducts research on the happiness-to-success theory. Using both public and private data sources on employee satisfaction, its researchers found that over an 11-year period ending in March 2025, S&P 500 companies that scored in the top 20% on several key employee-happiness measures outperformed (in stock price) those in the bottom 20% by nearly 6 percentage points. They also found that there were six specific factors behind employee satisfaction.
Arthur C. Brooks
Why Are You Productive For “Only” 5-6 Hours Each Day?
Almost no one is productive for 8 hours a day straight! Learn why and how to think about your daily productivity differently.
Ashley Janssen
That’s it!
If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!
Interested in sponsoring TMW or any of our events? Check out some stats here
Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:
Have an amazing week!
Andy