When I became a CTO in 2011, the job was fundamentally about infrastructure reliability and system delivery. Keep the servers running. Deliver projects on time. Manage vendor relationships. Stay within budget.

I could do most of that job without talking to customers, without understanding unit economics, and without having an opinion on business strategy. The CEO wanted the technology to work. That was the bar.

That bar has moved so dramatically in the past five years that many CTOs I know are struggling to keep up. Some are honest about it. Most aren’t.

What Changed

Three shifts happened simultaneously, and together they’ve transformed what organisations expect from their technology leaders.

Technology became the product. In 2011, most companies used technology to support their business. Now, for many companies, technology IS the business. Your customer-facing digital experience isn’t a channel—it’s the primary way your company creates and delivers value. The CTO who doesn’t deeply understand customer behaviour and product-market fit is flying blind.

AI moved from theoretical to operational. Two years ago, AI was something the CTO could delegate to a data science team. Now the CEO, the board, and every business unit leader has questions about AI strategy. The CTO needs informed opinions on everything from generative AI governance to automation ROI to ethical deployment. Not deep technical expertise necessarily—but genuine understanding of capabilities, limitations, and business implications.

Cyber risk became existential. The OAIC Notifiable Data Breaches Report shows Australian data breaches continue rising. Boards now hold technology leaders personally accountable for security posture. The CTO who treats security as the CISO’s problem is the CTO who gets called into the boardroom after an incident.

The Skills Gap

Most CTOs got promoted because they were excellent technologists. They understood systems architecture, could debug complex problems, and managed technical teams well.

Those skills still matter. But they’re table stakes now. The modern CTO also needs:

Commercial fluency. Can you read a P&L? Do you understand customer acquisition costs? Can you articulate how a technology investment changes unit economics? If not, you’re having a fundamentally different conversation than your CEO.

Storytelling ability. The board doesn’t want a technical briefing. They want to understand risk, opportunity, and trade-offs in language they use every day. The CTO who can’t translate “we need to refactor our microservices architecture” into “we’re spending $400K per year on workarounds because our systems can’t talk to each other properly” loses the budget conversation every time.

Vendor scepticism. Every vendor is selling AI, digital transformation, cloud-native everything. The CTO needs to cut through marketing and assess what’s genuinely useful versus what’s relabelled old products. This requires both technical depth and commercial awareness—a combination that’s rarer than it should be.

Talent strategy. The Australian tech talent market has shifted significantly since 2024. Remote work has globalised competition. AI is automating some roles while creating demand for others. The CTO who doesn’t have a workforce strategy is the CTO who can’t staff their roadmap.

What I See in Practice

I mentor several CTOs through an informal network, and the pattern is consistent. The ones who are thriving have deliberately expanded beyond their technical comfort zone. They attend industry events that aren’t technology conferences. They read business publications, not just tech blogs. They’ve built relationships with CFOs, CMOs, and heads of sales—not just engineering managers.

The ones who are struggling are doubling down on what made them successful in the first place. More technical depth. More hands-on coding. More architecture reviews. These are valuable activities, but they’re not what the role demands anymore.

One CTO told me recently that he spends 60% of his time on technology decisions and 40% on business conversations. I told him his ratio should probably be reversed. He didn’t like hearing that, but six months later he admitted I was right.

The Uncomfortable Conversation

Here’s what nobody says at CTO meetups: some current CTOs aren’t suited for what the role has become. That’s not a criticism of their capabilities—they’re often brilliant technologists. But the role has evolved beyond pure technology leadership, and not everyone wants to evolve with it.

If you’re a CTO and you dread board presentations, avoid customer conversations, and find business strategy discussions boring, that’s worth being honest about. There are excellent careers in technology that don’t require those things. Chief Architect, VP of Engineering, Distinguished Engineer—these roles still reward deep technical expertise without demanding commercial fluency.

The worst outcome is a CTO who stays in a role that no longer fits, slowly losing influence because the organisation’s needs have outgrown their skill set. I’ve seen it happen to good people, and it’s not fair to them or their organisations.

Adapting Is Possible

The good news: these skills can be learned. Commercial awareness, communication, strategic thinking—none of these are innate talents reserved for MBA graduates. They’re learned skills that improve with practice.

Start by sitting in on sales calls. Read your company’s financial statements until you can explain them. Ask your CFO to walk you through how they evaluate investment decisions. Present to the board without slides full of technical architecture diagrams.

The CTO role is harder than it’s ever been. But it’s also more influential than it’s ever been. Technology leaders who can bridge the gap between technical excellence and business impact are among the most valuable people in any organisation.

The question is whether you’re willing to become that kind of leader, or whether you’re waiting for the role to go back to what it used to be.

It’s not going back.