Having been a CTO I can tell you the only way to be a good one is to accept responsibility for everything under your control. I'd always tell my team my real job was to be the first one to catch bullshit as it rolled downhill and take as much of it as humanly possible (sparing them as much as I could).
You can very easily disrupt and prevent bad cultures by intervening and setting a good example. Once you're a C-level everything is your fault and only your fault because you have the power to stop it. After it being your fault, it's a process problem, only if it's assuredly not a process issue can it then be someone else's fault.
Saying it's the COO or HRs fault is to ignore the problems of culture; ones that YOU allow to exist. Your department/team WILL listen to you and often reflects your ideals and attitudes in the business. By simply being lazy is to create a culture that says it's okay or participate in it (whatever it is). I think this sort of thinking is pretty shameful to be honest and largely why most manager/executives are looked at poorly.
Lead by example and obviously the examples from Uber's executives are to be huge pieces of immoral shit. If you're at the top and you deny your responsibility you're a terrible person.
Sorry if this comes across as harsh, but after having done the job and hopefully done it well (only the teams under me could say for sure)-- this makes my blood boil. Being a CTO, or executive, is a lot harder, different, and complicated than I had ever thought it would be. It's a role that I can hardly recommend to most people who want to do it well.
You can very easily disrupt and prevent bad cultures by intervening and setting a good example. Once you're a C-level everything is your fault and only your fault because you have the power to stop it. After it being your fault, it's a process problem, only if it's assuredly not a process issue can it then be someone else's fault.
Saying it's the COO or HRs fault is to ignore the problems of culture; ones that YOU allow to exist. Your department/team WILL listen to you and often reflects your ideals and attitudes in the business. By simply being lazy is to create a culture that says it's okay or participate in it (whatever it is). I think this sort of thinking is pretty shameful to be honest and largely why most manager/executives are looked at poorly.
Lead by example and obviously the examples from Uber's executives are to be huge pieces of immoral shit. If you're at the top and you deny your responsibility you're a terrible person.
Sorry if this comes across as harsh, but after having done the job and hopefully done it well (only the teams under me could say for sure)-- this makes my blood boil. Being a CTO, or executive, is a lot harder, different, and complicated than I had ever thought it would be. It's a role that I can hardly recommend to most people who want to do it well.