Podcast – Episode 7:
A CTOs Epic journey

Charles Griffith, CTO at MilesZero, and previous to that, Technology Vice President of Transportation at Amazon, shares his journey as a CTO. An incredibly experienced tech leader with an interesting voyage. One that went something like this:

• Gaming industry
• To working at Amazon in the formative years
• And then to a Startup … and Exit

Through Charles’s story, be inspired to find the path for your own journey and see how making it varied can lead to long term success, thus creating a well-rounded tech leader. One of the key takeaways from the Podcast is that Investing in your journey from a place of awareness is a powerful success trick. Leading you to places where you want to be, rather than where you just end up.

“Ultimately, every day, ask yourself, is this what I should be doing and what is it I really want to do. I think if you’re not asking yourself to basically accomplish something that’s historic; you’re setting your bar too low. Because we only go through life once. So, you should always be moving forward. And I think that’s another reason I moved out of games after a certain point, and out of various companies where I got comfortable. [This] is because I said to myself, “what am I doing” “I’m not improving myself,”; whether that’s by challenging myself or by what I’m delivering. And so I will say, in retrospect, maybe I’ve hurt the world two times. Games, in terms of what I’ve seen from my kids being so absorbed in games versus the rest of the world. And now, perhaps with Amazon in terms of what that’s done to other retailers. But you can’t hold yourself responsible for how your deliveries are used, but you should hold yourself responsible for continuously improving.”

Key Points from the Podcast are:

• Designing a varied journey builds a strong foundation for your career
• Experimentation and failure leads to new deep learning and one that can have surprisingly long term successes (look at Amazon)
• Do what you love, and continuously learn from it (avoid comfort)
• Building high performing teams around you is a leadership art based on people chemistry

TLDR: Straight to the point
(Quick Links)

We all live busy lives, and sometimes a long Podcast is too much of a time-footprint for our busy schedules. So, to help you get to the bit you’re more interested in, use our table of contents below. Quick links to help you get straight to the point.