I am new here and I have no idea whether our technology is in good shape.
You are three weeks in. The technology budget is a number you cannot yet justify. The person running it is either the reason things work or the reason they do not, and you have no basis to tell which. Every vendor in the building wants a meeting.
You will be asked to sign renewals and approve projects before you have the context to judge them, and the first few of those decisions will set expectations you have to live with.
Asking the incumbent team to assess themselves produces an honest document that is structurally incapable of telling you the thing you most need to know. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because nobody can see the gap between what they built and what good looks like elsewhere.
Asking a firm that also sells implementation produces a different distortion. The assessment finds work, because that is what the assessment is for. A report that recommends changing nothing is not a product anyone sells.
An independent read, with a position
Spend, risk, capability, and the people. Not an inventory. A stated view on what is fine, what is fragile, and what needs a decision this year, from someone who has run the function and has nothing to sell you afterward.
Tell you what is already good
Most assessments only list problems, which leaves a new executive unable to tell a sound foundation from a lucky streak. Naming what works is as useful as naming what does not, and it protects the people who built it.
Separate the urgent from the merely untidy
Some of what you inherit is genuine exposure. Most of it is just old. Knowing the difference is what stops a new executive from spending their first-year credibility on the wrong project.
Hand it back, or hold the seat
If the function needs leadership while you hire, we can hold the seat on an interim basis and help define and fill the permanent role. If it does not, we say so and leave.
Inheriting a function you cannot yet evaluate?
Tell us what you walked into. We will tell you what an independent read would cover and whether you need one.
Start the conversation