The P&L Perspective: Why Technology Leaders Need a GM Chapter

It was just one month after my company acquired a cybersecurity company when I learned that the founder had decided to leave. I also discovered that the executive team of this acquired company would be heading for the exits because the deal structure just wasn’t going to work for them.

In the weeks that followed, 70% of the executive team that had run and operated this company would be gone. I was the CTO of the acquiring company and the executive most familiar with cybersecurity. It was the divisional president who encouraged the CEO to give me a chance to help during this moment of need.

I didn’t hesitate. I jumped at the opportunity.

People often assume these moments happen by accident, but it was my conversations with that divisional president and with the CEO about my ambitions to grow and develop that allowed me to have this opportunity.

What we estimated would be 90 days turned into 18 amazing months. I had taken on P&L responsibility twice before in my career when the business needed someone to lean in. Those earlier experiences reshaped me. They taught me what it feels like to sit in another leader’s seat, to carry their customer issues, the revenue pressure, the people challenges, and the strategic choices.

They forced me out of a technology mindset and into a business-owner, P&L mindset.

So when the founder walked out and the leadership team followed, I knew exactly what the moment represented. It wasn’t chaos. It was opportunity. And I wanted it because I had learned firsthand that stepping into the business unlocks growth you simply can’t get by staying in your functional lane. This was truly an opportunity of a lifetime.

What followed over the next 18 months wasn’t just a turnaround. It became the sharpest lesson of my career in what it really takes to run a company end-to-end.

Why CIOs Need to Own A P&L or Run A Business At Least Once

When you suddenly run a company, the work changes immediately.

Your day stops looking technical and starts looking like a master class in the entire operating model. And you quickly learn all the things you don’t know that you thought you knew. It’s one thing to understand how systems work and how data flows across a company. It is entirely different to be truly accountable for the architecture of how these things work together.

I woke up learning about lead optimization through SEO and whether the demand engine was even targeting our ideal customer profile.

• Were we aligned on who our ideal customer profile even was? For what size company? Which industries? And did we have the right analytical data? Were we even looking at the right dashboards to understand what level of leads we needed to support the business?

I found myself immediately evaluating our pricing models to understand whether they were sensible and competitive.

• Was pricing the reason we weren’t selling the way we had been just one year ago? Why hadn’t these prices been updated recently?

By midweek I was hearing from customers who were uneasy. They had been very comfortable with the prior leadership. The founder had been there for 17 years. They wanted reassurance. They wanted clarity. They wanted to know that the lights were on and that someone was committed to serving them the same way they had been served for the decade before.

Suddenly, you’re not thinking like a CTO or CIO. You are thinking like the person responsible for the health and stability of an entire business. It gave me immediate respect and admiration for those divisional presidents and CEOs who do this so well.

One of my early mentors told me that the best way to lead as a CEO is through ruthless prioritization.

You need to know what you’re going to say no to and stay focused on the things that matter.

From a technology lens, this was easy for me to do. I had been doing it for decades. From a business lens, I was learning. I didn’t have all the right answers, and I wasn’t sure what the right priorities were, but I was about to find out.

You start seeing technology, product, sales, customer success, finance, and marketing as one interconnected system. One flow of value. All of a sudden the technical debt stops being abstract and starts having hard-dollar implications. Product prioritization becomes profitability strategy. Security policies become sales friction or sales accelerators. Every decision has a customer on the other end of it.

That perspective changes your leadership forever.

It was ironic that we were in the business of selling boot camps because I truly felt like I was in a boot camp myself.

As time went on, I earned the respect and cooperation of the team that was there, and together we were committed to making sure that the company didn’t miss a beat and that we would perform at least as well as the prior year. And indeed we did.

That had everything to do with the team. I was merely a vessel to help connect them.

Here’s Some of My Advice for CIOs and CTOs:

• Say yes to the opportunity that stretches you: If someone offers you broader scope, take it before fear starts negotiating. You gain more judgment in three months of owning a P&L than in three years of functional excellence. I know my functional leaders may not agree with that, but I found it to be true. After stepping back into the CTO seat, I wasn’t the same leader. I made decisions faster, communicated more clearly, and saw trade-offs with sharper focus. This experience reshaped my instincts and made me a better partner to the business.

• Build teams that make you braver: Stop hiring people who are waiting for instructions. Build teams who thrive in ambiguity and elevate the thinking. During that 18-month stretch, I rebuilt most of the leadership team in real time. I told every new hire the truth: the founder had left, the team was thin, and I needed leaders who were ready to run. That honesty created alignment, accountability, and psychological safety. The team didn’t just stabilize the business. They raised its trajectory. We were in this together: the new leadership team, myself, and all the employees who were part of this business.

• Get P&L ownership wherever you can: If you can’t get full line ownership, ask for it. Volunteer for a troubled business unit. Step into a transition. Take an interim role. I assure you the value you will gain from this is immeasurable. There’s no substitute for carrying revenue, margin, customers, and people on your shoulders. You learn to think like an operator. You learn context beats theory. And you learn that technology decisions are never just technology decisions. Nothing will make this more apparent than walking a mile in these shoes. Every architecture choice, every roadmap call, every security policy I’ve shaped since then has been stronger because I’ve lived the business impact on the other side.

The opportunity will come. You don’t know when, and you don’t know if it will be as clear as this was for me, but it will come, and I encourage you to take it when it does.

By the end of those 18 months, we rebuilt the team, reset the strategy, and stabilized the business.

No, it was not perfect, but the outcome could have been so much worse. The team did an amazing job stabilizing the business, stabilizing the organization, and supporting our customers through this acquisition and transition.

I returned to the CTO role and we hired a full-time leader for the group who had experience in this area. Some of the key hires I made are still there today, leading and accelerating success at the company, proving they were the right leaders at the right time.

I reflected as I returned to the CTO role, but the leader who came back wasn’t the one who left.

Once you carry a P&L, your worldview changes.

You see the business differently. You understand pressure differently. And you make decisions differently. That is the real lesson.

Opportunities that scare you the most are often the ones that define your entire career. For CIOs and CTOs who want influence, strategic weight, and the ability to shape the future, you must step into the business at least once.

The moment will come. The question is whether you recognize it and whether you have the courage to step in when the phone rings on the drive home from Boston, like it did for me.

I did, and it changed everything.