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Or you can jump straight to the episode page at helios360.co.uk/podcast/ep002/

In this one, we look at the awkwardness of advocating for customer outcomes, business goals, *and* project team needs all at the same time.

And we look at the odd, often contradictory combination of skills and capabilities that a high performing delivery director should have.

And when we've got a few episodes under our belts, we'll be talking to some great guests, too — fascinating people leading customer delivery from across the board of sectors and specialisms.

And we'll be diving deep into loads of the stuff in The Chief Delivery Officer's Handbook — helios360.co.uk/handbook/

We'll be talking about what it takes to get stuff done in delivery leadership, about why things go wrong, and what can you do to prevent that.

We'll discuss it all — what works in delivery leadership and what doesn’t, and what’s important in the ideas behind the buzzwords.

So far we've put together a short trailer, and we're recording the first episode this week — it'll be out early next week, hopefully!

You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts — details on the page.

Filling this role is both *very important* and *very challenging*.

So, the Handbook updates that will come out later today cover the conversations we had on the issues to consider in hiring for the role of CDO … and a bunch of other things, too.

Added to that, the particular mix of characteristics and strengths needed in this position in the business is necessarily different at each stage of growth — what you need in a 10–20-person business is very different from what you need in a 30–50-person business, or at 100, or at 300, 1,000, etc.

👉 Forecasting and capacity management
👉 Knowledge and skills sharing
👉 Strong sense of team — we’re doing this together
👉 Set standards, and hold people accountable to them

And, they said, it's very unusual to find all of that in one person, making the hiring process especially challenging.

They said that when they're appointing for the role of delivery principal they’re looking for a very special set of traits and capabilities —

👉 High EQ
👉 Strong communication skills
👉 Diplomacy
👉 Strong organisational skills
👉 Outcome oriented
👉 Process driven
…

We've covered lots of subjects in the conversations I've had so far, but one of the things that's become abundantly clear is that the role of CDO (whatever you call that position — delivery director; delivery principal; head of delivery; etc.) is one of the hardest positions to fill.

What does a high EQ look like?

There's many characteristics of someone with high emotional intelligence, but here's 12 that should be at the forefront for an effective CDO.

helios360.co.uk/handbook/wha...

And I'm especially interested in talking to … women CEOs, leaders of non-software engineering businesses, leaders of businesses other than professional services.

LASTLY: I'm always keen to talk to more CEOs on the subject — whether you agree about the need for a CDO, or strongly disagree, or have clear views on what that role is for. In fact, strong opinions are super-interesting. DM me if you'd be up for a chat.

Big thanks to: @tomwillmot.bsky.social at @humanmade.com; Alexander Frison at Syde; Myles Lagolago-Craig at XWP; @jakemgold.bsky.social at @10up.com/Fueled ; and @marucchi.com at Crowd Favorite.