News UK CTO describes the challenge of moving firms as a tech leader

Christina Scott explains her priorities as she moved from being Chief Product and Information Officer at the Financial Times in early 2016

Christina Scott, the CTO at News UK, publisher of the Times and the Sun newspapers, has described the challenge of switching employers as a technology leader.

Speaking to Computing recently, Scott explained that she began her new role, which she started in April 2016, by assessing the people and environment.

"The first thing you do in a new job is assess what you're inheriting," said Scott. "You recognise the strengths and development needs of your teams, and take a broader look at the organisation."

One role Scott found to be missing at News UK is that of the chief digital officer (CDO), however she said that didn't feel it was necessary.

One of the challenges she experienced was in moving from the Financial Times, she was leaving an organisation which in her words is "ahead of game compared to most publishers."

"One challenge is in moving into a similar role in another news organisation, and you find lots of things you've already done which haven't been done yet at your new firm. You have to be careful not to go too quickly and leave people behind. There's a sense of ‘I know this problem and I'm going to fix it', but you forget that at the Financial Times the situation evolved and was fixed over time, but you think you know the answer so you want to go too quickly. One of things I've been trying to do is think hard about how to get to the results as quickly as possible, whilst making sure that we're not losing people as we go."

Scott has also found differences between the two organisations in their openness to new ideas, something which has both pros and cons.

"The FT is brilliant, but I think it's also quite cautious. Whereas here, people are really open to new ideas and trying new things, which is refreshing. People will listen to new ideas and go for it here, but the flip-side is you can get quite a scattergun approach. People have amazing ideas here as it's a creative organisation, but it needs a bit of process to help manage it, or it gets too chaotic."