[jroseattle]

Cool, thank you for the context (which is everything in these situations.) And apologies if I implied things that weren't the case; just my reading/interpretation of the post.

My primary criticism of the CTO's email was that it didn't seem direct, which I've found is the most important aspect when communicating in that role. With all the intentions of being inclusive and providing avenues for flexibility, I've found the interpretations are most often viewed as ambiguous. The higher up the chain, clarity becomes so much more important. Live and learn, in my case.

In terms of consensus building, I had to do the same thing. For me, we accomplished that through objectivity -- we were constantly evaluating. We asked team members who liked technology A to provide brown-bag sessions on technology B. We had "skin-the-cat" sessions, where we would have a team of two or three implement a somewhat basic solution in three different ways (you know, nine ways to skin a cat....). It took some doing, but essentially what we did was enable developers who might not be so flexible to considering alternative technologies to get comfortable with those by spending time using them and providing an opportunity for them to say "this sucks" or "this is awesome". The team, as it was constructed, really responded well to this. Not only did they feel involved, but they were also tacitly preparing themselves to accommodate a shift, no matter which way it went. I was really surprised at how well the team became empowered; it was not something I was expecting to see.

Your CTO definitely had a tricky process and conversion to balance. I empathize, it's so easy to do a mediocre job with things that one wouldn't expect to matter quite so much.