Taimella ja puulla voi olla sama DNA, mutta niiden roolit ekosysteemissä ovat hyvin erilaiset – aivan kuten tuotejohtamisen juniori- ja johtotason tehtävissä. Johtajien edetessä urallaan heidän huomionsa siirtyy ominaisuuksien tuottamisesta rakenteiden ja tuen tarjoamiseen, jotta tiimit voivat menestyä.
Financial Timesin tuotejohtaja Debbie McMahon pohtii tätä kehitystä ja sitä, miten hänen lähestymistapansa johtamiseen on kypsynyt ajan myötä. Debbie tarjoaa käytännönläheisiä näkemyksiä vakaana pysymisestä, luottamuksen rakentamisesta ja tietoisesta johtamisesta johtotason tehtävissä – aina monimutkaisten sisäisten ja ulkoisten suhteiden hallinnasta sen tietämiseen, milloin suosittuja neuvoja ei kannata seurata.
Haastattelun kohokohdat
- Debbien urapolku [01:28]
- Debbie toimii Financial Timesin väliaikaisena tuotejohtajana, ja hän on toiminut tehtävässä lähes kuusi kuukautta.
- Aiemmin hän työskenteli FT:llä kolme vuotta tuotejohtajana ja vastasi B2C- sekä "sisältö palveluna" -alueista.
- Hän nauttii koko tuoteorganisaation johtamisesta ja pitää sitä erilaisena ja palkitsevana kokemuksena.
- Hänen aiempiin tehtäviinsä kuuluu työskentely BBC:llä sekä Yhdistyneen kuningaskunnan Universal Credit -ohjelman parissa, jossa hänen tuotejohtamisen uransa alkoi.
- Sidosryhmien hallinta tuotejohtamisessa [02:27]
- Uransa alkuvaiheessa Debbie pyrki olemaan puolueeton osapuoli ja asetti todisteet sekä sidosryhmien tarpeet henkilökohtaisten mielipiteiden edelle.
- Myöhemmin hän ymmärsi, että tuote tarvitsee johdonmukaisuuden ja selkeän näkemyksen, johon kuuluu myös hänen oma näkökulmansa.
- CPO:na hän ajaa vahvasti mobiili edellä -lähestymistapaa – ei ainoastaan lopputuloksissa, vaan myös siinä, miten tuotteita rakennetaan.
- Hän korostaa, että on tärkeää tunnistaa oma henkilökohtainen panos tuotteen kehittymiseen.
- Debbie käyttää tuotteen yksityiskohtia, kuten painikkeiden epäjohdonmukaista suunnittelua, havainnollistamaan, miten laatu heijastaa johtamista ja huolenpitoa.
- Tuote- ja suunnittelutiimien välisten suhteiden kehittyminen [04:50]
- Debbie pitää tuotteen ja suunnittelun välistä suhdetta välttämättömänä – ne ovat kuin saman kolikon kaksi puolta.
- PM:t ja suunnittelijat ovat riippuvaisia toisistaan merkityksellisten tulosten saavuttamiseksi.
- Johtajana hänen yhteistyönsä suunnittelutiimin kanssa keskittyi vahvasti toimituksiin ja yhteisiin tulostavoitteisiin.
- CPO:na painopiste siirtyi laajempiin aiheisiin, kuten toimittajahallintaan, tiimirakenteeseen ja tuoteportfolion valvontaan.
- Keskustelut keskittyvät nyt enemmän ihmisiin ja organisaation rakenteeseen ja vähemmän päivittäiseen toteutukseen.
- Hän korostaa, että tuotejohtajien on löydettävä uusia tapoja pysyä yhteydessä työhön vastuiden muuttuessa strategisemmiksi.
En voi korostaa liikaa suhteiden merkitystä. Suunnittelijakollegasi eivät ole vain sidosryhmiä – he ovat kuin toinen kätesi. Ilman heitä kumpikaan teistä ei saa paljon aikaan. Tämä dynamiikka on itse asiassa varsin ainutlaatuinen, ja se sai minut ajattelemaan rooleja eri tavalla.
Debbie McMahon
- Makro- ja mikrotason johtamisen tasapaino [08:05]
- Tuotejohtajana Debbie keskittyi toteutukseen ja pysyi tiiviisti yhteydessä tiimitason työhön.
- Siirtyminen CPO:n tehtävään muutti hänen painopistettään laajempiin, ihmiskeskeisiin päätöksiin, kuten palkitsemiseen, koulutukseen ja organisaatiomuutokseen.
- CPO:n tehtävässä päivittäinen osallistuminen toimituksiin on vähäisempää, ja strateginen johtaminen laajemmassa ja monimuotoisemmassa tiimikokonaisuudessa korostuu enemmän.
- Hänen vastuullaan on nyt 28 tiimiä, joten yhteyden säilyttäminen kaikkeen työhön on vaikeampaa – siksi hän valitsee vuosittain kolme keskeistä painopistealuetta.
- Hän perehtyy yksityiskohtaisesti vain muutamiin strategisiin hankkeisiin säilyttääkseen vaikutusvaltansa ja yhteytensä tuotteeseen.
- Tämä valikoiva syvällinen osallistuminen auttaa sovittamaan tiimit yhteen kokonaisstrategian kanssa ja pitää hänen johtamisotteensa näkyvänä.
- Sidosryhmien ymmärtämisen merkitys [11:53]
- Tuotejohtajien on ymmärrettävä syvällisesti, miten sidosryhmät työskentelevät, jotta he voivat rakentaa tehokkaita ja tarkoituksenmukaisia tuotteita.
- Pelkkä asiakastyytyväisyyteen keskittyminen ei riitä – tuotteiden on oltava linjassa laajempien liiketoimintatavoitteiden, kuten liikevaihdon, asiakaspysyvyyden ja sisäisten työnkulkujen, kanssa.
- FT:n keskeisiin sidosryhmiin eivät kuulu ainoastaan kaupalliset tiimit vaan myös toimittajat, sillä journalismi on ydinpalvelu.
- On olennaista ymmärtää, miten muut työskentelevät – miten heidän työtään mitataan, miten he raportoivat ja mitä he tarvitsevat – jotta vältytään tavoitteiden ja toiminnan eriytymiseltä.
- PM:ien kannustaminen työskentelemään yhdessä sidosryhmien kanssa tuottaa arvokkaita oivalluksia ja paljastaa piileviä ongelmia, kuten ristiriitaisia mittareita.
- Empatia ja sidosryhmien roolien tuntemus auttavat tuotetiimejä tekemään parempaa yhteistyötä ja viestimään uskottavammin.
Ne ajat ovat ohi, jolloin tuoteihmiset saattoivat työskennellä omassa kuplassaan ja sanoa: ”Ainoa asia, josta välitän, on se, että asiakas on tyytyväinen ja hänellä on tarvitsemansa.” Se ei enää riitä. Sinun on pystyttävä asettamaan kaikki tekemäsi liiketoiminnan kontekstiin.
Debbie McMahon
- Ulkosuhteiden hallinta [16:05]
- Ulkosuhteiden hallintaan CPO:na kuuluu toimittajien yhteydenottojen suuren määrän suodattaminen ja merkityksellisten keskustelujen priorisointi.
- Yhteistyö CTO:n kanssa on ratkaisevan tärkeää päällekkäisen työn välttämiseksi ja sen varmistamiseksi, että oikea henkilö hoitaa kunkin ulkoisen keskustelun.
- Teknologia-, tuote- ja datajohtajat ottavat sidosryhmät usein mukaan yhdessä tarjotakseen yhtenäisen ja informoidun näkemyksen sekä välttääkseen toistuvat tai pirstaleiset keskustelut.
- ”Pilaritaulujen” kaltaiset sisäiset foorumit tuovat erilaiset sidosryhmät yhteen, edistävät läpinäkyvyyttä ja yhteistä suuntaa sekä mahdollistavat toimintojen välisen vuoropuhelun.
- Ulkoisten oivallusten jakaminen sisäisesti on kriittistä – Debbie selvittää nykyään tietoisesti jokaisen keskustelun jälkeen, kenen on tiedettävä mitäkin.
- Toisto on olennaista; selkeät viestit on välitettävä usein, jotta ne kuullaan ja niiden mukaan toimitaan.
- Aitous ja tunteiden hallinta johtamisessa [20:42]
- Useimmat ihmiset eivät halua johtajiltaan täydellistä aitoutta – he etsivät varmuutta, eivät henkilökohtaisia ongelmia.
- Johtajien tulisi välttää stressinsä purkamista tiimilleen; se kannattaa jakaa mieluummin kollegoiden tai mentoreiden kanssa.
- Tasapaino on avainasemassa: ole inhimillinen ja jaa aiempia virheitä, mutta älä sellaisia tämänhetkisiä epäilyksiä, jotka voisivat horjuttaa tiimin luottamusta.
- Kovassa paineessa tiimit odottavat johtajilta rauhallisuutta ja suuntaa, vaikka etenemissuunta ei olisi vielä selvä.
- Viestitä haavoittuvuudesta strategisesti – aiemmat epäonnistumiset voivat rakentaa luottamusta horjuttamatta nykyistä johtajuutta.
- Johtajien tulisi ottaa tiimin stressi vastaan, ei lisätä sitä, ja samalla hakea tukea oikeista lähteistä.
- Harkittu delegointi seniorijohtajana [25:15]
- Delegoi mahdollisten vaikutusten perusteella: osallistu enemmän, kun seuraukset ovat merkittäviä, ja tarjoa tukea sen sijaan, että vain jakaisit tehtäviä.
- Hyväksy tiimin päätökset ja luota niihin, vaikka ne poikkeaisivat omistasi – mikromanageeraaminen ei ole skaalautuvaa.
- Sovita osallistumisesi kunkin tiimin jäsenen kokemukseen ja tarpeisiin – uudet haasteet saattavat edellyttää enemmän tukea.
- Tarkista säännöllisesti, että tuen määrä tuntuu tiimistä sopivalta.
- Tunnista, että mieltymykset johtamistyylien suhteen vaihtelevat – se, mikä toimii sinulle, ei välttämättä sovi muille.
- Ole tyylisi suhteen avoin ja mukauta sitä mahdollisuuksien mukaan.
- Kannusta tiimin jäseniä tukeutumaan toistensa vahvuuksiin, ei vain sinuun.
- Yksinäisyys huipulla [28:51]
- Yksinäisyys huipulla on todellista, mutta hallittavissa.
- Rakenna vahva ja monipuolinen vertaisryhmä, johon voit tukeutua ja jonka kanssa voit jakaa taakkaa.
- Ymmärrä ja ylläpidä henkilökohtaisia palautumisen lähteitäsi – olivatpa ne sisäisiä, sosiaalisia tai tiettyihin rutiineihin liittyviä.
- Pidä työn ulkopuolella asioita (ystäviä, perhettä, harrastuksia), jotka auttavat säilyttämään jalat maassa ja saamaan tukea.
- Muistuta itseäsi siitä, että olet ihminen – parhaansa tekeminen riittää.
Tapaa vieraamme
Debbie McMahon on Financial Timesin tuotejohtaja, jossa hän johtaa kuluttajatuotetiimejä digitaalisten kokemusten parantamisessa yli miljoonalle käyttäjälle. Hän keskittyy vahvasti käyttäjälähtöiseen suunnitteluun ja toimintojen väliseen yhteistyöhön, ja hänellä on ollut keskeinen rooli tekoälyteknologioiden integroimisessa tarinankerronnan tukemiseksi ja organisaation innovaatioiden edistämiseksi. Ennen tehtäväänsä Financial Timesissa Debbie toimi BBC:n tuotejohtajana, jossa hän kehitti saumattomia käyttäjäkokemuksia eri palveluihin. Glasgow'n yliopistosta matematiikasta valmistuneena hän suhtautuu intohimoisesti monimuotoisten tuotetiimien rakentamiseen ja osallistavien ympäristöjen luomiseen niin, että ne heijastavat kaikkien käyttäjien tarpeita.
Tarvitset jotain, joka auttaa sinua astumaan työympäristön ulkopuolelle ja samalla muistuttaa sinua siitä, että olet ihminen – todellinen henkilö – ja että pärjäät hienosti. Et tule olemaan täydellinen, mutta pärjäät hyvin. Kunhan teet parhaasi, se on kaikki, mitä voit tehdä.
Debbie McMahon
Tämän jakson resurssit:
- Tilaa CPO Clubin uutiskirje
- Verkostoidu Debbien kanssa LinkedInissä
- Tutustu Financial Timesiin
Aiheeseen liittyvät artikkelit ja podcastit:
- Tietoa CPO Clubin podcastista
- Kuinka laadit yksinkertaisen sidosryhmien hallintasuunnitelman (+ mallipohja)
- Rauhan säilyttäminen: kuinka hallitset kaikkia tuotteesi sidosryhmiä
- Miten tämä CPO onnistui saavuttamaan 350 prosentin kasvun kahdessa vuodessa?
- Kuinka johdat ihmisiä ja rakennat parempia tuotteita
Read The Transcript:
We’re trying out transcribing our podcasts using a software program. Please forgive any typos as the bot isn’t correct 100% of the time.
Hannah Clark: The other day, I noticed a little seedling growing a short distance from an apple tree. It struck me that even though I was looking at two of the same plant, they had very little in common. Despite their shared goal of producing apples, time and maturity had given the tree a gradual but total transformation.
When you look at the seedling, you see the leaves, but when you look at the tree, you see the trunk. And such is the case for executive leadership. The higher you climb the ranks of product leadership, your role centers more and more on providing support, stability, and balance so that every branch can grow.
My guest today is Debbie McMahon, Chief Product Officer at the Financial Times, and I have to say, I feel so privileged to have had this conversation. Debbie shared her candid insights about how her role has changed over the course of her career timeline, particularly with respect to internal and external relationships, including the things no one tells you to do and the things you shouldn’t do, even though everyone says you should.
She also shared her approach for keeping her scope of responsibility balanced, and how intentional relationship building bears fruit. Let’s jump in.
Oh, by the way, we hold conversations like this every week, so if this sounds interesting to you, why not subscribe? Okay, now let’s jump in.
Welcome back to the Product Manager podcast. I’m here with Debbie McMahon. She is the CPO at the Financial Times.
Debbie, I’m so honored that you made time to join us today.
Debbie McMahon: Hi, I’m delighted to be here on a thankfully sunny afternoon here in London.
Hannah Clark: Oh, beautiful. Okay. I’m jealous of your weather. We had snowfall last night, so I’m so good.
Debbie McMahon: Wow. Okay.
Hannah Clark: So can you tell us a little bit about your background and your journey to becoming the Chief Product Officer at the Financial Times?
Debbie McMahon: Yeah, I’ve been the interim Chief Product Officer at the Financial Times for about nearly six months now. Prior to that, I’d spent nearly three years at the FT as a product director leading the B2C part of the business, and also the, I guess we kinda call it content as a service part of the organization.
We only have one homepage, one set of adverts, et cetera. Yeah, that’s my journey at the FT. I’m loving leading the entire product organization, it’s quite different and I think we’ll touch on that a bit today. Before that, I worked in the BBC and before that in Universal Credit, which is a government program within the uk and that’s where I started my product journey.
We know one of these slightly random, wow, how did I end up here? But yeah, it happened.
Hannah Clark: Wow. Yeah, it’s an incredible, and I’d love to dig into a little bit more. Today, we’re going to be focusing on the ways that stakeholder management evolves as we climb the ladder of product leadership, which is a journey that you were very familiar with.
So to kick us off, I’d love to frame this discussion in the context of seeing yourself in the product, which is something that you had mentioned before, looks really different from one role to the next. So what does that look for you across the different stages of your career?
Debbie McMahon: Yeah, it’s really interesting, isn’t it?
When I started out, I think I tried to remain as this sort of neutral party. Somebody who’s no, it’s just, I don’t really have a view. I have no stake here. It’s what does the evidence say? What do the stakeholders need? What does the business need? What our customers are saying? And you sit in this weird world in between and in the end you, I like, I think I realized that doesn’t really work.
Sure, it probably works for most things, but ultimately it doesn’t in the end, work for everything because where is your opinion? It is the thing that also makes the product hang together. Like it has to be coherent, it has to feel like, it’s like it makes sense and if you go with, oh, here’s everybody else’s view, and I’m just collating and figuring out, where the best opportunity is.
Like it’s, I don’t think in the end it’s gonna work. Right now as I’m in the CPO role, I’ve set my stall out super clearly and gone, oh, I think I really care about just now. Is how mobile first we are building our products. Not even just the end outcome, but how we’re building them and how that relates to the data and evidence of how people are using them, and also the experience that I want our customers to have.
I want it to be a mobile first experience. It is all about me being able to go back and go, look, this is what’s changed. My current boss said it quite nicely a while ago. He’s I always look at the start of the year and then look at the end of the year and go, what wouldn’t have happened without me?
And for product people, sometimes that can be quite hard, and that’s why I have this thing about, you’ve gotta see what is you and what is your contribution to the product in a way that also like sure isn’t just your opinion, but makes sense. The other thing that I’m super banging on about just now, any day my team who does listen to this will be like, Hey, yeah, mobile first.
We’ve heard that, Debbie. We know we’re getting there. The buttons on my side are terrible. They’re all different sizes and colors and shapes and, sorry, Darcy, but she knows, and when I look at that I go, no, that does not represent me. That’s a thing that I care about and I go, no, that is not a good enough experience.
Sure. Is it the most important thing? No, probably not, but it’s a thing I’m going, yeah, let’s do something about that. Because it’s where I can reflect quality of the experience and how premium I want our experience to be back to our customers, also to my teams.
Hannah Clark: We kinda talked about some of your team members, and I wanna talk a little bit about relationships. So you mentioned before that the product engineering relationship is probably the most important one for product leaders. How has that relationship evolved for you as you’ve transitioned from a director role into a CPO position, working directly with CTOs?
Debbie McMahon: Yeah. I cannot emphasize how important I think that relationship is.
Like we talk about stakeholders and how important as a product person is to work with stakeholders. Like your engineering colleagues are not your stakeholders. They’re like, your other arm is how I see it without them. Neither of you can really get anything done, which is actually quite unique, I think, where I started to think about roles.
Most people in the end can get stuff done themselves, but PMs and engineers really can’t. Sure, you could build stuff, but what would you build and sure, you could figure out what to build, but how would you build it? That just doesn’t really, two sides of the same coin. I guess thing I found really interesting is I have had some really strong.
I guess why we call peer relationships in many different places that I’ve worked. Alice, hi Alice, who’s my engineering director here at the Financial Times. We had a really delivery focused relationship. Yeah, sure. We were all about our outcomes. What is it that we’re trying to achieve and how are we setting up this organization in order to succeed?
We had our top three priorities and our shared like goals and every time we met, we let’s go through these three things. How are we orientating this group of 120 people to get this stuff done because these are the big outcomes we need to achieve. What’s super interesting is I move into the CPO role and I have this really strong peer relationship with Rebecca.
Hi Rebecca, who actually interestingly used to be my boss in a previous world. It’s, funny how things come round, isn’t it? I’m like, that’s amazing ’cause I already know Rebecca and we’ve got a good relationship together as individuals, but I look around and go, oh, the things we’re talking about now are quite different.
We’re talking about who’s gonna deal with this particular vendor. Do we care about this problem rather than how are we gonna get it solved? We’re talking about the size and scope of the different product groups, not the individual pieces of work anymore. And it’s not wildly different, but it’s subtly different.
And I think getting used to that dynamic and thinking about the fact that relationship was now not built on our need to get stuff done every day, but it was more built on how are we running our portfolio and how are we running a set of products, particularly since at the FT. And I know for some people this will be a wee bit different.
And if you’re working in a single product, just a giant single product, maybe that is a bit different, but FT has some portfolio products that are very separate now. They’re not necessarily interacting with each other every day, so the sort of interchange between them is not really there. And so our conversations are, ah, we could talk about this thing, but it only relates to this one area of the business.
But we actually need to talk about the things that relate to all of them so much more about people, much more about what the overall shape of the organization is. And interestingly, much less about the work, which in some sense is great in some senses is back to my previous point. You then need to find other ways to make sure that you, particularly as a product person, are represented through the work.
Hannah Clark: Yeah. Okay. So I wanna dig a little bit deeper into this. I think this really fascinating how the scope and the nature of the work changes so much when you transition from one role to the next.
So let’s talk a little bit about managing a delivery unit as a product director versus leading an enterprise function as a CPO. What’s the difference in the leadership approach and, what are some of like the tactical differences of how your day looks?
Debbie McMahon: So interesting. Actually, I was just talking to one of my product directors about this yesterday. He was asking how I was enjoying the role and I talked a saying I feel.
I used to sit here in a senior leader role in the organization, but I knew what my, I knew what my scope was, and it was all about getting stuff done. Sure. Making good decisions and good outcomes, but it ultimately was about getting stuff done. When I moved into the CPO role, I did have this perception.
I was, oh, I’ve just now got five delivery units. We’ve got, four product groups. I’ve got five delivery units. It’s just about getting stuff done across five different things. It’ll be the same, but bigger and more complicated. Like it really is not, I find myself like a much greater amount of my time is on things that I guess I would say are super consequential to people’s lives.
Like how much money are we spending on pay rises and promotions this year? Are we upping the budget for training or are we not? Are we moving people around and stopping doing some stuff and starting doing some other things, which will change people’s jobs? That kind of very people, yeah, sure it comes with a product lens, but it’s a very people orientated and like the absolute purity of leadership.
I’ve got a hundred people. That’s a lot of folk. In the product and technology organization of the FT, I think there’s a 450 perms and another a hundred contractors. It’s a lot of people for us to, as a sort of group, make sure that we are supporting correctly. But then what I’ve also found super interesting is I feel that because my scope as a director, it was relatively broad.
You had 12 teams. What I was able to be quite connected to the work, not involved in the detail, but I feel like I was able to impart those messages, get involved where necessary help, support, and block. That’s much, much more difficult a CPO role. I think there’s 28 teams now. And as I said before, there, some of them are very different.
You’re working in very different areas that are not necessarily connected to each other, so finding the threads that you can pull on, that’s why something like mobile first is super powerful ’cause it’s a thread that can work for everything. But what I have found is I actually end up diving into the detail, further into the detail than I did as a director on a tiny number of things.
I found that fascinating. I’m like most of my time, I’m up here. Quite far away from the work and thinking about the organization and how we work with the rest of the FT, which we will come onto later, I think, in more detail. But I’ve gone, ah, for me to have the impact, I need to set out, it’s always three things.
Anybody who knows me, I’m slightly obsessed about things coming in threes. So what are the three things? And I’ve said, here are the three things at the start of this year. I’ve written them down, I’ve told all my team, I’ve told people who work for my team. These are the three things that I really cared about and I am gonna get involved in.
And so we’re doing some stuff on content transformation just now. I was like looking at the designs, going, oh, I don’t really has this white color really what we want. And it was only afterwards I kinda went, I would not have done that six months ago. I just wouldn’t have been involved in that level of detail.
And it’s super interesting, but it’s on a tiny number of things. It is literally three things. You can’t do that in very many, but that’s my way of sh. Both imparting, again, myself into the product, but also in keeping myself connected with where are we headed? What is our strategy? What impact do we want to have on our business and on our customers?
Who else? Most of my time is spent over here in a completely different thing.
Hannah Clark: Oh, I really love that insight on balancing the macro and the micro, like micro, where you can make an impact that’s significant. And then macro, where your time needs to be dispersed. So that’s a really great approach.
Another thing that I wanted to talk about more related to relationships, is the importance of understanding the job of the stakeholder in front of you. The stakeholder or the arm, depending on who you’re speaking to, so can you tell me what that looks like and why you believe it’s so critical to your role as a product leader?
Debbie McMahon: Yeah, definitely. I think gone are the days when product people could live in a vacuum and kinda go, oh, all I care about is like that. The customer is happy and the customer has what they need. No, that’s not what we’re here to deliver. If you work in a commercial organization or even a non-commercial organization that has specific outcomes that needs to achieve like cost cutting or a revenue growth, you have to be able to contextualize everything you’re doing with the business.
And it might be very commercial parts of the business, like we have at the FT, we a, we’re a subscriptions business and a sales business and an advertising business. Or it might be slightly different parts. So we also, our journalists are really important stakeholders for us. ’cause that’s what we’re getting out there into the big wide world.
Our product is our journalism. And if you don’t understand how those people need to go about doing their jobs. And I don’t just mean if you work on internal tools, sure. People will say, oh yeah, if you work on internal tools, of course they’re my customer. Yeah, great. Amazing. That’s very important. But even if you don’t work on internal tools, that is how ultimately your product is being delivered to your customers.
It’s the journalists that are writing stories and they have to get those stories onto the site, and that is essentially how your product is delivered. Or it is through the marketing messages that are communicated, or the sales person who is talking to a account manager or the business wanting who may want to buy your product.
You don’t really understand how they’re communicating to the people they meet, what they say about your product, what feedback they get and how they go about doing their business, and also how they’re measured and managed and what reporting they need. Like you’re missing a huge bit of the jigsaw.
23, we had a new product manager start in the retention area of our business. And it was an area that we hadn’t actually invested in a lot. We had a lot of energy over the previous couple of years into acquisition in discussion, and in agreement with our colleagues in that part of the business.
But we were now gonna invest a lot more in the retention side. I asked that product manager to go and spend like a lot longer as part of his onboarding with his colleagues in that part of the business and go to not just the sort of high level trading meetings that we would already join, but go to their detailed weekly meetings, go to the discussions that they were having with their managers to understand what questions they were being asked and how they went about reporting and how they went about making decisions on spending their money and marketing campaigns.
And he came back with some fascinating insights that without that extra level of data we just wouldn’t have gotten, including some stuff where it turned out that we were using different numbers to describe the same thing, which is clearly where some of the confusion that we’d had in some of those conversations previously had been coming from.
And you’re like, wow, okay. There’s no reason for that. It’s just two different departments that have that focus slightly differently and have ended up in slight, not going in different directions, but just slightly parallel to each other. That just reminded me of how important this is to really get under the skin of that person.
One of my group product managers went and observed an individual editing a newsletter not long after she joined, ’cause she works in much more in the content part of the business and watching somebody spend nearly two hours. And then nearly get to the end, but get really badly interrupted by the environment they were in, and then just have to like, go back like about 20 minutes into their work and just understanding, oh wow, that’s like the concentration and he’s having to get a sense of the whole thing.
Can’t just do it bit by bit. Just understanding that just us, a world that we don’t inhabit was just incredibly powerful for her. But then of course, she can also tell that story to me and to her colleagues to help them understand. And I think we’re never gonna do these people’s jobs. Sometimes maybe, we’ll, who knows?
Some PMs do write really well and become journalists. That’s definitely true. But the ability to have the both, the level of empathy, also the level of knowledge to be able to speak credibly, I think is really important.
Hannah Clark: I’m glad you brought up empathy, ’cause I wanna talk also about external relationships.
So obviously at the CPO level, that’s another very critical aspect of the role is to manage those external stakeholders as well. How do you effectively manage relationships with folks like vendors, partners, industry peers, and still maintain a focus on internal priorities?
Debbie McMahon: Wow. Don’t open your LinkedIn.
It’s one thing. Okay. That’s bad advice, but like sometimes don’t open your LinkedIn. It’s amazing that you put a job update or you get a new job title and suddenly a million LinkedIn messages of wonderful, lovely people congratulating you, but also of a thousand vendors wanting to sell you something that you definitely didn’t know you needed.
We get it at all levels, but like every time I’ve either moved jobs or gotten more senior, it just gets more and more extreme. So one thing I would say is for anybody out there who’s trying to sell me something, I’ll tell you if I need it, because that’s the only way to handle. So this is one of the things that the CTO at the FT and I spend quite a lot of our time on.
Who is talking to who let’s one, make sure we’re not duplicating ’cause that is a waste of the small amounts of time that we do have, but also who is best placed to have these conversations in order to make sure that we are learning about the things we need to learn about, but also not just tag teaming and both of us going in and having conversations just because it’s more comfortable.
It’s like you have to exceed a lot of trust to each other and be like, that’s fine. You can ask my questions. You go talk to them. And a lot of the time I say Rebecca the first thing we care about is this tech good? Because most of the time we’re pretty clear on the customer outcome. So you spend a lot of time there.
It’s the same within the organization itself, though there, I think I would say that I have found it much more powerful to have that technology product and a lot of the time data relationships represented at the same time. What I have found in the past is when you try and go, oh you talk to this bit of business and you talk to that bit of the business.
You do end up sometimes in quite circular conversations and like that kind of being able to be there and be like, I don’t mean we are united front against the organization, like we’ve spoken and discussed this, but you’ve got our combined view, but you’ve also got all of us to get our combined knowledge, information questions.
We don’t have to go away and have another meeting because a more technical question was asked or anything like that. Like I think that is quite powerful. At the FT, we’ve got these things called pillar boards, which are ways of collecting those people, but also some of the really important stakeholders to also do the same thing with them.
Like we don’t necessarily want to have the same question discussed or the same issue discussed with. The editorial team and then with the ads team. And then so how do we create forums where we can do this? People can hear stuff, but they can also ask questions, but they can hear each other. It’s not just, always us giving out information and taking information back.
It’s that kind of oh, do you see that there’s a bit of inconsistency here that your preferences for this, but over here in this part of the business, their preferences for this, and maybe we are not necessarily the people who should arbitrate. Maybe like you two talk to each other. I think the thing that I’ve also found really interesting is how do you make sure that, as you’re doing that, to your point about how do you then focus on making sure you’re getting the work done and your teams, A lot of it is about making sure that you’re gathering the information you need to gather and you’re finding time to impart it.
Every week I feel I learn again, oh no, you need to repeat things. Repeat them. Repeat them more. Repeat them more. Yep. Repeat them again. Repeat them again. And that is a lesson that any of us can never learn enough. Because no matter how often you think you’ve said something, you’ve never said it enough.
And for me it is a lot been about, okay, I’ve gone and learned this and maybe in previous roles in my career, ’cause that imparting of information is not one of my strongest suits. I would often go, oh yeah, great. That’s super important information. I’ll file that away. And now I’m like no. Wait is my vehicle to go and tell that to someone.
I need to tell that to someone. Maybe my whole team, maybe one specific person, who is it? I need to tell about this. And I do that after every conversation I have and go who needs to know this? There must be someone because it can’t just be me. And that is, I’ve made that a very conscious effort in order to make sure that.
That’s part of the way I focus internally is by going right now, I’ve told you what I’ve learned. You can now do something with that because you’re the person who can get something done often times.
Hannah Clark: As you’re telling me this, it’s starting to dawn on me, the level of mastery that you have to have over your communication skills and the amount of empathy that requires to manage all of these different parties at the level and the depth of information that each of them need and be able to delegate.
This is fascinating to listen to, and I wanna talk a little bit more about communication more in terms of almost emotional mastery, or how do you show up for your team? So for example, there’s a popular narrative around bringing your authentic self to work. I know that
Debbie McMahon: I have views about this. I have views about this.
Hannah Clark: That’s exactly what I wanna hear. So what are your thoughts on bringing your authentic self to work? Take me through your thought process around this narrative.
Debbie McMahon: Yeah. What I would say is, honestly, no one wants you to bring your authentic self to work. That is my hot take. Now, of course there’s always an exception.
There’s one in a million. There will be someone out there who’s no. I want your warts and all, and that’s the way I will be inspired by you. But 99.9% of people do not want that. They do not want to know that you’ve got a headache, that you fell out with your partner, that your car’s got a flat tire.
They have all those problems too, and they are dealing with all those things and more. They don’t wanna hear about yours. You are their boss. That is why your peer relationships, like eh, the, the ways you get support and that kind of slightly lonely at the top thing that I’m sure we will touch on at some point is really true.
If you start offloading onto your team, they’re just gonna be like, ah, like you are the one in charge. You can’t sort it. What chance do I have? The other thing I would say is people want to hear about. They don’t want you to be perfect. They don’t want you to be like a robot who’s just I’m fine.
Everything’s great. Thank you. Bye. Nobody wants that either. So yes, as with everything, it’s a wonderful balance you need to strike. I do talk about the messies I’ve made and the mistakes I’ve made and the poor decisions I’ve made, and people do wanna hear about that, but really only after the fact. They don’t really wanna hear about at the time, and often they don’t even want to hear about it in the times that might.
So I usually talk about, I usually always do something on some of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. I am a human, like I’ve made tons of bad decisions, but it was from the previous job or the job before that because that gives people a level of confidence that like, oh, she won’t be so bad this time.
She won’t make those mistakes with us. We’re in safe hands, and of course they know that’s not really true. I always remember at this time when I worked in Universal Credit and we were under a lot of pressure. A couple of things had gone really badly wrong. One of them really unexpectedly, and it needed fixed really quickly.
It was days when we’re all in the office, so everybody’s like kinda sitting around and we sat and my team sat in these two banks of desks and one of the women in my team turned to me and she was like, what are we gonna do, Debbie? And I just went I just, I was really thin. I was like, I don’t know. And that was like entirely the wrong thing to do in that moment because I could feel it, I could feel the kind of the raising of the shoulders, the tightening of the sort of go ready, slightly scared looks, becoming more scared and confused and sure nobody wanted me to lie and say, oh, let’s just do this random thing.
But what they needed in that moment was reassurance. They didn’t need me to go, ah, go and say that in the toilet, or go and say that to the other head of product or to my boss. That’s all fine. Afterwards when we got through that situation and we did figure out what to do in the end, like a couple of ’em came to me and said we really hated you doing that.
Don’t do that again. It was like horrible. ’cause if you didn’t know what to do, what chance did we have? And then we thought it was all gonna be a disaster and it was not fixable. And I was like, oh, that is an interesting way of looking at this, which is about what people need from you in the moment and trying your best to give that.
While still being a real human and not lying and not pretending things are better than they are, but also remembering that like you bear more responsibility and it’s your job to bait it. And when you need support, you need to go elsewhere and not give that to your team and expect them to support you back.
Sometimes they will just because of, life some ages ago asked me, in one of these interview questions like, what would your team say about you? I actually hadn’t really asked people directly and I thought of some stuff and then I went back to my team and actually asked them what would you say?
And they were like, that you are the person that eats all the biscuits and never buys any. And they were saying it funnily, but it was true. And I’m like, this is a way you can all support me. Great. You can buy the biscuits, that is fine. I’m fine with that. I don’t need to buy the biscuits. But in that sort of reassurance and that support, and also just in accepting that everyone’s got stuff going on and problems and.
You keep yours to you, but you need to take some of your teams away from them because that is your job.
Hannah Clark: I love this insight and I love the anecdotes too, that kind of really illustrate how that balance looks in practice.
Obviously you don’t share all of your thoughts with your team, but some you do. For example, your thoughts on the design and the like of those things that you do focus on. So how do you approach delegating that? How do you delegate thoughts and preferences to other leaders rather than just delegating tasks, which would you would’ve done probably in previous roles?
Debbie McMahon: Yeah, definitely. I think the balance here for me is where could the car crash versus where might the car just go on a slightly detour or wobbly journey. That’s why I’m always thinking about, which is what is the consequence of this choice? What could happen here and if the car could crash, yeah, I’m gonna be more involved and I’m not necessarily there delegating a task, but my approach to delegation will be like delegation with active support.
Like being there to be like, yeah, this is hard, this is consequential. What do you need from me? Whereas the rest of the time you do just have to accept. And sometimes grit your teeth and go, oh, that’s not what I would’ve done. Oh no. But that is okay because how can you possibly be in 28 places at once?
If you try to be in 28 places at once, I guarantee you’ll be in none of them. And that’s not gonna help. But it’s also recognizing the strengths of your team. And being able to go, oh, actually this is something that this person is really good at. So even if it is really consequential, actually, let me just let go and let them get on with it.
But over here, this is something this person has never done before. So how do I therefore make sure that I. Whether it’s a consequential thing or not, that I’ve given them enough support and given them the right tools in order that they themselves in that moment can both learn but also feel supported enough.
It’s a really tricky balance. It’s a constant oh, have I gotten too involved in this? Oh, maybe not. Maybe not enough. Oh, a bit more involved. And again, it was one of the conversations I was having with my product director yesterday was just. Asking the question of, am I getting that balance right for you?
Do you feel like I’m involved enough and giving you enough support because there is a real risk that people feel ignored or just oh it’s. Get on with it. You know what you’re doing, you’re a senior person. And the answer appeared to be mostly yes, but I think there’s no easy answer.
And also, the thing I’ve always got to remember is, and all of us, the more senior we get, are what we want for ourselves and for our, from our managers and our bosses. It’s not necessarily what our people want. I’m very much a kind of, Nope, leave me alone. I’ve got this. Please leave me alone. I’ll sort out myself.
I would call it, get your tanks off my lawn, person as me, you. I’m like no, like this is my space. Just leave me. But that’s not how everybody else is. And by doing that, by replicating your style onto others without really examining what they need. You can end up with quite a mismatch between, with people going, ah, you’ve just left me alone, versus others who are like, oh yeah, this is exactly what I want because I’m quite like you.
And it’s, you’ve got to find that balance and a lot of it is. This is what I’m like as a leader and this would be what I would naturally do. How does that work for you? And just being honest about that. We can’t be everything to everyone. Also, how do you help your team use each other? If it’s something that you are not great at, there probably will be somebody in that peer group who is good at it.
So how can you match them up and go, not always me, but how about your work with this person on that?
Hannah Clark: I think that’s a really important piece that can really serve us well at any level to be really aware of the way that we are, and I think a lot of misunderstanding and friction could be avoided just by understanding, our default ways of being and working. I really appreciate how you incorporate that into the conversation.
You did mention though a little bit about being left alone. Let’s talk about loneliness at the top. The trope of it’s lonely at the top. What does that really feel like? I think that we have before entering an executive role, there’s a idea what that looks like, but in practice, I, it seems to me that it’s very different than you’d expect.
What strategies have you found effective for managing that sort of loneliness, and what does it really feel like?
Debbie McMahon: Yeah. Yeah. I think it is inevitable. Like that trope just is true. I think it is. It doesn’t have to be all bad everyone. It doesn’t have to be all bad. So I think for me there’s three things.
One, it is what is that peer group? And get yourself involved with your peer group, whether that be, a group of product directors or whether it be your individual sort of peer engineer, engineering director, whether it be the CTO and the CDO, like find. At the FT, we have a peer group that also includes the VP of Cyber and the VP of portfolios and programs like that is a good group of people who are all very different, as you can imagine.
You are very different and leaning on them and being like, oh, more about finance than I do, or Rebecca, you’re definitely better at talking to vendors than I am and just like being really honest and shading that load is definitely one thing. Secondly is figuring out for you as a human where your resilience comes from.
Some of us get it internally. I draw strength from myself. Others get it from others. Others get it from tools and techniques, like figuring out like where your resilience comes from and what you need to do to keep it top. For some people that’s about how you work, how you have breaks, loads and loads of different things.
But thinking about where you’re drawing your resilience and keeping it. And then third, make sure you’ve got releases outside of work, whether that be moaning to your friends, not about like confidential stuff, you can moan about, oh, like this was really hard and ugh. Like that kind of, somebody who knows you as a person and who can keep you grounded, but also tell you.
You’ll be doing great. They don’t know, just that kind of thing that you need for some people. For some people it’s their kids or their partner. Some people it’s going and doing an exercise and being told they’re doing a great job at exercise and like that. Then translating that into their work.
But it’s, you do need something that is helping you step a bit out of the work environment, but also remind you that you’re a human, you’re a real person, and you’re doing great. Inevitably, you will not be doing perfect, but you’ll be doing great. And as long as you’re doing your best, that’s all you can do.
Hannah Clark: This has been such a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate, Debbie, the empathetic approach that you’ve shared with us today. I wanna thank you so much for some of the tactics and insights and anecdotes you shared. This has been so valuable. Where can listeners keep up with you online?
Debbie McMahon: Please do message me on LinkedIn. It’s genuinely fine, just not if you’re trying to sell me something. You’ll find me on LinkedIn. I am not much for a writer, so I don’t write much, but I do post a bit about your work and the stuff that we do both at the FT and also I have the occasional moan about equality of women and things like that.
So people will usually find that interesting. So yeah, please follow me and reach out if there’s something I can help you with.
Hannah Clark: Lovely. Thanks for joining us.
Debbie McMahon: Delighted too.
Hannah Clark: Thanks for listening in. For more great insights, how-to guides and tool reviews, subscribe to our newsletter at theproductmanager.com/subscribe. You can hear more conversations like this by subscribing to the Product Manager wherever you get your podcasts.
