As of July 2022, there are over 2,000 openings for chief product officers (CPOs) in the US on LinkedIn alone. Why? As a result of buyer expectations are altering, and companies must ship excellent digital product experiences to satisfy their desires and wishes. And corporations want somebody with product data and enterprise acumen to supervise the supply of those product experiences.
Nonetheless, there are only a few chief product officers within the workforce, so many first-time chief product officers are unclear about their roles or how you can thrive of their new place.
At Amplify 2022, Amplitude’s annual convention, Melissa Perri, CEO of Produx Labs and writer of Escaping the Construct Entice, mentioned what it’s wish to thrive as a first-time chief product officer. Melissa’s session, titled You’re a First-time CPO! Now What? was filled with insights for brand new chief product officers in each SaaS and non-SaaS areas. The session included widespread pitfalls to keep away from as they settle into their roles as new CPOs.
Listed here are 4 suggestions all new chief product officers ought to know:
- Make clear your duties and the corporate’s expectations.
- Join your actions with enterprise outcomes.
- Spend time on constructing the product technique.
- Earn the belief of the chief group by being a group participant.
1. Make clear your duties and the corporate’s expectations
As a result of CPOs are sometimes senior product managers who finally tackle management roles of their corporations, there are often no clear traces on what they need to drop from their earlier positions. However chief product officers ought to spend greater than 75% of their time on strategic initiatives, whereas senior product managers ought to focus half their time on tactical work.
Defining the precise function of a chief product officer shouldn’t be a simple process as a result of the duties of a CPO differ relying on the corporate and the product. Usually, a chief product officer ensures the product group’s actions align with the enterprise targets whereas fixing buyer issues. Georgie Smallwood, CPO of Tier Mobility, says, “The function of the CPO is basically the identical as being a product supervisor. You’re the intersection of the consumer and the enterprise, however the stakes are a lot larger.”
To additional clarify how roles differ relying on the context, Melissa grouped chief product officers into three classes: the startup, the scale-up, and the enterprise CPO.
- Startup CPOs are tasked with discovering product-market match, establishing processes, and taking ARR from zero to seven figures.
- Scale-up CPOs work with corporations within the development stage to assist scale groups and infrastructure. They’ve extra sophisticated methods and portfolios and take care of mergers and acquisitions, pricing and packaging, and extra.
- Enterprise CPOs work with massive corporations. They have to be extra diplomatic, have important monetary acumen, and navigate non-product spheres—like compliance and authorized—alongside their conventional product tasks.
Your organization’s expectations of it’s essential to align with the place they’re with their product. To outline your tasks, ask questions. Discuss to the product, advertising and marketing, gross sales, buyer success, improvement, and govt groups in your first few days. Get a 360-degree view of the place the product is, examine it to the enterprise targets, and use that info to map out your motion plans.
2. Join your actions with enterprise outcomes
Melissa talked about how new CPOs typically suppose that executives don’t perceive them. Nonetheless, one of many greatest errors new chief product officers make is speaking with the executives in “product administration converse” with out tying it again to the enterprise outcomes.
New chief product officers can simply get distracted by speaking about issues like agile, dash planning, backlog, and many others. However if you’re speaking concerning the product backlog, you could have to have the ability to clarify the impact it has on the enterprise. In accordance with Gijo Mathew, CPO of VTS, “When you don’t know what are an important outcomes for the enterprise then you must get sensible on that. When you do, then you could have to have the ability to determine and execute a technique to get to that end result.”
As Melissa Perri stated, “the language of the executives is cash.” A primary-time CPO ought to have the ability to speak about their function, tasks, and motion plans whereas framing it again to the income and value concerned.
When you don’t know the anticipated enterprise outcomes, ask the executives. “There’s often some type of agenda there. They’ve an exit expectation. They’ve a objective that they’re really striving for,” Melissa stated. “You have to perceive what that’s since you are gonna be making selections primarily based on these varieties of outcomes, not essentially simply on buyer issues.”
3. Spend time on constructing the product technique
The core of a chief product officer’s function is constructing a product technique, “a framework that allows groups to make product selections about how you can drive buyer worth which in flip drives enterprise worth.”
The technique is the trail you lay for each the product and the chief groups to contribute to the general enterprise end result. Getting executives, management, and the product group concerned is crucial within the technique creation course of.
Melissa shared a four-tier technique deployment framework to assist first-time CPOs construct the technique and get everybody concerned. The framework contains:
- Imaginative and prescient: The imaginative and prescient solutions questions like: The place can we see the enterprise in 5 to 10 years? What’s our price for our clients? What’s our place available in the market? The CEO primarily units the imaginative and prescient, whilst you contribute to it because the chief product officer.
- Strategic Intents: These are the enterprise challenges standing in the best way of reaching the imaginative and prescient. They’re the large enterprise selections that the corporate has to make to attain its targets. For instance, these selections could possibly be about increasing geographically, transferring upmarket, and many others. The chief product officer is liable for recognizing the strategic intent and setting them along with the remainder of the C-suite.
- Product Initiative: The product management group under the chief product officer is liable for setting the product initiatives. These are the enterprise challenges that they wish to resolve from a product perspective.
- Choices: These are your product options. The product managers and product entrepreneurs set these. An excellent instance of an choice is including options to a product to extend consumer adoption.
In accordance with Melissa, on the finish of the day, all people in your group ought to have the ability to inform the story from the Choices again as much as the Visions and the way the enterprise ought to attain them. It’s the CPO’s job to allow folks to inform this story.
Don’t rush by the technique course of to get the ball rolling shortly. It’s on the coronary heart of your job, so deal with your product technique rigorously and diligently. Take a look at Amplitude’s free product technique template for a simple strategy to get began.
4. Earn the belief of the chief group by being a group participant
Melissa defined the way it’s comfy for chief product officers to spend time with their group of product managers. However CPOs typically neglect that they’re a part of the chief group. As a CPO, gaining the belief of different executives is crucial and the way you retain your spot on the C-suite desk.
By treating the C-suite as your group, you study to speak with executives the identical approach you probably did together with your product group. You’ll pay attention and study from different executives to construct belief and rapport. Having that belief will make your job simpler as a brand new member of the group.
A group participant additionally is aware of when to pay attention and ask questions, particularly in difficult conditions. Get to know your fellow leaders and perceive their function within the enterprise. You can find it simpler to share your concepts, talk your influence, and hold your seat on the desk.
Communication is important as a CPO
It’s one factor to get a job as a chief product officer and one other to thrive in it. As a CPO, it’s essential to acknowledge your strengths and align your ability set to the stage your product is in and your organization’s enterprise targets.
Clear communication is the one ability that CPOs throughout firm sizes and industries should have of their toolbox. It can assist stability the product and govt groups and ensure you’re capable of talk your product technique successfully to each.
Watch Melissa Perri’s complete session to study extra about how you can arrange techniques that can assist you scale, rent the suitable folks to your group, and dive deeper into the product technique course of.
