One Knight in Product

CPO Stories: Debbie McMahon - The Financial Times

Welcome to CPO Stories!
In this new "podcast within a podcast", I'll be speaking to executive product leaders from the UK's biggest companies as well as up-and-coming stars of the future. I'll be digging into how they approach product management within their organisations, how they approached the leap into executive product leadership and trying to get some deep insights into how they view product management practices and culture. If you're a CPO and would like to come on, drop me a line! Or, forward this episode to your CPO and tell them you want them to come on 🙂
About the Episode
In this episode, I speak with Debbie McMahon, interim Chief Product Officer at the Financial Times, one of the UK's most well-known and distinctive newspapers. Debbie started out working at the Department for Work & Pensions, moving into a product strategy role there before spending time at the BBC and onwards to the FT.
We cover a lot, including:
All about the FT and its move away from being "just" a newspaper
How the FT structures Product; size, scope, dependency management and whether they have product owners
How to advocate for the value of product management with non-tech leaders and editorial stakeholders
Balancing product management idealism and book principles with the real world of the FT
The importance of being honest upfront about your organisation's context when hiring people
Making the jump to CPO; what was different, what was the same
How CPOs can avoid being seen as ivory tower thinkers or, worse still, "poop and swoopers"
Why product people should work at the FT
Check out the FT
Check out the FT's website: https://www.ft.com, or their careers page: https://aboutus.ft.com/careers.
Connect with Debbie
You can connect with Debbie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcmahon/.

Rich Mironov - Product Managers Need to Understand the Language of Money (with Rich Mironov, Author and CPO Coach)

Returning guest Rich Mironov is a B2B product management legend, long-time blogger and author of "The Art of Product Management". He's recently moved to Portugal to sample the best of European product culture, and is currently actively coaching and mentoring product leaders. His goal is to help them understand what business leaders really care about and ensure that they make an impact by speaking the same language as the rest of the executive suite.
Episode highlights:
1. No one in the leadership team cares about how products are made; they care about making money
We product people can often be so in love with our craft and our terminology that we forget that no one else wants to hear it. We need to craft a narrative that moves beyond esoteric, fuzzy concepts about delight and happiness. These are important, but not as important to the leadership team as how those things make money for the company. We need to get off our high horses and meet our stakeholders where they are, just like we would with our users.
2. Product Managers need to know how their product and their company make money
Too many product managers are not aware of how their company makes money, how things are priced and packaged, and the effect that this will have on the types of decisions they can make. We need to up our game when it comes to financial literacy and understand the growth levers that we can pull if we want to have an impact at the top level.
3. It's important to build internal coalitions to get support early, rather than being the one person who dissents
It's always hard when there's a seemingly blockbuster deal on the table that has big revenue numbers attached, but is going to derail the roadmap for months. It's important to understand the positions of other non-product stakeholders and get their buy-in so that you're not the only person against the deal. Make sure you build bridges with your colleagues and go in with a united front.
4. Learn to tell "Money Stories" to get alignment around your roadmap and calculate the true cost of trade-offs
There are four different types of money stories: Cost savings, Upselling, New Market and Customer Satisfaction. These all use simple heuristics to sense-check the revenue impact of any initiative. Product people can get obsessed with accuracy, but your colleagues are guesstimating all their numbers, so get comfortable with directionally correct numbers. You can still make prioritisation debates clearer by "counting the digits" or comparing orders of magnitude.
5. Organisational context is everything, so you need to understand it
There are big differences between how Private Equity-funded and Venture Capital-funded startups work. They have different timeframes, different goals and, ultimately, a different mindset. There's no right or wrong here, simply an acknowledgement that your company's investment context will dramatically impact the types of decisions the leadership team will make. If you know this context, it can help you make better decisions (as well as decide whether it's the type of company you want to work for)
Check out Rich's essay "Business Cases are Stories about Money"
Rich's original essay, which has led to conference talks as well as this interview, can be found here: https://www.mironov.com/moneystories/
Buy "The Art of Product Management (2nd edition)"
"The Art of Product Management takes us inside the head of a product management thought leader. With color and humor, Rich Mironov gives us a taste of Silicon Valley's tireless pursuit of great technology and its creation of new products. He provides strategic advice to product managers and tech professionals about start-ups, big organizations, how to think like a customer, and what things should cost. He also reminds us to love our products and our teams."
Check it out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Product-Management-Second-Innovator-ebook/dp/B0CVL45F36.
Contact Rich
You can catch up with Rich on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richmironov/. Or check out his website: https://mironov.com.

Tami Reiss' Hot Take - All Product Managers Are Leaders, Even If They Don't Think So (with Tami Reiss, Executive Coach & Corporate Trainer @ Leader Within)

Tami Reiss (aka "Tami from Miami"!) is an executive leadership coach, corporate trainer and upcoming author of a children's product management book.
Tami's hot take? That all product managers are leaders, even if they don't feel like it. As a PM, whatever your situation (and however high or low your sights) it's your job to inspire the team and influence your colleagues.
Find Tami on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamireiss/ or check out https://tamireiss.com/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

Alexander Murauski's Hot Take - The Language Your Product Speaks Is A Part of Your Product's Design (with Alexander Murauski, CEO @ Alconost)

Alexandar Murauski is an expert in all things related to product localisation and the CEO of Alconost, a platform that aims to help product teams unlock global growth through AI-enhanced localisation.
Alexander's hot take? That the language your product "speaks" is a fundamental part of the product's user experience, and is often left lacking. It's important to consider localisation upfront, and ensure that you take cultural considerations into account, not just Google Translate the text as an afterthought.
Find Alexander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amurauski/ or check out his company, Alconost, at https://alconost.com/en.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

Andriy Burkov - The TRUTH About Large Language Models and Agentic AI (with Andriy Burkov, Author "The Hundred-Page Language Models Book")

Andriy Burkov is a renowned machine learning expert and leader. He's also the author of (so far) three books on machine learning, including the recently-released "The Hundred-Page Language Models Book", which takes curious people from the very basics of language models all the way up to building their own LLM. Andriy is also a formidable online presence and is never afraid to call BS on over-the-top claims about AI capabilities via his punchy social media posts.
Episode highlights:
1. Large Language Models are neither magic nor conscious
LLMs boil down to relatively simple mathematics at an unfathomably large scale. Humans are terrible at visualising big numbers and cannot comprehend the size of the dataset or the number of GPUs that have been used to create the models. You can train the same LLM on a handful of records and get garbage results, or throw millions of dollars at it and get good results, but the fundamentals are identical, and there's no consciousness hiding in between the equations. We see good-looking output, and we think it's talking to us. It isn't.
2. As soon as we saw it was possible to do mathematics on words, LLMs were inevitable
There were language models before LLMs, but the invention of the transformer architecture truly accelerated everything. That said, the fundamentals trace further back to "simpler" algorithms, such as word2vec, which proved that it is possible to encode language information in a numeric format, which meant that the vast majority of linguistic information could be represented by embeddings, which enabled people to run equations on language. After that, it was just a matter of time before they got scaled out.
3. LLMs look intelligent because people generally ask about things they already know about
The best way to be disappointed by an LLM's results is to ask detailed questions about something you know deeply. It's quite likely that it'll give good results to start with, because most people's knowledge is so unoriginal that, somewhere in the LLM's training data, there are documents that talk about the thing you asked about. But, it will degrade over time and confidently keep writing even when it doesn't know the answer. These are not easily solvable problems and are, in fact, fundamental parts of the design of an LLM.
4. Agentic AI relies on unreliable actors with no true sense of agency
The concept of agents is not new, and people have been talking about them for years. The key aspect of AI agents is that they need self-motivation and goals of their own, rather than being told to have goals and then simulating the desire to achieve them. That's not to say that some agents are not useful in their own right, but the goal of fully autonomous, agentic systems is a long way off, and may not even be solvable.
5. LLMs represent the most incredible technical advance since the personal computer, but people should quit it with their most egregious claims
LLMs are an incredible tool and can open up whole new worlds for people who are able to get the best out of them. There are limits to their utility, and some of their shortcomings are likely unsolvable, but we should not minimise their impact. However, there are unethical people out there making completely unsubstantiated claims based on zero evidence and a fundamental misunderstanding of how these models work. These people are scaring people and encouraging terrible decision-making from the gullible. We need to see through the hype.
Buy "The Hundred-Page Language Model Book"
"Large language models (LLMs) have fundamentally transformed how machines process and generate information. They are reshaping white-collar jobs at a pace comparable only to the revolutionary impact of personal computers. Understanding the mathematical foundations and inner workings of language models has become crucial for maintaining relevance and competitiveness in an increasingly automated workforce. This book guides you through the evolution of language models, starting from machine learning fundamentals. Rather than presenting transformers right away, which can feel overwhelming, we build understanding of language models step by step—from simple count-based methods through recurrent neural networks to modern architectures. Each concept is grounded in clear mathematical foundations and illustrated with working Python code."
Check it out on the book's website: https://thelmbook.com/.
You can also check out Machine Learning Engineering: https://www.mlebook.com and The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book: https://www.themlbook.com/.
Follow Andriy
You can catch up with Andriy here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andriyburkov/
Twitter/"X": https://twitter.com/burkov
True Positive Newsletter: https://aiweekly.substack.com/

Sam Greenwood's Hot Take - We Need to Rethink Product Management in the Age of Societal Collapse (with Sam Greenwood, Emotional Resilience Coach for PMs)

Sam Greenwood is an emotional resilience coach who works with product managers to help them survive at the intersection of emotional stress and product leadership. His goal is to help product managers build EQ, communication and leadership and AI-proof their careers.
Sam's hot take? That we are on the cusp of societal collapse and product managers, as well as people in tech in general, have taken their eye off the ball. Product people need to adopt new mindsets and build different kinds of products to help us weather the storm... although, maybe the storm can't be weathered at all.
Find Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-greenwood/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot
 

Olha Yohansen-Veselova's Hot Take - Product Managers Need To Become Growth Managers (with Olha Yohansen-Veselova, Product Growth and Optimization Advisor)

Olha Yohansen-Veselova is a product growth and product optimisation expert who has now gone solo and is helping companies with their onboarding. Olha is also a startup mentor and advisor, and is passionate about product managers living up to their full potential.
Olha's hot take? That product managers need to beyond being facilitators and unblockers, and move towards being true growth partners to the business. Too many people are working in a bubble and not taking account of the commercial impact of their roles, and the ones that do will outpace the ones that don't.
Find Olha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oyohansen/.
Or check out Olha's newsletter: https://oyogrowth.substack.com/.
If you'd like to appear on Hot Takes, please grab a time: https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/hot

Elena Verna - Solopreneurship, Memes & Getting Started with Product-Led Sales (with Elena Verna, B2B Growth Guru & Meme Queen)

About the Episode
Elena Verna is a renowned growth consultant who has worked at and with a glittering array of well-known tech companies. She's a strong advocate of career optionality and solopreneurship, as well as the author of a popular growth newsletter, Reforge instructor and popular LinkedIn content creator with her insightful posts and searing memes. Just don't call her an influencer.
Episode highlights:
 
1. Solopreneurship is about having optionality; it doesn't mean you never take a full-time job again.
You can build a portfolio career with a variety of different offerings, and get involved in the types of problems that excite you. This feels risky, but people get laid off from "real" jobs all the time. The most important thing is to optimise for what you're passionate about, and it may well be that you move between full-time employment and advisory or fractional roles. It's not a one-way street, and you're in control.
2. Humour disarms people, so memes are a great way to talk about difficult topics and build empathy
Content creators should not be scared of poking fun at meaningful topics. Using humour is a great way to help build connections with people around potentially sensitive areas. That doesn't mean you should make everything a joke, but you can certainly mix it up. You might think it's risky for a solopreneur, needing to build credibility, to be seen as an unserious clown. But, do you really want to work with people who can't take a joke?
3. Product-Led Sales is all about using self-service as a lever to fill up your sales pipeline with healthy, qualified leads
Speaking of knowledge (nice segue!), Elena has written a lot about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Product-Led Sales (PLS). PLG is the strategy of using your product as its own acquisition channel through enabling a great self-service experience, quick time-to-value and all the other things that B2C apps have had to worry about for years. PLS, on the other hand, is about filling your sales team's pipeline with high-quality leads that have already experienced your product through PLG, and demonstrated enough usage to make it worth having a data-backed conversation with the buyers at that organisation.
4. There are signals that it's time to try out Product-Led Sales
Don't adopt PLS for the sake of it; instead, look for signals that it's appropriate for you. Traditional sales-led motions focus on the buyer but, if you solve a problem that matters more to end users than buyers, you should consider Product-Led Sales as a method for building internal champions and advocacy for your product. You should also be conscious of competitive threats; your traditional, top-down buyer-led sales motion may work today, but keep your eyes open for new PLG players attacking your underbelly.
5. You probably need new capabilities (and talent) within your organisation if you want to get started with Product-Led Sales.
Let's face it, most sales-led organisations are terrified of giving sales prospects access to their product without supervision. The user experience is almost certainly terrible and there's no "Aha!" moment to speak of, just a pile of features that got added to satisfy procurement teams. You need to get a good product manager in to overhaul the experience, good product marketers to work on optimising acquisition, and great data analytics so you can make sure you aren't just sending garbage to the sales team. If you don't send them high-quality leads, they'll stop trying to sell to them.
6. Product-Led Sales is not an on/off switch but a dial.
Traditional sales-led organisations that are crushing their quotas don't need to go down the product-led growth or product-led sales route if it doesn't work for them. Similarly, product-led companies shouldn't have to go upmarket to succeed. The most important thing to consider is how to build on your existing strengths and complement them, and getting the mix right. You can run both at the same time, and this is better than throwing all-in on a go-to-market motion where you have no credibility, experience or right to win.
Contact Elena
Check out Elena's newsletter and other work: ElenaVerna.com
Follow Elena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenaverna/