Four Years as CPO: my 4 Key Lessons
Four years ago, I embarked on a thrilling yet daunting journey in my career—one that would take me from being an individual contributor to the role of Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Hemnet.
I had led smaller teams and my own ventures, but the opportunity of shaping the emerging product organization for one of Sweden's largest products was both extremely exciting and nerve-wracking. And what made it even more challenging was the fact that I'd now be managing my colleagues. Help.
Looking back, I'm struck by how naive I have been at times. Sometimes when I think back at some of the decisions I took I really think ” What the hell was I thinking?!”. And yet, it is this very mix of naivety and curiosity that has led me to become the leader I am today.
I feel that I have learned and grown a lot and with me the entire Hemnet. The company has doubled in size, people working with product development account for more than half of the employees, we achieved a really successful IPO, we started to work with continuous discovery at scale. And I learned how to hire, coach, and work with product managers at first, and with UXers and user researchers along the journey.
As I reflect on the past four years, I’m proud of myself and what I have learned. I am also eager to share the four lessons I take with me, and I wish someone had told me about them since the start.
I hope they can give insights and/or comfort to anyone else who is thinking about embarking on a similar journey.
Recording the product strategy from home during the pandemic, the IPO, and talking at Hemnet strategy days
If you have to focus on one thing, let it be trust
This is no news for any leader, but it is especially important for any leader who wants to lead a product transformation. Thinking back I would have not been able to come anywhere in the journey of creating a product culture without focusing on trust. On both an organizational and personal level.
Creating trust in the product organization meant defining what was the most important thing to deliver, and focusing on delivering it. This showed that a new way of working was actually efficient and worth investing in. If you want more details, I wrote about it here and talked about it at Product at Heart.
Creating trust within the product organization has only one way of doing: listening and acting on what you hear. This brings me to the second learning…
You are in the people business
Being in product, in any role, means being in the people’s business, as you will not be able to achieve a single thing without the support of your team, or your stakeholders. But going from individual contributor to manager, and in my case CPO, puts working with people on a whole other level.
It took me a little while, but I realized that my role is creating the right conditions for others to do their job at their best. And that the only way I can achieve impact is through others. So no matter how many things you have on your plate, my tip to you is to always prioritize people.
For me, it means two things: prioritize all my direct reports and prioritize building relationships within the company.
When it comes to direct reports I learned the importance of coaching and personal development. And I had to do it the hard way, as I did not have the fortune of having a great coach that showed me the way.
And I also learned that the most important thing is to adapt plans and goals to the individual so that they can own their own development. I learned to enjoy a lot the sessions with all my PMs and to feel incredible joy by seeing them succeed.
The stakeholders part, on the other hand, is a bit more challenging at times.
I struggle with having the energy to have hard conversations all the time, but I try my best to create the best conditions for cooperation. I believe this is one of the hardest parts of the job, but in the quest to improve it, I definitely refined my listening and negotiating skills.
Make it all explicit
This is a lesson I learned the hard way.
What is obvious to me might not be obvious to someone else. And even what I thought was extremely clear might have meant something else for another person.
Add to that the weight that comes with having a certain role in the company, where your words are inspected and dissected, and you’ll suddenly be looking at a snowball effect of misunderstanding.
I’ve seen it happening many times, and creating a lot of frustration. Until I found an antidote to it: making things explicit.
Some examples:
After a meeting take notes and make sure everyone agrees on what was said
Make goals visible and make sure to point at what is needed to succeed with them
Document decisions and why you arrived at them so that you can go back and look at them once the consequences are apparent
Appoint accountability for every new process
Define role expectations so that people know what is expected from them (this was actually the very first step I took when I took over the product organization). And remember to go back and revisit them if things change
Make the assumptions that need to be true explicit in your opportunity solution tree
Making all the things above explicit will help you either achieve alignment, or surface misalignment. So when in doubt: make it explicit. I wish someone had told me earlier.
My weekly planning, that I use at the beginning of every week to allocate my focus
Set boundaries
This is the lesson that I probably will never be done learning. Yet the most important one: make sure to set boundaries for others, and most importantly for yourself.
The higher up you get, the more balls will be thrown at you: strategy, product details, direct reports, roadmaps, stakeholders, how are we doing with this experiment, budgeting, we promised the client this feature, financial reports, what are people working on? investor meetings, meetups, employer branding… and the list goes on.
I remember that I tried so hard to be able to answer all the questions I got in the beginning, with the only result of constantly feeling insufficient. I had this idea that I had to be on top of things to demonstrate that I was doing my job well.
But as time passed I learned a really important lesson: it is inhuman to be able to answer all the questions, the most important thing is to answer the most important ones.
So I started to do some simple things to help me with that
At the beginning of every week, I reflect on what are the most important things for me to focus on
I am explicit about where my focus goes and say no to the rest. And of course, I communicate that. Some people might need to be extra patient with me if they need my help, or need to find another ally to continue running
I ask back every time I get a question I feel I do not have the time for: how important is it? And am I the only one who can answer it?
I started to delegate much more, empowering other people to take control over some parts of my job. To learn this lesson, this book was really helpful
What I do now is choose my battles and focus my energy there. I constantly remind myself that I am running a marathon and not a sprint, that the pace should be accordingly and it is important that I stop to drink (read taking a rest) before I am thirsty. That is the only way of enjoying the ride.
Above is a screenshot of the announcement that was made once I permanently became CPO. Back then I did not know all the things I do know now, but I still hope that if asked today, all my colleagues would still be happy to have me at that place.
