Stepping into the product leadership ring
Tags: Product, Women In Tech, Leadership, Culture, User Experience

What inspired you to join Xero?

I spent 15 years at SEEK, moving from customer service and sales to product and tech. All of that accumulated to being the Chief Product Officer at SEEK, which was my most recent role. Xero has always been very high on the list of companies I wanted to work for — I had a role a few years back that led the small business area of SEEK and I loved working with people who are so passionate about what they do. So when a leadership role opened up at Xero, I jumped on it. It’s really satisfying to build products that let business owners get back to doing what they do best.

The other element that attracted me to Xero was its culture and values. As a leader, I want to do the right thing by my people and that’s something that is a real focus for Xero. Everyone puts people first, whether it’s teams or customers or partners. The fact that the leadership team has a really good gender balance — 44% of the product executive team are female — is also really refreshing. So many companies are talking about gender balance, but Xero has taken it seriously and built a gender balanced team. It’s exciting to join an organisation that lives its values.

How has COVID-19 impacted your work?

It’s never been more important for product teams to be tuned in to the challenges our customers are facing. But we’re mindful that our normal methods of conducting research and interviews are difficult right now while small businesses are undergoing hardship and focused on keeping their business afloat. We’ve had to become more creative on how we work with our internal teams to get access to the wealth of knowledge they are tapped into.

The needs of our customers have also changed — there are needs that didn’t exist before, or those that were lower on the priority list that are now really important. So we’ve had to respond to that by prioritising the work that is going to matter to them. A big part of my role is making sure teams are as focused as they can be, because there’s so much we can do and everyone is so ambitious. So we need to get really tight on the problems we need to solve and keep testing those to make sure we’re always on the right track.

Do you think it’s changed our expectations of digital experiences?

Yeah, absolutely. Digital standards are amazing in terms of how quickly they grow and change. The reality is that companies like Facebook and Google are driving expectations and people just expect those standards to be applied across all products and services. Look at Zoom. There’s so much pressure on them right now to improve their experience and their privacy standards, purely because usage is so much higher. The standards we expect as users is so high right now, because everyone is more reliant on technology than they were before.

Another good example is working in the cloud. Xero is lucky because it was born in the cloud, so we already had everything we needed to work remotely. And being a global company, many teams were already using video calls to stay connected with their teams. But there were many companies that really had to scramble to make sure their people had the ability to work remotely in a way that didn’t slow them down. When I was at SEEK, we were already seeing increases in businesses offering remote and flexible working, but I think we’ll see a lot more of this moving forward.

What do you think makes a good leader in a tech company?

Hiring the right team is critical. You need to make sure you have a good cross section of skills and capabilities, so there’s a diversity of thought. What I try to do is be really specific about what I’m looking for — not just in terms of capabilities, but also values and strengths. The combination of people in a team is always more important than any one individual. So as a leader it’s important to assess every new hire and make sure they’re in the right environment and bringing strengths that the team needs at that time. It might mean moving people around to get that balance, but it’s worth it.

The other thing is realising that you don’t have all the answers and that your teams are the ones that know your customers best. It’s very humbling in that respect. I’ve been in product for a long time, and I remember when we’d sit in a meeting room and talk about solutions we thought people needed. The reality is, as leaders we’re not as close to the customer as our product managers. So it’s important to listen to them and respect the fact that they have a better understanding of our customers and the problems they face.

Tell us about your biggest career lessons

During my career, I’ve always run product experiments. Sometimes they ended up being incredibly successful. But other times, I would think my solution was terrific, only to discover it was a complete flop when put to the test. There’s nothing more humbling than putting an experiment live and watching it fail. But it’s a crucial experience, because it reminds you that we all have decision-making biases. We all make occasional mistakes about what’s going to work. I’ve learned to celebrate both the successes and the failures, because it means I’m challenging the status quo.

Another lesson I learned very early on in my career is to do what’s right, not necessarily what’s easy. I’ve had leaders that really encouraged me to speak up for what I believed in, even if it made the situation a little uncomfortable. It’s one of the things I think has made me a successful leader and something that I hope I can pass on to my teams at Xero. To make it work, you really need mutual trust with your team. That way, they’ll feel comfortable about opening up and sharing what they’re thinking and how they’ll approach something. And you’ll be in a position to back them and give them the support they need.

How has martial arts influenced you?

I used to compete professionally in Thai boxing and it was life-changing for me, to be honest. There’s nothing like stepping into a ring and facing someone who has been trained to do everything they can to hurt you. And if you’re not careful, you will actually get hurt. No matter how many people have helped you get where you are and supported you along the way, when you’re in the ring it’s just you. There’s a lot of parallels between my fighting career and my leadership career — particularly when it comes to mindset.

I remember losing a couple of fights in the early days of my career — not because I was unfit or the other person was a better athlete. But because somewhere along the way, I thought I couldn’t do it. I got to the point where I was like, I either need to stop fighting or I need to overcome it. So I worked hard to change that mindset, learning techniques like visualisation and positive self-talk. It really turned around my career in the ring and I ended up on a winning streak. It just goes to show that the biggest risk is letting the doubt creep in and affect your performance, no matter how hard you’ve worked or how passionate you are.