In January 2025 I changed from ‘Director of Product’ to ‘Director of Strategy and Transformation’– not to change what I do – but to give a better name to what I already do.

Beyond product

2018 was the last time I focused on just the product management profession, truth be told. That year I started leading on the overall standard and value of work done by whole product teams. Fast forward to 2021 and I led a team of Heads of Profession across business analysis, content, delivery management, design, product management, and user research – leading in improving how our professions came together in teams to do valuable stuff for users. Fast forward again to 2022 and I joined a leadership team restructuring a large organisation – leading on migration of business critical systems to form a new Digital team – whilst leading on creating product ways of working.

Introducing

If I think about it, strategy and transformation have been consistent themes throughout my career. Lots of my career has been spent introducing new tech to organisations – laptops, the world wide web, software as a service, mobile devices, apps, games based learning, . . . and much more. Ways of working too – customer insights, agility, design thinking, customer validation, lean, DevOps . . . the ways of working keep on coming too.

Coordination

In the last couple of years I’ve been helping organisations implement a ‘product operating model’ or ‘product ways of working’ and what I see is a challenge of coordination. Lots of new technologies and ways of working have been introduced over the last couple of decades and we’re left with the end result of multiple transformations that never quite finished and don’t link together. At their best, modern digital transformation coordinate organisations, helping the individual parts to work together, radically focused on the same goals. Product remains my anchor point and a specialism for me but the work of successful transformation goes way beyond product management. I’m increasingly working with and across product and delivery, PMO, service operations, solution architecture, research, education, publishing . . . helping build shared strategy, and coordinating joint efforts to achieve their strategy.

It’s what I love and what I’m good at. Still product at heart but pragmatic and inclusive in practice.