CPO Stories: Debbie McMahon - The Financial Times

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 🙂

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's website: https://www.ft.com, or their careers page: https://aboutus.ft.com/careers.

You can connect with Debbie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcmahon/.