A seedling and a tree may share the same DNA, but their roles in the ecosystem are vastly different—just like junior and executive product leaders. As leaders climb the ranks, their focus shifts from producing features to providing structure and support that allow teams to thrive.
Debbie McMahon, Chief Product Officer at the Financial Times, reflects on this evolution and how her approach to leadership has matured over time. From managing complex internal and external relationships to knowing when not to follow popular advice, Debbie offers practical wisdom on staying grounded, building trust, and leading with intention at the executive level.
Resources from this episode:
- Subscribe to The Product Manager newsletter
- Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn
- Check out The Financial Times
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hannah Clark (00:01):
The other day, I noticed a little
seedling growing a shortdistance from an apple tree.
It struck me that eventhough I was looking at
two of the same plant, theyhad very little in common.
Despite their shared goalof producing apples, time
and maturity had giventhe tree a gradual but
total transformation.
When you look at theseedling, you see the leaves,
but when you look at thetree, you see the trunk.
(00:22):
And such is the case forexecutive leadership.
The higher you climb theranks of product leadership,
your role centers more andmore on providing support,
stability, and balance sothat every branch can grow.
My guest today is DebbieMcMahon, Chief Product
Officer at the FinancialTimes, and I have to say,
I feel so privileged tohave had this conversation.
Debbie shared her candidinsights about how her role has
changed over the course of hercareer timeline, particularly
(00:44):
with respect to internaland external relationships,
including the things no onetells you to do and the things
you shouldn't do, even thougheveryone says you should.
She also shared her approachfor keeping her scope of
responsibility balanced, andhow intentional relationship
building bears fruit.
Let's jump in.
Oh, by the way, we holdconversations like this
every week, so if thissounds interesting to
you, why not subscribe?
(01:05):
Okay, now let's jump in.
Welcome back to theProduct Manager podcast.
I'm here with Debbie McMahon.
She is the CPO atthe Financial Times.
Debbie, I'm so honored thatyou made time to join us today.
Debbie McMahon (01:18):
Hi, I'm delighted to be here
on a thankfully sunnyafternoon here in London.
Hannah Clark (01:23):
Oh, beautiful.
Okay.
I'm jealous of your weather.
We had snowfall lastnight, so I'm so good.
Debbie McMahon (01:27):
Wow.
Okay.
Hannah Clark (01:28):
So can you tell us a little bit about your
background and your journeyto becoming the Chief Product
Officer at the Financial Times?
Debbie McMahon (01:34):
Yeah, I've been the interim Chief Product
Officer at the Financial Timesfor about nearly six months now.
Prior to that, I'd spent nearlythree years at the FT as a
product director leading theB2C part of the business, and
also the, I guess we kindacall it content as a service
part of the organization.
We only have one homepage,one set of adverts, et cetera.
Yeah, that's my journey atthe FT. I'm loving leading the
(01:56):
entire product organization,it's quite different and I think
we'll touch on that a bit today.
Before that, I worked inthe BBC and before that in
Universal Credit, which isa government program within
the uk and that's where Istarted my product journey.
We know one of theseslightly random, wow,
how did I end up here?
But yeah, it happened.
Hannah Clark (02:15):
Wow.
Yeah, it's an incredible,and I'd love to dig
into a little bit more.
Today, we're going to befocusing on the ways that
stakeholder managementevolves as we climb the
ladder of product leadership,which is a journey that you
were very familiar with.
So to kick us off, I'd loveto frame this discussion in
the context of seeing yourselfin the product, which is
something that you had mentionedbefore, looks really different
from one role to the next.
(02:36):
So what does that look foryou across the different
stages of your career?
Debbie McMahon (02:39):
Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it?
When I started out, I thinkI tried to remain as this
sort of neutral party.
Somebody who's no, it's just,I don't really have a view.
I have no stake here.
It's what does the evidence say?
What do the stakeholders need?
What does the business need?
What our customers are saying?
And you sit in this weird worldin between and in the end you,
I like, I think I realizedthat doesn't really work.
(03:01):
Sure, it probably works formost things, but ultimately
it doesn't in the end,work for everything because
where is your opinion?
It is the thing that also makesthe product hang together.
Like it has to be coherent,it has to feel like, it's like
it makes sense and if you gowith, oh, here's everybody
else's view, and I'm justcollating and figuring out,
where the best opportunity is.
Like it's, I don't thinkin the end it's gonna work.
(03:23):
Right now as I'm in theCPO role, I've set my
stall out super clearlyand gone, oh, I think I
really care about just now.
Is how mobile first weare building our products.
Not even just the end outcome,but how we're building them
and how that relates to thedata and evidence of how
people are using them, andalso the experience that I
want our customers to have.
(03:44):
I want it to be amobile first experience.
It is all about me beingable to go back and go,
look, this is what's changed.
My current boss said itquite nicely a while ago.
He's I always look at thestart of the year and then
look at the end of theyear and go, what wouldn't
have happened without me?
And for product people,sometimes that can be quite
hard, and that's why I havethis thing about, you've
gotta see what is you and whatis your contribution to the
(04:06):
product in a way that alsolike sure isn't just your
opinion, but makes sense.
The other thing that I'msuper banging on about just
now, any day my team who doeslisten to this will be like,
Hey, yeah, mobile first.
We've heard that, Debbie.
We know we're getting there.
The buttons on myside are terrible.
They're all different sizesand colors and shapes and,
sorry, Darcy, but she knows,and when I look at that I go,
(04:27):
no, that does not represent me.
That's a thing that I careabout and I go, no, that is
not a good enough experience.
Sure.
Is it the most important thing?
No, probably not, but it's athing I'm going, yeah, let's
do something about that.
Because it's where I can reflectquality of the experience
and how premium I want ourexperience to be back to our
customers, also to my teams.
Hannah Clark (04:46):
We kinda talked about some of your team
members, and I wanna talk alittle bit about relationships.
So you mentioned before that theproduct engineering relationship
is probably the most importantone for product leaders.
How has that relationshipevolved for you as you've
transitioned from a directorrole into a CPO position,
working directly with CTOs?
Debbie McMahon (05:02):
Yeah.
I cannot emphasize how importantI think that relationship is.
Like we talk about stakeholdersand how important as
a product person is towork with stakeholders.
Like your engineering colleaguesare not your stakeholders.
They're like, your other armis how I see it without them.
Neither of you can really getanything done, which is actually
quite unique, I think, where Istarted to think about roles.
(05:23):
Most people in the end can getstuff done themselves, but PMs
and engineers really can't.
Sure, you could buildstuff, but what would you
build and sure, you couldfigure out what to build,
but how would you build it?
That just doesn't really,two sides of the same coin.
I guess thing I foundreally interesting is I
have had some really strong.
I guess why we call peerrelationships in many different
(05:46):
places that I've worked.
Alice, hi Alice, who's myengineering director here
at the Financial Times.
We had a really deliveryfocused relationship.
Yeah, sure.
We were all about our outcomes.
What is it that we're tryingto achieve and how are we
setting up this organizationin order to succeed?
We had our top three prioritiesand our shared like goals and
every time we met, we let'sgo through these three things.
(06:08):
How are we orientating thisgroup of 120 people to get this
stuff done because these are thebig outcomes we need to achieve.
What's super interesting is Imove into the CPO role and I
have this really strong peerrelationship with Rebecca.
Hi Rebecca, who actuallyinterestingly used to be my
boss in a previous world.
It's, funny how thingscome round, isn't it?
I'm like, that's amazing 'causeI already know Rebecca and
(06:29):
we've got a good relationshiptogether as individuals, but
I look around and go, oh, thethings we're talking about
now are quite different.
We're talking aboutwho's gonna deal with
this particular vendor.
Do we care about thisproblem rather than how
are we gonna get it solved?
We're talking about the size andscope of the different product
groups, not the individualpieces of work anymore.
(06:50):
And it's not wildly different,but it's subtly different.
And I think getting used to thatdynamic and thinking about the
fact that relationship was nownot built on our need to get
stuff done every day, but it wasmore built on how are we running
our portfolio and how are werunning a set of products,
particularly since at the FT.
And I know for some people thiswill be a wee bit different.
(07:11):
And if you're working in asingle product, just a giant
single product, maybe thatis a bit different, but FT
has some portfolio productsthat are very separate now.
They're not necessarilyinteracting with each other
every day, so the sortof interchange between
them is not really there.
And so our conversations are,ah, we could talk about this
thing, but it only relates tothis one area of the business.
But we actually need totalk about the things that
(07:32):
relate to all of them somuch more about people, much
more about what the overallshape of the organization is.
And interestingly, much lessabout the work, which in some
sense is great in some sensesis back to my previous point.
You then need to findother ways to make sure
that you, particularlyas a product person, are
represented through the work.
Hannah Clark (07:50):
Yeah.
Okay.
So I wanna dig a littlebit deeper into this.
I think this really fascinatinghow the scope and the nature
of the work changes somuch when you transition
from one role to the next.
So let's talk a little bit aboutmanaging a delivery unit as a
product director versus leadingan enterprise function as a CPO.
What's the difference inthe leadership approach
and, what are some of likethe tactical differences
of how your day looks?
Debbie McMahon (08:10):
So interesting.
Actually, I was just talkingto one of my product directors
about this yesterday.
He was asking how I wasenjoying the role and I
talked a saying I feel.
I used to sit here in a seniorleader role in the organization,
but I knew what my, I knewwhat my scope was, and it was
all about getting stuff done.
Sure.
Making good decisions and goodoutcomes, but it ultimately
(08:32):
was about getting stuff done.
When I moved into the CPO role,I did have this perception.
I was, oh, I've just nowgot five delivery units.
We've got, four product groups.
I've got five delivery units.
It's just about gettingstuff done across
five different things.
It'll be the same, butbigger and more complicated.
Like it really is not, Ifind myself like a much
greater amount of my timeis on things that I guess
(08:53):
I would say are superconsequential to people's lives.
Like how much money arewe spending on pay rises
and promotions this year?
Are we upping the budgetfor training or are we not?
Are we moving people aroundand stopping doing some
stuff and starting doingsome other things, which
will change people's jobs?
That kind of very people,yeah, sure it comes with a
product lens, but it's a verypeople orientated and like the
(09:17):
absolute purity of leadership.
I've got a hundred people.
That's a lot of folk.
In the product and technologyorganization of the FT, I
think there's a 450 perms andanother a hundred contractors.
It's a lot of peoplefor us to, as a sort of
group, make sure that weare supporting correctly.
But then what I've also foundsuper interesting is I feel that
because my scope as a director,it was relatively broad.
(09:40):
You had 12 teams.
What I was able to be quiteconnected to the work, not
involved in the detail, butI feel like I was able to
impart those messages, getinvolved where necessary
help, support, and block.
That's much, much moredifficult a CPO role.
I think there's 28 teams now.
And as I said before, there,some of them are very different.
You're working in very differentareas that are not necessarily
(10:02):
connected to each other, sofinding the threads that you can
pull on, that's why somethinglike mobile first is super
powerful 'cause it's a threadthat can work for everything.
But what I have found is Iactually end up diving into
the detail, further into thedetail than I did as a director
on a tiny number of things.
I found that fascinating.
I'm like most of mytime, I'm up here.
Quite far away from the work andthinking about the organization
(10:26):
and how we work with the rest ofthe FT, which we will come onto
later, I think, in more detail.
But I've gone, ah, for me tohave the impact, I need to set
out, it's always three things.
Anybody who knows me, I'mslightly obsessed about
things coming in threes.
So what are the three things?
And I've said, hereare the three things at
the start of this year.
I've written them down, I'vetold all my team, I've told
people who work for my team.
(10:47):
These are the three thingsthat I really cared about and
I am gonna get involved in.
And so we're doing some stuff oncontent transformation just now.
I was like looking atthe designs, going, oh, I
don't really has this whitecolor really what we want.
And it was only afterwards Ikinda went, I would not have
done that six months ago.
I just wouldn't havebeen involved in
that level of detail.
And it's super interesting, butit's on a tiny number of things.
(11:10):
It is literally three things.
You can't do that in verymany, but that's my way of sh.
Both imparting, again, myselfinto the product, but also
in keeping myself connectedwith where are we headed?
What is our strategy?
What impact do we wantto have on our business
and on our customers?
Who else?
Most of my time isspent over here in a
completely different thing.
Hannah Clark (11:29):
Oh, I really love that insight on balancing
the macro and the micro, likemicro, where you can make an
impact that's significant.
And then macro, where yourtime needs to be dispersed.
So that's a reallygreat approach.
Another thing that I wantedto talk about more related to
relationships, is the importanceof understanding the job of the
stakeholder in front of you.
The stakeholder or the arm,depending on who you're speaking
to, so can you tell me whatthat looks like and why you
(11:49):
believe it's so critical toyour role as a product leader?
Debbie McMaho (11:52):
Yeah, definitely.
I think gone are the days whenproduct people could live in
a vacuum and kinda go, oh,all I care about is like that.
The customer is happy and thecustomer has what they need.
No, that's not whatwe're here to deliver.
If you work in a commercialorganization or even a
non-commercial organization thathas specific outcomes that needs
to achieve like cost cutting ora revenue growth, you have to be
(12:14):
able to contextualize everythingyou're doing with the business.
And it might be very commercialparts of the business, like
we have at the FT, we a,we're a subscriptions business
and a sales business andan advertising business.
Or it might be slightlydifferent parts.
So we also, our journalistsare really important
stakeholders for us.
'cause that's what we'regetting out there into
the big wide world.
Our product is our journalism.
(12:35):
And if you don't understandhow those people need to
go about doing their jobs.
And I don't just mean if youwork on internal tools, sure.
People will say, oh yeah, ifyou work on internal tools,
of course they're my customer.
Yeah, great.
Amazing.
That's very important.
But even if you don't work oninternal tools, that is how
ultimately your product is beingdelivered to your customers.
(12:57):
It's the journalists that arewriting stories and they have
to get those stories onto thesite, and that is essentially
how your product is delivered.
Or it is through the marketingmessages that are communicated,
or the sales person who istalking to a account manager
or the business wanting whomay want to buy your product.
You don't really understandhow they're communicating to
(13:17):
the people they meet, whatthey say about your product,
what feedback they get andhow they go about doing
their business, and also howthey're measured and managed
and what reporting they need.
Like you're missing ahuge bit of the jigsaw.
23, we had a new productmanager start in the retention
area of our business.
And it was an areathat we hadn't actually
invested in a lot.
(13:38):
We had a lot of energy over theprevious couple of years into
acquisition in discussion, andin agreement with our colleagues
in that part of the business.
But we were now gonna invest alot more in the retention side.
I asked that product manager togo and spend like a lot longer
as part of his onboarding withhis colleagues in that part
of the business and go to notjust the sort of high level
(13:59):
trading meetings that we wouldalready join, but go to their
detailed weekly meetings, goto the discussions that they
were having with their managersto understand what questions
they were being asked and howthey went about reporting and
how they went about makingdecisions on spending their
money and marketing campaigns.
And he came back with somefascinating insights that
without that extra level ofdata we just wouldn't have
(14:20):
gotten, including some stuffwhere it turned out that we
were using different numbersto describe the same thing,
which is clearly where someof the confusion that we'd had
in some of those conversationspreviously had been coming from.
And you're like, wow, okay.
There's no reason for that.
It's just two differentdepartments that have that focus
slightly differently and haveended up in slight, not going in
different directions, but justslightly parallel to each other.
(14:43):
That just reminded me of howimportant this is to really get
under the skin of that person.
One of my group productmanagers went and observed
an individual editing anewsletter not long after she
joined, 'cause she works inmuch more in the content part
of the business and watchingsomebody spend nearly two hours.
And then nearly get to the end,but get really badly interrupted
(15:04):
by the environment they werein, and then just have to
like, go back like about 20minutes into their work and
just understanding, oh wow,that's like the concentration
and he's having to get asense of the whole thing.
Can't just do it bit by bit.
Just understanding thatjust us, a world that we
don't inhabit was justincredibly powerful for her.
But then of course, shecan also tell that story
(15:25):
to me and to her colleaguesto help them understand.
And I think we're nevergonna do these people's jobs.
Sometimes maybe,we'll, who knows?
Some PMs do write reallywell and become journalists.
That's definitely true.
But the ability to have theboth, the level of empathy,
also the level of knowledgeto be able to speak credibly,
I think is really important.
Hannah Clark (15:44):
I'm glad you brought up empathy, 'cause
I wanna talk also aboutexternal relationships.
So obviously at the CPOlevel, that's another very
critical aspect of the roleis to manage those external
stakeholders as well.
How do you effectively managerelationships with folks like
vendors, partners, industrypeers, and still maintain a
focus on internal priorities?
Debbie McMahon (16:03):
Wow.
Don't open your LinkedIn.
It's one thing.
Okay.
That's bad advice, butlike sometimes don't
open your LinkedIn.
It's amazing that you put ajob update or you get a new job
title and suddenly a millionLinkedIn messages of wonderful,
lovely people congratulatingyou, but also of a thousand
vendors wanting to sell yousomething that you definitely
didn't know you needed.
(16:23):
We get it at all levels,but like every time I've
either moved jobs or gottenmore senior, it just gets
more and more extreme.
So one thing I would say is foranybody out there who's trying
to sell me something, I'lltell you if I need it, because
that's the only way to handle.
So this is one of thethings that the CTO at
the FT and I spend quitea lot of our time on.
Who is talking to who let'sone, make sure we're not
(16:44):
duplicating 'cause that is awaste of the small amounts of
time that we do have, but alsowho is best placed to have these
conversations in order to makesure that we are learning about
the things we need to learnabout, but also not just tag
teaming and both of us going inand having conversations just
because it's more comfortable.
It's like you have to exceeda lot of trust to each other
and be like, that's fine.
(17:05):
You can ask my questions.
You go talk to them.
And a lot of the time I sayRebecca the first thing we
care about is this tech good?
Because most of the timewe're pretty clear on
the customer outcome.
So you spend alot of time there.
It's the same within theorganization itself, though
there, I think I would saythat I have found it much
more powerful to have thattechnology product and a lot
(17:26):
of the time data relationshipsrepresented at the same time.
What I have found in thepast is when you try and
go, oh you talk to this bitof business and you talk to
that bit of the business.
You do end up sometimes in quitecircular conversations and like
that kind of being able to bethere and be like, I don't mean
we are united front againstthe organization, like we've
(17:47):
spoken and discussed this, butyou've got our combined view,
but you've also got all of usto get our combined knowledge,
information questions.
We don't have to go away andhave another meeting because
a more technical question wasasked or anything like that.
Like I think thatis quite powerful.
At the FT, we've got thesethings called pillar boards,
which are ways of collectingthose people, but also some
(18:09):
of the really importantstakeholders to also do
the same thing with them.
Like we don't necessarilywant to have the same
question discussed or thesame issue discussed with.
The editorial team andthen with the ads team.
And then so how do we createforums where we can do this?
People can hear stuff, butthey can also ask questions,
but they can hear each other.
It's not just, always usgiving out information and
taking information back.
(18:29):
It's that kind of oh, do yousee that there's a bit of
inconsistency here that yourpreferences for this, but
over here in this part of thebusiness, their preferences
for this, and maybe we arenot necessarily the people
who should arbitrate.
Maybe like you twotalk to each other.
I think the thing that I'vealso found really interesting
is how do you make sure that, asyou're doing that, to your point
about how do you then focus onmaking sure you're getting the
(18:50):
work done and your teams, A lotof it is about making sure that
you're gathering the informationyou need to gather and you're
finding time to impart it.
Every week I feel Ilearn again, oh no, you
need to repeat things.
Repeat them.
Repeat them more.
Repeat them more.
Yep.
Repeat them again.
Repeat them again.
And that is a lesson that anyof us can never learn enough.
Because no matter how often youthink you've said something,
(19:11):
you've never said it enough.
And for me it is a lot beenabout, okay, I've gone and
learned this and maybe inprevious roles in my career,
'cause that imparting ofinformation is not one
of my strongest suits.
I would often go,oh yeah, great.
That's superimportant information.
I'll file that away.
And now I'm like no.
Wait is my vehicle to goand tell that to someone.
(19:33):
I need to tell that to someone.
Maybe my whole team, maybe onespecific person, who is it?
I need to tell about this.
And I do that after everyconversation I have and
go who needs to know this?
There must be someonebecause it can't just be me.
And that is, I've made thata very conscious effort in
order to make sure that.
That's part of the wayI focus internally is by
going right now, I've toldyou what I've learned.
(19:54):
You can now do somethingwith that because you're
the person who can getsomething done often times.
Hannah Clark (19:59):
As you're telling me this, it's starting to dawn
on me, the level of masterythat you have to have over
your communication skills andthe amount of empathy that
requires to manage all ofthese different parties at
the level and the depth ofinformation that each of them
need and be able to delegate.
This is fascinating to listento, and I wanna talk a little
bit more about communicationmore in terms of almost
(20:21):
emotional mastery, or how doyou show up for your team?
So for example, there'sa popular narrative
around bringing yourauthentic self to work.
I know that
Debbie McMahon (20:30):
I have views about this.
I have views about this.
Hannah Clark (20:32):
That's exactly what I wanna hear.
So what are yourthoughts on bringing your
authentic self to work?
Take me through your thoughtprocess around this narrative.
Debbie McMahon (20:40):
Yeah.
What I would say is, honestly,no one wants you to bring
your authentic self to work.
That is my hot take.
Now, of course there'salways an exception.
There's one in a million.
There will be someoneout there who's no.
I want your warts andall, and that's the way I
will be inspired by you.
But 99.9% of peopledo not want that.
They do not want to know thatyou've got a headache, that
(21:02):
you fell out with your partner,that your car's got a flat tire.
They have all those problemstoo, and they are dealing with
all those things and more.
They don't wannahear about yours.
You are their boss.
That is why your peerrelationships, like eh, the,
the ways you get supportand that kind of slightly
lonely at the top thing thatI'm sure we will touch on at
some point is really true.
(21:23):
If you start offloadingonto your team, they're
just gonna be like, ah, likeyou are the one in charge.
You can't sort it.
What chance do I have?
The other thing I would sayis people want to hear about.
They don't wantyou to be perfect.
They don't want you to be likea robot who's just I'm fine.
Everything's great.
Thank you.
Bye.
(21:43):
Nobody wants that either.
So yes, as with everything,it's a wonderful balance
you need to strike.
I do talk about the messiesI've made and the mistakes I've
made and the poor decisionsI've made, and people do
wanna hear about that, butreally only after the fact.
They don't really wannahear about at the time,
and often they don't evenwant to hear about it
in the times that might.
So I usually talk about, Iusually always do something
(22:06):
on some of the worstdecisions I've ever made.
I am a human, like I've madetons of bad decisions, but it
was from the previous job orthe job before that because
that gives people a level ofconfidence that like, oh, she
won't be so bad this time.
She won't make thosemistakes with us.
We're in safe hands,and of course they know
that's not really true.
I always remember at thistime when I worked in
Universal Credit and we wereunder a lot of pressure.
(22:27):
A couple of things hadgone really badly wrong.
One of them reallyunexpectedly, and it needed
fixed really quickly.
It was days when we're allin the office, so everybody's
like kinda sitting aroundand we sat and my team sat in
these two banks of desks andone of the women in my team
turned to me and she was like,what are we gonna do, Debbie?
And I just went I just,I was really thin.
I was like, I don't know.
And that was like entirelythe wrong thing to do in that
(22:49):
moment because I could feelit, I could feel the kind of
the raising of the shoulders,the tightening of the sort
of go ready, slightly scaredlooks, becoming more scared
and confused and sure nobodywanted me to lie and say, oh,
let's just do this random thing.
But what they needed inthat moment was reassurance.
They didn't need me to go, ah,go and say that in the toilet,
or go and say that to the otherhead of product or to my boss.
(23:10):
That's all fine.
Afterwards when we got throughthat situation and we did
figure out what to do inthe end, like a couple of
'em came to me and said wereally hated you doing that.
Don't do that again.
It was like horrible.
'cause if you didn't know whatto do, what chance did we have?
And then we thought it wasall gonna be a disaster
and it was not fixable.
And I was like, oh, that is aninteresting way of looking at
this, which is about what peopleneed from you in the moment and
(23:33):
trying your best to give that.
While still being a real humanand not lying and not pretending
things are better than they are,but also remembering that like
you bear more responsibilityand it's your job to bait it.
And when you need support,you need to go elsewhere and
not give that to your team andexpect them to support you back.
Sometimes they will justbecause of, life some ages
(23:55):
ago asked me, in one of theseinterview questions like, what
would your team say about you?
I actually hadn't really askedpeople directly and I thought
of some stuff and then I wentback to my team and actually
asked them what would you say?
And they were like, that youare the person that eats all
the biscuits and never buys any.
And they were saying itfunnily, but it was true.
And I'm like, this is away you can all support me.
Great.
You can buy thebiscuits, that is fine.
(24:17):
I'm fine with that.
I don't need tobuy the biscuits.
But in that sort of reassuranceand that support, and also just
in accepting that everyone's gotstuff going on and problems and.
You keep yours to you, butyou need to take some of
your teams away from thembecause that is your job.
Hannah Clark (24:33):
I love this insight and I love the
anecdotes too, that kind ofreally illustrate how that
balance looks in practice.
Obviously you don't shareall of your thoughts with
your team, but some you do.
For example, your thoughts onthe design and the like of those
things that you do focus on.
So how do you approachdelegating that?
How do you delegate thoughtsand preferences to other leaders
rather than just delegatingtasks, which would you would've
(24:55):
done probably in previous roles?
Debbie McMaho (24:56):
Yeah, definitely.
I think the balance here forme is where could the car
crash versus where might thecar just go on a slightly
detour or wobbly journey.
That's why I'm always thinkingabout, which is what is the
consequence of this choice?
What could happen here and ifthe car could crash, yeah, I'm
gonna be more involved and I'mnot necessarily there delegating
(25:18):
a task, but my approachto delegation will be like
delegation with active support.
Like being there to belike, yeah, this is hard,
this is consequential.
What do you need from me?
Whereas the rest of the timeyou do just have to accept.
And sometimes grit yourteeth and go, oh, that's
not what I would've done.
Oh no.
But that is okay becausehow can you possibly be
(25:41):
in 28 places at once?
If you try to be in 28places at once, I guarantee
you'll be in none of them.
And that's not gonna help.
But it's also recognizingthe strengths of your team.
And being able to go, oh,actually this is something that
this person is really good at.
So even if it is reallyconsequential, actually,
let me just let go andlet them get on with it.
But over here, this issomething this person
(26:02):
has never done before.
So how do I therefore makesure that I. Whether it's a
consequential thing or not, thatI've given them enough support
and given them the right toolsin order that they themselves
in that moment can both learnbut also feel supported enough.
It's a really tricky balance.
It's a constant oh, have Igotten too involved in this?
Oh, maybe not.
Maybe not enough.
(26:23):
Oh, a bit more involved.
And again, it was one ofthe conversations I was
having with my productdirector yesterday was just.
Asking the questionof, am I getting that
balance right for you?
Do you feel like I'm involvedenough and giving you enough
support because there is areal risk that people feel
ignored or just oh it's.
Get on with it.
You know what you're doing,you're a senior person.
(26:43):
And the answer appeared tobe mostly yes, but I think
there's no easy answer.
And also, the thing I'vealways got to remember is,
and all of us, the more seniorwe get, are what we want for
ourselves and for our, fromour managers and our bosses.
It's not necessarilywhat our people want.
I'm very much a kind of,Nope, leave me alone.
I've got this.
Please leave me alone.
I'll sort out myself.
(27:04):
I would call it, get your tanksoff my lawn, person as me, you.
I'm like no, likethis is my space.
Just leave me.
But that's not howeverybody else is.
And by doing that, byreplicating your style
onto others without reallyexamining what they need.
You can end up with quitea mismatch between, with
people going, ah, you'vejust left me alone, versus
others who are like, oh yeah,this is exactly what I want
(27:26):
because I'm quite like you.
And it's, you've got to findthat balance and a lot of it is.
This is what I'm like asa leader and this would be
what I would naturally do.
How does that work for you?
And just beinghonest about that.
We can't be everythingto everyone.
Also, how do you helpyour team use each other?
If it's something that you arenot great at, there probably
will be somebody in thatpeer group who is good at it.
So how can you match themup and go, not always me,
(27:48):
but how about your workwith this person on that?
Hannah Clark (27:51):
I think that's a really important piece that
can really serve us well at anylevel to be really aware of the
way that we are, and I thinka lot of misunderstanding and
friction could be avoided justby understanding, our default
ways of being and working.
I really appreciate howyou incorporate that
into the conversation.
You did mention though a littlebit about being left alone.
(28:13):
Let's talk aboutloneliness at the top.
The trope of it'slonely at the top.
What does that really feel like?
I think that we have beforeentering an executive role,
there's a idea what that lookslike, but in practice, I, it
seems to me that it's verydifferent than you'd expect.
What strategies have you foundeffective for managing that
sort of loneliness, and whatdoes it really feel like?
Debbie McMahon (28:33):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it is inevitable.
Like that trope just is true.
I think it is.
It doesn't have tobe all bad everyone.
It doesn't have to be all bad.
So I think for methere's three things.
One, it is what isthat peer group?
And get yourself involvedwith your peer group, whether
that be, a group of productdirectors or whether it
be your individual sort ofpeer engineer, engineering
(28:55):
director, whether it be theCTO and the CDO, like find.
At the FT, we have a peer groupthat also includes the VP of
Cyber and the VP of portfoliosand programs like that is a good
group of people who are all verydifferent, as you can imagine.
You are very different andleaning on them and being
like, oh, more about financethan I do, or Rebecca,
you're definitely better attalking to vendors than I am
(29:17):
and just like being reallyhonest and shading that load
is definitely one thing.
Secondly is figuring outfor you as a human where
your resilience comes from.
Some of us get it internally.
I draw strength from myself.
Others get it from others.
Others get it from tools andtechniques, like figuring out
like where your resiliencecomes from and what you
need to do to keep it top.
(29:38):
For some people that'sabout how you work, how
you have breaks, loads andloads of different things.
But thinking about whereyou're drawing your
resilience and keeping it.
And then third, make sureyou've got releases outside
of work, whether that bemoaning to your friends, not
about like confidential stuff,you can moan about, oh, like
(30:01):
this was really hard and ugh.
Like that kind of, somebodywho knows you as a person
and who can keep yougrounded, but also tell you.
You'll be doing great.
They don't know, justthat kind of thing that
you need for some people.
For some people it's theirkids or their partner.
Some people it's going anddoing an exercise and being
told they're doing a greatjob at exercise and like that.
(30:23):
Then translatingthat into their work.
But it's, you do need somethingthat is helping you step a bit
out of the work environment,but also remind you that
you're a human, you're a realperson, and you're doing great.
Inevitably, you will notbe doing perfect, but
you'll be doing great.
And as long as you're doing yourbest, that's all you can do.
Hannah Clark (30:41):
This has been such a fascinating conversation.
I really appreciate, Debbie,the empathetic approach that
you've shared with us today.
I wanna thank you so much forsome of the tactics and insights
and anecdotes you shared.
This has been so valuable.
Where can listenerskeep up with you online?
Debbie McMahon (30:56):
Please do message me on LinkedIn.
It's genuinely fine,just not if you're trying
to sell me something.
You'll find me on LinkedIn.
I am not much for a writer,so I don't write much, but I
do post a bit about your workand the stuff that we do both
at the FT and also I have theoccasional moan about equality
of women and things like that.
So people will usuallyfind that interesting.
(31:18):
So yeah, please follow meand reach out if there's
something I can help you with.
Hannah Clark (31:22):
Lovely.
Thanks for joining us.
Debbie McMahon (31:23):
Delighted too.
Hannah Clark (31:27):
Thanks for listening in.
For more great insights,how-to guides and tool reviews,
subscribe to our newsletter attheproductmanager.com/subscribe.
You can hear more conversationslike this by subscribing to
the Product Manager whereveryou get your podcasts.
The other day, I noticed a little
seedling growing a shortdistance from an apple tree.
It struck me that eventhough I was looking at
two of the same plant, theyhad very little in common.
Despite their shared goalof producing apples, time
and maturity had giventhe tree a gradual but
total transformation.
When you look at theseedling, you see the leaves,
but when you look at thetree, you see the trunk.
(00:22):
And such is the case forexecutive leadership.
The higher you climb theranks of product leadership,
your role centers more andmore on providing support,
stability, and balance sothat every branch can grow.
My guest today is DebbieMcMahon, Chief Product
Officer at the FinancialTimes, and I have to say,
I feel so privileged tohave had this conversation.
Debbie shared her candidinsights about how her role has
changed over the course of hercareer timeline, particularly
(00:44):
with respect to internaland external relationships,
including the things no onetells you to do and the things
you shouldn't do, even thougheveryone says you should.
She also shared her approachfor keeping her scope of
responsibility balanced, andhow intentional relationship
building bears fruit.
Let's jump in.
Oh, by the way, we holdconversations like this
every week, so if thissounds interesting to
you, why not subscribe?
(01:05):
Okay, now let's jump in.
Welcome back to theProduct Manager podcast.
I'm here with Debbie McMahon.
She is the CPO atthe Financial Times.
Debbie, I'm so honored thatyou made time to join us today.
Debbie McMahon (01:18):
Hi, I'm delighted to be here
on a thankfully sunnyafternoon here in London.
Hannah Clark (01:23):
Oh, beautiful.
Okay.
I'm jealous of your weather.
We had snowfall lastnight, so I'm so good.
Debbie McMahon (01:27):
Wow.
Okay.
Hannah Clark (01:28):
So can you tell us a little bit about your
background and your journeyto becoming the Chief Product
Officer at the Financial Times?
Debbie McMahon (01:34):
Yeah, I've been the interim Chief Product
Officer at the Financial Timesfor about nearly six months now.
Prior to that, I'd spent nearlythree years at the FT as a
product director leading theB2C part of the business, and
also the, I guess we kindacall it content as a service
part of the organization.
We only have one homepage,one set of adverts, et cetera.
Yeah, that's my journey atthe FT. I'm loving leading the
(01:56):
entire product organization,it's quite different and I think
we'll touch on that a bit today.
Before that, I worked inthe BBC and before that in
Universal Credit, which isa government program within
the uk and that's where Istarted my product journey.
We know one of theseslightly random, wow,
how did I end up here?
But yeah, it happened.
Hannah Clark (02:15):
Wow.
Yeah, it's an incredible,and I'd love to dig
into a little bit more.
Today, we're going to befocusing on the ways that
stakeholder managementevolves as we climb the
ladder of product leadership,which is a journey that you
were very familiar with.
So to kick us off, I'd loveto frame this discussion in
the context of seeing yourselfin the product, which is
something that you had mentionedbefore, looks really different
from one role to the next.
(02:36):
So what does that look foryou across the different
stages of your career?
Debbie McMahon (02:39):
Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it?
When I started out, I thinkI tried to remain as this
sort of neutral party.
Somebody who's no, it's just,I don't really have a view.
I have no stake here.
It's what does the evidence say?
What do the stakeholders need?
What does the business need?
What our customers are saying?
And you sit in this weird worldin between and in the end you,
I like, I think I realizedthat doesn't really work.
(03:01):
Sure, it probably works formost things, but ultimately
it doesn't in the end,work for everything because
where is your opinion?
It is the thing that also makesthe product hang together.
Like it has to be coherent,it has to feel like, it's like
it makes sense and if you gowith, oh, here's everybody
else's view, and I'm justcollating and figuring out,
where the best opportunity is.
Like it's, I don't thinkin the end it's gonna work.
(03:23):
Right now as I'm in theCPO role, I've set my
stall out super clearlyand gone, oh, I think I
really care about just now.
Is how mobile first weare building our products.
Not even just the end outcome,but how we're building them
and how that relates to thedata and evidence of how
people are using them, andalso the experience that I
want our customers to have.
(03:44):
I want it to be amobile first experience.
It is all about me beingable to go back and go,
look, this is what's changed.
My current boss said itquite nicely a while ago.
He's I always look at thestart of the year and then
look at the end of theyear and go, what wouldn't
have happened without me?
And for product people,sometimes that can be quite
hard, and that's why I havethis thing about, you've
gotta see what is you and whatis your contribution to the
(04:06):
product in a way that alsolike sure isn't just your
opinion, but makes sense.
The other thing that I'msuper banging on about just
now, any day my team who doeslisten to this will be like,
Hey, yeah, mobile first.
We've heard that, Debbie.
We know we're getting there.
The buttons on myside are terrible.
They're all different sizesand colors and shapes and,
sorry, Darcy, but she knows,and when I look at that I go,
(04:27):
no, that does not represent me.
That's a thing that I careabout and I go, no, that is
not a good enough experience.
Sure.
Is it the most important thing?
No, probably not, but it's athing I'm going, yeah, let's
do something about that.
Because it's where I can reflectquality of the experience
and how premium I want ourexperience to be back to our
customers, also to my teams.
Hannah Clark (04:46):
We kinda talked about some of your team
members, and I wanna talk alittle bit about relationships.
So you mentioned before that theproduct engineering relationship
is probably the most importantone for product leaders.
How has that relationshipevolved for you as you've
transitioned from a directorrole into a CPO position,
working directly with CTOs?
Debbie McMahon (05:02):
Yeah.
I cannot emphasize how importantI think that relationship is.
Like we talk about stakeholdersand how important as
a product person is towork with stakeholders.
Like your engineering colleaguesare not your stakeholders.
They're like, your other armis how I see it without them.
Neither of you can really getanything done, which is actually
quite unique, I think, where Istarted to think about roles.
(05:23):
Most people in the end can getstuff done themselves, but PMs
and engineers really can't.
Sure, you could buildstuff, but what would you
build and sure, you couldfigure out what to build,
but how would you build it?
That just doesn't really,two sides of the same coin.
I guess thing I foundreally interesting is I
have had some really strong.
I guess why we call peerrelationships in many different
(05:46):
places that I've worked.
Alice, hi Alice, who's myengineering director here
at the Financial Times.
We had a really deliveryfocused relationship.
Yeah, sure.
We were all about our outcomes.
What is it that we're tryingto achieve and how are we
setting up this organizationin order to succeed?
We had our top three prioritiesand our shared like goals and
every time we met, we let'sgo through these three things.
(06:08):
How are we orientating thisgroup of 120 people to get this
stuff done because these are thebig outcomes we need to achieve.
What's super interesting is Imove into the CPO role and I
have this really strong peerrelationship with Rebecca.
Hi Rebecca, who actuallyinterestingly used to be my
boss in a previous world.
It's, funny how thingscome round, isn't it?
I'm like, that's amazing 'causeI already know Rebecca and
(06:29):
we've got a good relationshiptogether as individuals, but
I look around and go, oh, thethings we're talking about
now are quite different.
We're talking aboutwho's gonna deal with
this particular vendor.
Do we care about thisproblem rather than how
are we gonna get it solved?
We're talking about the size andscope of the different product
groups, not the individualpieces of work anymore.
(06:50):
And it's not wildly different,but it's subtly different.
And I think getting used to thatdynamic and thinking about the
fact that relationship was nownot built on our need to get
stuff done every day, but it wasmore built on how are we running
our portfolio and how are werunning a set of products,
particularly since at the FT.
And I know for some people thiswill be a wee bit different.
(07:11):
And if you're working in asingle product, just a giant
single product, maybe thatis a bit different, but FT
has some portfolio productsthat are very separate now.
They're not necessarilyinteracting with each other
every day, so the sortof interchange between
them is not really there.
And so our conversations are,ah, we could talk about this
thing, but it only relates tothis one area of the business.
But we actually need totalk about the things that
(07:32):
relate to all of them somuch more about people, much
more about what the overallshape of the organization is.
And interestingly, much lessabout the work, which in some
sense is great in some sensesis back to my previous point.
You then need to findother ways to make sure
that you, particularlyas a product person, are
represented through the work.
Hannah Clark (07:50):
Yeah.
Okay.
So I wanna dig a littlebit deeper into this.
I think this really fascinatinghow the scope and the nature
of the work changes somuch when you transition
from one role to the next.
So let's talk a little bit aboutmanaging a delivery unit as a
product director versus leadingan enterprise function as a CPO.
What's the difference inthe leadership approach
and, what are some of likethe tactical differences
of how your day looks?
Debbie McMahon (08:10):
So interesting.
Actually, I was just talkingto one of my product directors
about this yesterday.
He was asking how I wasenjoying the role and I
talked a saying I feel.
I used to sit here in a seniorleader role in the organization,
but I knew what my, I knewwhat my scope was, and it was
all about getting stuff done.
Sure.
Making good decisions and goodoutcomes, but it ultimately
(08:32):
was about getting stuff done.
When I moved into the CPO role,I did have this perception.
I was, oh, I've just nowgot five delivery units.
We've got, four product groups.
I've got five delivery units.
It's just about gettingstuff done across
five different things.
It'll be the same, butbigger and more complicated.
Like it really is not, Ifind myself like a much
greater amount of my timeis on things that I guess
(08:53):
I would say are superconsequential to people's lives.
Like how much money arewe spending on pay rises
and promotions this year?
Are we upping the budgetfor training or are we not?
Are we moving people aroundand stopping doing some
stuff and starting doingsome other things, which
will change people's jobs?
That kind of very people,yeah, sure it comes with a
product lens, but it's a verypeople orientated and like the
(09:17):
absolute purity of leadership.
I've got a hundred people.
That's a lot of folk.
In the product and technologyorganization of the FT, I
think there's a 450 perms andanother a hundred contractors.
It's a lot of peoplefor us to, as a sort of
group, make sure that weare supporting correctly.
But then what I've also foundsuper interesting is I feel that
because my scope as a director,it was relatively broad.
(09:40):
You had 12 teams.
What I was able to be quiteconnected to the work, not
involved in the detail, butI feel like I was able to
impart those messages, getinvolved where necessary
help, support, and block.
That's much, much moredifficult a CPO role.
I think there's 28 teams now.
And as I said before, there,some of them are very different.
You're working in very differentareas that are not necessarily
(10:02):
connected to each other, sofinding the threads that you can
pull on, that's why somethinglike mobile first is super
powerful 'cause it's a threadthat can work for everything.
But what I have found is Iactually end up diving into
the detail, further into thedetail than I did as a director
on a tiny number of things.
I found that fascinating.
I'm like most of mytime, I'm up here.
Quite far away from the work andthinking about the organization
(10:26):
and how we work with the rest ofthe FT, which we will come onto
later, I think, in more detail.
But I've gone, ah, for me tohave the impact, I need to set
out, it's always three things.
Anybody who knows me, I'mslightly obsessed about
things coming in threes.
So what are the three things?
And I've said, hereare the three things at
the start of this year.
I've written them down, I'vetold all my team, I've told
people who work for my team.
(10:47):
These are the three thingsthat I really cared about and
I am gonna get involved in.
And so we're doing some stuff oncontent transformation just now.
I was like looking atthe designs, going, oh, I
don't really has this whitecolor really what we want.
And it was only afterwards Ikinda went, I would not have
done that six months ago.
I just wouldn't havebeen involved in
that level of detail.
And it's super interesting, butit's on a tiny number of things.
(11:10):
It is literally three things.
You can't do that in verymany, but that's my way of sh.
Both imparting, again, myselfinto the product, but also
in keeping myself connectedwith where are we headed?
What is our strategy?
What impact do we wantto have on our business
and on our customers?
Who else?
Most of my time isspent over here in a
completely different thing.
Hannah Clark (11:29):
Oh, I really love that insight on balancing
the macro and the micro, likemicro, where you can make an
impact that's significant.
And then macro, where yourtime needs to be dispersed.
So that's a reallygreat approach.
Another thing that I wantedto talk about more related to
relationships, is the importanceof understanding the job of the
stakeholder in front of you.
The stakeholder or the arm,depending on who you're speaking
to, so can you tell me whatthat looks like and why you
(11:49):
believe it's so critical toyour role as a product leader?
Debbie McMaho (11:52):
Yeah, definitely.
I think gone are the days whenproduct people could live in
a vacuum and kinda go, oh,all I care about is like that.
The customer is happy and thecustomer has what they need.
No, that's not whatwe're here to deliver.
If you work in a commercialorganization or even a
non-commercial organization thathas specific outcomes that needs
to achieve like cost cutting ora revenue growth, you have to be
(12:14):
able to contextualize everythingyou're doing with the business.
And it might be very commercialparts of the business, like
we have at the FT, we a,we're a subscriptions business
and a sales business andan advertising business.
Or it might be slightlydifferent parts.
So we also, our journalistsare really important
stakeholders for us.
'cause that's what we'regetting out there into
the big wide world.
Our product is our journalism.
(12:35):
And if you don't understandhow those people need to
go about doing their jobs.
And I don't just mean if youwork on internal tools, sure.
People will say, oh yeah, ifyou work on internal tools,
of course they're my customer.
Yeah, great.
Amazing.
That's very important.
But even if you don't work oninternal tools, that is how
ultimately your product is beingdelivered to your customers.
(12:57):
It's the journalists that arewriting stories and they have
to get those stories onto thesite, and that is essentially
how your product is delivered.
Or it is through the marketingmessages that are communicated,
or the sales person who istalking to a account manager
or the business wanting whomay want to buy your product.
You don't really understandhow they're communicating to
(13:17):
the people they meet, whatthey say about your product,
what feedback they get andhow they go about doing
their business, and also howthey're measured and managed
and what reporting they need.
Like you're missing ahuge bit of the jigsaw.
23, we had a new productmanager start in the retention
area of our business.
And it was an areathat we hadn't actually
invested in a lot.
(13:38):
We had a lot of energy over theprevious couple of years into
acquisition in discussion, andin agreement with our colleagues
in that part of the business.
But we were now gonna invest alot more in the retention side.
I asked that product manager togo and spend like a lot longer
as part of his onboarding withhis colleagues in that part
of the business and go to notjust the sort of high level
(13:59):
trading meetings that we wouldalready join, but go to their
detailed weekly meetings, goto the discussions that they
were having with their managersto understand what questions
they were being asked and howthey went about reporting and
how they went about makingdecisions on spending their
money and marketing campaigns.
And he came back with somefascinating insights that
without that extra level ofdata we just wouldn't have
(14:20):
gotten, including some stuffwhere it turned out that we
were using different numbersto describe the same thing,
which is clearly where someof the confusion that we'd had
in some of those conversationspreviously had been coming from.
And you're like, wow, okay.
There's no reason for that.
It's just two differentdepartments that have that focus
slightly differently and haveended up in slight, not going in
different directions, but justslightly parallel to each other.
(14:43):
That just reminded me of howimportant this is to really get
under the skin of that person.
One of my group productmanagers went and observed
an individual editing anewsletter not long after she
joined, 'cause she works inmuch more in the content part
of the business and watchingsomebody spend nearly two hours.
And then nearly get to the end,but get really badly interrupted
(15:04):
by the environment they werein, and then just have to
like, go back like about 20minutes into their work and
just understanding, oh wow,that's like the concentration
and he's having to get asense of the whole thing.
Can't just do it bit by bit.
Just understanding thatjust us, a world that we
don't inhabit was justincredibly powerful for her.
But then of course, shecan also tell that story
(15:25):
to me and to her colleaguesto help them understand.
And I think we're nevergonna do these people's jobs.
Sometimes maybe,we'll, who knows?
Some PMs do write reallywell and become journalists.
That's definitely true.
But the ability to have theboth, the level of empathy,
also the level of knowledgeto be able to speak credibly,
I think is really important.
Hannah Clark (15:44):
I'm glad you brought up empathy, 'cause
I wanna talk also aboutexternal relationships.
So obviously at the CPOlevel, that's another very
critical aspect of the roleis to manage those external
stakeholders as well.
How do you effectively managerelationships with folks like
vendors, partners, industrypeers, and still maintain a
focus on internal priorities?
Debbie McMahon (16:03):
Wow.
Don't open your LinkedIn.
It's one thing.
Okay.
That's bad advice, butlike sometimes don't
open your LinkedIn.
It's amazing that you put ajob update or you get a new job
title and suddenly a millionLinkedIn messages of wonderful,
lovely people congratulatingyou, but also of a thousand
vendors wanting to sell yousomething that you definitely
didn't know you needed.
(16:23):
We get it at all levels,but like every time I've
either moved jobs or gottenmore senior, it just gets
more and more extreme.
So one thing I would say is foranybody out there who's trying
to sell me something, I'lltell you if I need it, because
that's the only way to handle.
So this is one of thethings that the CTO at
the FT and I spend quitea lot of our time on.
Who is talking to who let'sone, make sure we're not
(16:44):
duplicating 'cause that is awaste of the small amounts of
time that we do have, but alsowho is best placed to have these
conversations in order to makesure that we are learning about
the things we need to learnabout, but also not just tag
teaming and both of us going inand having conversations just
because it's more comfortable.
It's like you have to exceeda lot of trust to each other
and be like, that's fine.
(17:05):
You can ask my questions.
You go talk to them.
And a lot of the time I sayRebecca the first thing we
care about is this tech good?
Because most of the timewe're pretty clear on
the customer outcome.
So you spend alot of time there.
It's the same within theorganization itself, though
there, I think I would saythat I have found it much
more powerful to have thattechnology product and a lot
(17:26):
of the time data relationshipsrepresented at the same time.
What I have found in thepast is when you try and
go, oh you talk to this bitof business and you talk to
that bit of the business.
You do end up sometimes in quitecircular conversations and like
that kind of being able to bethere and be like, I don't mean
we are united front againstthe organization, like we've
(17:47):
spoken and discussed this, butyou've got our combined view,
but you've also got all of usto get our combined knowledge,
information questions.
We don't have to go away andhave another meeting because
a more technical question wasasked or anything like that.
Like I think thatis quite powerful.
At the FT, we've got thesethings called pillar boards,
which are ways of collectingthose people, but also some
(18:09):
of the really importantstakeholders to also do
the same thing with them.
Like we don't necessarilywant to have the same
question discussed or thesame issue discussed with.
The editorial team andthen with the ads team.
And then so how do we createforums where we can do this?
People can hear stuff, butthey can also ask questions,
but they can hear each other.
It's not just, always usgiving out information and
taking information back.
(18:29):
It's that kind of oh, do yousee that there's a bit of
inconsistency here that yourpreferences for this, but
over here in this part of thebusiness, their preferences
for this, and maybe we arenot necessarily the people
who should arbitrate.
Maybe like you twotalk to each other.
I think the thing that I'vealso found really interesting
is how do you make sure that, asyou're doing that, to your point
about how do you then focus onmaking sure you're getting the
(18:50):
work done and your teams, A lotof it is about making sure that
you're gathering the informationyou need to gather and you're
finding time to impart it.
Every week I feel Ilearn again, oh no, you
need to repeat things.
Repeat them.
Repeat them more.
Repeat them more.
Yep.
Repeat them again.
Repeat them again.
And that is a lesson that anyof us can never learn enough.
Because no matter how often youthink you've said something,
(19:11):
you've never said it enough.
And for me it is a lot beenabout, okay, I've gone and
learned this and maybe inprevious roles in my career,
'cause that imparting ofinformation is not one
of my strongest suits.
I would often go,oh yeah, great.
That's superimportant information.
I'll file that away.
And now I'm like no.
Wait is my vehicle to goand tell that to someone.
(19:33):
I need to tell that to someone.
Maybe my whole team, maybe onespecific person, who is it?
I need to tell about this.
And I do that after everyconversation I have and
go who needs to know this?
There must be someonebecause it can't just be me.
And that is, I've made thata very conscious effort in
order to make sure that.
That's part of the wayI focus internally is by
going right now, I've toldyou what I've learned.
(19:54):
You can now do somethingwith that because you're
the person who can getsomething done often times.
Hannah Clark (19:59):
As you're telling me this, it's starting to dawn
on me, the level of masterythat you have to have over
your communication skills andthe amount of empathy that
requires to manage all ofthese different parties at
the level and the depth ofinformation that each of them
need and be able to delegate.
This is fascinating to listento, and I wanna talk a little
bit more about communicationmore in terms of almost
(20:21):
emotional mastery, or how doyou show up for your team?
So for example, there'sa popular narrative
around bringing yourauthentic self to work.
I know that
Debbie McMahon (20:30):
I have views about this.
I have views about this.
Hannah Clark (20:32):
That's exactly what I wanna hear.
So what are yourthoughts on bringing your
authentic self to work?
Take me through your thoughtprocess around this narrative.
Debbie McMahon (20:40):
Yeah.
What I would say is, honestly,no one wants you to bring
your authentic self to work.
That is my hot take.
Now, of course there'salways an exception.
There's one in a million.
There will be someoneout there who's no.
I want your warts andall, and that's the way I
will be inspired by you.
But 99.9% of peopledo not want that.
They do not want to know thatyou've got a headache, that
(21:02):
you fell out with your partner,that your car's got a flat tire.
They have all those problemstoo, and they are dealing with
all those things and more.
They don't wannahear about yours.
You are their boss.
That is why your peerrelationships, like eh, the,
the ways you get supportand that kind of slightly
lonely at the top thing thatI'm sure we will touch on at
some point is really true.
(21:23):
If you start offloadingonto your team, they're
just gonna be like, ah, likeyou are the one in charge.
You can't sort it.
What chance do I have?
The other thing I would sayis people want to hear about.
They don't wantyou to be perfect.
They don't want you to be likea robot who's just I'm fine.
Everything's great.
Thank you.
Bye.
(21:43):
Nobody wants that either.
So yes, as with everything,it's a wonderful balance
you need to strike.
I do talk about the messiesI've made and the mistakes I've
made and the poor decisionsI've made, and people do
wanna hear about that, butreally only after the fact.
They don't really wannahear about at the time,
and often they don't evenwant to hear about it
in the times that might.
So I usually talk about, Iusually always do something
(22:06):
on some of the worstdecisions I've ever made.
I am a human, like I've madetons of bad decisions, but it
was from the previous job orthe job before that because
that gives people a level ofconfidence that like, oh, she
won't be so bad this time.
She won't make thosemistakes with us.
We're in safe hands,and of course they know
that's not really true.
I always remember at thistime when I worked in
Universal Credit and we wereunder a lot of pressure.
(22:27):
A couple of things hadgone really badly wrong.
One of them reallyunexpectedly, and it needed
fixed really quickly.
It was days when we're allin the office, so everybody's
like kinda sitting aroundand we sat and my team sat in
these two banks of desks andone of the women in my team
turned to me and she was like,what are we gonna do, Debbie?
And I just went I just,I was really thin.
I was like, I don't know.
And that was like entirelythe wrong thing to do in that
(22:49):
moment because I could feelit, I could feel the kind of
the raising of the shoulders,the tightening of the sort
of go ready, slightly scaredlooks, becoming more scared
and confused and sure nobodywanted me to lie and say, oh,
let's just do this random thing.
But what they needed inthat moment was reassurance.
They didn't need me to go, ah,go and say that in the toilet,
or go and say that to the otherhead of product or to my boss.
(23:10):
That's all fine.
Afterwards when we got throughthat situation and we did
figure out what to do inthe end, like a couple of
'em came to me and said wereally hated you doing that.
Don't do that again.
It was like horrible.
'cause if you didn't know whatto do, what chance did we have?
And then we thought it wasall gonna be a disaster
and it was not fixable.
And I was like, oh, that is aninteresting way of looking at
this, which is about what peopleneed from you in the moment and
(23:33):
trying your best to give that.
While still being a real humanand not lying and not pretending
things are better than they are,but also remembering that like
you bear more responsibilityand it's your job to bait it.
And when you need support,you need to go elsewhere and
not give that to your team andexpect them to support you back.
Sometimes they will justbecause of, life some ages
(23:55):
ago asked me, in one of theseinterview questions like, what
would your team say about you?
I actually hadn't really askedpeople directly and I thought
of some stuff and then I wentback to my team and actually
asked them what would you say?
And they were like, that youare the person that eats all
the biscuits and never buys any.
And they were saying itfunnily, but it was true.
And I'm like, this is away you can all support me.
Great.
You can buy thebiscuits, that is fine.
(24:17):
I'm fine with that.
I don't need tobuy the biscuits.
But in that sort of reassuranceand that support, and also just
in accepting that everyone's gotstuff going on and problems and.
You keep yours to you, butyou need to take some of
your teams away from thembecause that is your job.
Hannah Clark (24:33):
I love this insight and I love the
anecdotes too, that kind ofreally illustrate how that
balance looks in practice.
Obviously you don't shareall of your thoughts with
your team, but some you do.
For example, your thoughts onthe design and the like of those
things that you do focus on.
So how do you approachdelegating that?
How do you delegate thoughtsand preferences to other leaders
rather than just delegatingtasks, which would you would've
(24:55):
done probably in previous roles?
Debbie McMaho (24:56):
Yeah, definitely.
I think the balance here forme is where could the car
crash versus where might thecar just go on a slightly
detour or wobbly journey.
That's why I'm always thinkingabout, which is what is the
consequence of this choice?
What could happen here and ifthe car could crash, yeah, I'm
gonna be more involved and I'mnot necessarily there delegating
(25:18):
a task, but my approachto delegation will be like
delegation with active support.
Like being there to belike, yeah, this is hard,
this is consequential.
What do you need from me?
Whereas the rest of the timeyou do just have to accept.
And sometimes grit yourteeth and go, oh, that's
not what I would've done.
Oh no.
But that is okay becausehow can you possibly be
(25:41):
in 28 places at once?
If you try to be in 28places at once, I guarantee
you'll be in none of them.
And that's not gonna help.
But it's also recognizingthe strengths of your team.
And being able to go, oh,actually this is something that
this person is really good at.
So even if it is reallyconsequential, actually,
let me just let go andlet them get on with it.
But over here, this issomething this person
(26:02):
has never done before.
So how do I therefore makesure that I. Whether it's a
consequential thing or not, thatI've given them enough support
and given them the right toolsin order that they themselves
in that moment can both learnbut also feel supported enough.
It's a really tricky balance.
It's a constant oh, have Igotten too involved in this?
Oh, maybe not.
Maybe not enough.
(26:23):
Oh, a bit more involved.
And again, it was one ofthe conversations I was
having with my productdirector yesterday was just.
Asking the questionof, am I getting that
balance right for you?
Do you feel like I'm involvedenough and giving you enough
support because there is areal risk that people feel
ignored or just oh it's.
Get on with it.
You know what you're doing,you're a senior person.
(26:43):
And the answer appeared tobe mostly yes, but I think
there's no easy answer.
And also, the thing I'vealways got to remember is,
and all of us, the more seniorwe get, are what we want for
ourselves and for our, fromour managers and our bosses.
It's not necessarilywhat our people want.
I'm very much a kind of,Nope, leave me alone.
I've got this.
Please leave me alone.
I'll sort out myself.
(27:04):
I would call it, get your tanksoff my lawn, person as me, you.
I'm like no, likethis is my space.
Just leave me.
But that's not howeverybody else is.
And by doing that, byreplicating your style
onto others without reallyexamining what they need.
You can end up with quitea mismatch between, with
people going, ah, you'vejust left me alone, versus
others who are like, oh yeah,this is exactly what I want
(27:26):
because I'm quite like you.
And it's, you've got to findthat balance and a lot of it is.
This is what I'm like asa leader and this would be
what I would naturally do.
How does that work for you?
And just beinghonest about that.
We can't be everythingto everyone.
Also, how do you helpyour team use each other?
If it's something that you arenot great at, there probably
will be somebody in thatpeer group who is good at it.
So how can you match themup and go, not always me,
(27:48):
but how about your workwith this person on that?
Hannah Clark (27:51):
I think that's a really important piece that
can really serve us well at anylevel to be really aware of the
way that we are, and I thinka lot of misunderstanding and
friction could be avoided justby understanding, our default
ways of being and working.
I really appreciate howyou incorporate that
into the conversation.
You did mention though a littlebit about being left alone.
(28:13):
Let's talk aboutloneliness at the top.
The trope of it'slonely at the top.
What does that really feel like?
I think that we have beforeentering an executive role,
there's a idea what that lookslike, but in practice, I, it
seems to me that it's verydifferent than you'd expect.
What strategies have you foundeffective for managing that
sort of loneliness, and whatdoes it really feel like?
Debbie McMahon (28:33):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it is inevitable.
Like that trope just is true.
I think it is.
It doesn't have tobe all bad everyone.
It doesn't have to be all bad.
So I think for methere's three things.
One, it is what isthat peer group?
And get yourself involvedwith your peer group, whether
that be, a group of productdirectors or whether it
be your individual sort ofpeer engineer, engineering
(28:55):
director, whether it be theCTO and the CDO, like find.
At the FT, we have a peer groupthat also includes the VP of
Cyber and the VP of portfoliosand programs like that is a good
group of people who are all verydifferent, as you can imagine.
You are very different andleaning on them and being
like, oh, more about financethan I do, or Rebecca,
you're definitely better attalking to vendors than I am
(29:17):
and just like being reallyhonest and shading that load
is definitely one thing.
Secondly is figuring outfor you as a human where
your resilience comes from.
Some of us get it internally.
I draw strength from myself.
Others get it from others.
Others get it from tools andtechniques, like figuring out
like where your resiliencecomes from and what you
need to do to keep it top.
(29:38):
For some people that'sabout how you work, how
you have breaks, loads andloads of different things.
But thinking about whereyou're drawing your
resilience and keeping it.
And then third, make sureyou've got releases outside
of work, whether that bemoaning to your friends, not
about like confidential stuff,you can moan about, oh, like
(30:01):
this was really hard and ugh.
Like that kind of, somebodywho knows you as a person
and who can keep yougrounded, but also tell you.
You'll be doing great.
They don't know, justthat kind of thing that
you need for some people.
For some people it's theirkids or their partner.
Some people it's going anddoing an exercise and being
told they're doing a greatjob at exercise and like that.
(30:23):
Then translatingthat into their work.
But it's, you do need somethingthat is helping you step a bit
out of the work environment,but also remind you that
you're a human, you're a realperson, and you're doing great.
Inevitably, you will notbe doing perfect, but
you'll be doing great.
And as long as you're doing yourbest, that's all you can do.
Hannah Clark (30:41):
This has been such a fascinating conversation.
I really appreciate, Debbie,the empathetic approach that
you've shared with us today.
I wanna thank you so much forsome of the tactics and insights
and anecdotes you shared.
This has been so valuable.
Where can listenerskeep up with you online?
Debbie McMahon (30:56):
Please do message me on LinkedIn.
It's genuinely fine,just not if you're trying
to sell me something.
You'll find me on LinkedIn.
I am not much for a writer,so I don't write much, but I
do post a bit about your workand the stuff that we do both
at the FT and also I have theoccasional moan about equality
of women and things like that.
So people will usuallyfind that interesting.
(31:18):
So yeah, please follow meand reach out if there's
something I can help you with.
Hannah Clark (31:22):
Lovely.
Thanks for joining us.
Debbie McMahon (31:23):
Delighted too.
Hannah Clark (31:27):
Thanks for listening in.
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