My name is Teagan, and I’m a Managing Consultant at ISL Talent. I specialise in product and have worked hard to build a solid network over the years. I’ve created this blog series to gather insights from high level product people and help others in the community with advice to take their careers to the next level.

In this interview, I chat to Product Operations consultant & coach, and Founder of the Product Mind Community, Graham. We talk about everything from trends within the product industry to what it means to work in product operations and how businesses should implement the function into their teams.

Can you start by telling me a bit about yourself and your career journey up until now?

“I’ve been a Product Manager for as long as I can remember – well over 10 years now. I started from nothing and learnt on the job and worked at some really interesting companies. I moved up through the ranks to a Product Leadership type role and then about 3 years ago I switched to what’s now called Product Operations and I haven’t looked back since.

Outside the workplace, mental health and wellbeing is a huge passion of mine, stemming from my own experiences but also helping support others. Combining my two passions of product and mental health, I created a very unique group called the Product Mind Community, which is a totally free online safe space for product professionals to talk openly about what’s going on for them and to gain support from other members of the product community.

I also mentor and support junior and aspiring product managers, I’m big on giving back and helping people where I can.”

What do you think is currently the biggest challenge in the product industry?

“I think there’s two things. First, I think there’s an increasing demand for doing more, and wanting more from product, but there is also less support, less resources and not much opportunity for growth. Alongside that, there are several high-profile figures in the space that are questioning the value of product management and whether they need a product function within their business.

It’s a bit of a perfect storm right now, what with redundancies across the board and very few roles coming up, people are questioning, do we need product management? I think there’s a renewed lack of understanding of what product management brings to a business and the value of the function.

Another thing to mention is in big companies like X, Airbnb and Spotify where the business leaders have made drastic changes to their business, making tons of redundancies have other smaller business leaders looking up to them and doing the same thing, without necessarily thinking about the impact it’ll have on their business. Every single business is completely different, and just because something works for one company doesn’t mean it’ll work for another.”

What trends are you currently seeing within the product industry? 

“The big one is AI. Everyone is talking about AI. AI is saving huge amounts of time on very laborious, time consuming tasks that product managers do in terms of research and discovery. AI is great for being a supporting tool, and doing jobs that don’t need any human input. This ties in with what I said earlier about companies wanting more, and AI will help us achieve being able to do more, much quicker, by allowing product managers to focus on the tasks that can’t be automated.”

Could you tell me a little more about product operations?

“In a nutshell, product operations is a facilitator for product leaders and product management teams. We provide logistical support to product teams so they can focus on doing what brings most value from their skills – building great products for customers. Those logistical things typically cover data-informed decision making and providing dashboards for product teams to use to support their planning, communication standards, collaboration and alignment across teams, process and improvement setting and strategic support for product leadership, among many other things.

The role enables teams but does not make decisions for them.  It advises, guides, questions, and ultimately supports the business on its quest for a more efficient product function.

Product operations professionals aren’t writing the communications to the wider business, product managers are best at that. We aren’t analysing the data, but we are enabling product managers to do so by providing them with dashboards featuring the data they need, saving them time collecting and finding the data themselves. All the logistical stuff is product operations.

Product operations work closely with product leadership too, again to help them with the logistical side of things. For example, if the product leader says we want to overhaul the way we do product discovery, how do we get feedback from customers? Rather than them going out to their team and asking them to contact customers which may take weeks or months, or not have much process around which customers are contacted, which are not, how often, where is the feedback being stored, analysed; product operations take all that pain away. Product operations will sit down and think who are we going to contact and when? How will we ensure no duplication? What questions will we ask? Where will the data live? We’ll then implement a plan or support the implementation of a plan.”

Is there usually one higher level product operations person within the business or is it a team?

“It very much depends on the size of the business. So typically, you’ll start with one who will usually be at a head of/ director type level. The role needs to be at a high enough level so that there is a sort of authority that comes with it. As the business grows, you would typically have a Director of Product type role with specialists sitting below them. It could be a specialist in data, discovery and customer research or marketing. The aim is for each of these specialists to deal with the product team in different ways and bring different strengths to the table.”

At what stage of a businesses journey would you see them hiring their first product operations person?

“This certainly isn’t your first product hire. Or your second, third, fourth or fifth. You’d typically be looking at this hire at the scaleup stage after your series A or series B funding. So, when you’re firmly established as a business and are on your way to becoming a more structured organization, product operations hires can come into play. Typically, a product leader will start to notice gaps as you grow from startup to scaleup and a product operations professional can come on board to help align the business, become more efficient and ultimately ensure those gaps are plugged.”

What is the main value a company would see by hiring this type of role?

“Anything that makes a business more efficient and focused on the delivery and outcomes is a big plus. What product operations professionals do is allow product managers and product leaders to focus on what they need to do to get products out of the door, without needing to worry about the logistical side of things. As product operations we want to provide the information, tools and facilities to product teams, to make the whole product journey much more efficient.”

Any last words for a business considering hiring a product operations role?

“Let somebody else deal with the backend, back office internal stuff. It’s understanding that you want to grow and be more efficient. Efficiency and growth equal better teams and more output. This is also a function that focuses on what YOU need, not what some framework says you should align to”.

Get in touch

In this engaging interview, Graham shares crucial insights into the challenges and trends within the product operations field. His decade-long journey within product highlights the evolving demands within the industry and the growing role of AI in supporting product leaders. Graham also highlights the key role that product operations play in building highly successful, efficient product functions.

These blogs are all about connecting people, so if you liked what Graham had to say, connect with him here. Alternatively, if you’d like to feature in a blog or would like to talk to me about product roles, drop me a message on LinkedIn here.