The History of Trade Me’s Product Council

In January 2014, Trade Me’s CEO invited me to lunch. Jon and I first met in 2009, when I was asked to be part of the Trade Me Revolution tour, but given we’d had very little to do with each other between times I was curious about what was on his mind. Turns out that he wanted to pick my brains on whether Trade Me should employ a Chief Product Officer. My answer was ‘no’. It made sense that there would be a Head of Product for Marketplace, Jobs, Motors, and Property, but I didn’t see what an overall product person would do in a portfolio-style business like Trade Me. I didn’t think they’d have the mandate or authority to make much of a difference.

Fast forward 10 months, and I had accepted the role as Trade Me’s first-ever Chief Product Officer. One of the reasons I said yes was that Jon assured me that the role did come with authority, or ‘teeth’ as he put it, and would represent him for all things product-related.

Within two months of arriving, based on what came out of an offsite with our 10 product managers, we made a bunch of quick-fire changes to our tools and processes. But then I really freaked everyone out and wrote this:

It’s one thing that we have these tools and processes, but how do we make sure that they are used correctly? Who are you accountable to in regards to following a robust process? I recommend that we establish a Product Council to provide a level of oversight, and ultimately ensure we choose the right products to build.

I proposed that the council do two things: review one-pagers (our version of a lightweight business case), and review the product managers’ roadmaps.

Partly because I deliberately and liberally used words like ‘governance’, and ‘process’ and ‘rigour’, I got some push back from the product managers, who said things like:

• It seems like a lot of process
• I read your email and thought, whoa, admin overhead just ballooned, slowing me down in a big way
• I’m surprised by the lack of product experience on the Council. If the Council is about making sure that we do product management better then it seems weird that it doesn’t include product managers
• The way you’ve described the 30-Day session sounds quite confrontational
• I feel this extreme level of an exec oversight committee is the antithesis of innovation (or intrapreneurship)

and my favourite:

• It absolutely assures only safe, pedestrian “sure bet cookie cutter” ideas get any traction as no one wants to convince their squad, their manager, their business owner, the chief product officer, the head of design, the head of tech of an idea to get it moving, then defend said idea every 30 days all the while following somewhat arbitrary processes that a generic enough to apply everywhere. You’ve been very vocal in wanting to be wow’ed before, but this path assuredly means that’s not a possibility internally any longer

Despite these concerns, I was confident that this was the right call. The Council construct allows me to delegate my ‘teeth’ to a nimble team of three product-minded, systems thinkers who bring different experiences to bear. The three of us ask different questions, notice different things, and do a better job of supporting our product managers than any one of us would alone.

(We even hold one another to account. Earlier in the week, Simon and Ruth took me aside to host what we jokingly called an intervention, when I had made a poorly thought through decision.)

Since those early days, the upset from product managers has now faded away, and the Council is an accepted part of our product management practice. We are still tweaking how it works (two notable changes are that we no longer sign off on one-pagers, and every third roadmap review is a strategic version), but it’s stayed very true to it’s original intent and form.

What do you think, how would you improve the Council?