Chief Product Officer at four companies, three of them full time. I run product, design and engineering as one organization, because in my experience the expensive problems live in the seams between them.
Vancouver and Salt Spring Island. Before software there were games, and before that agencies, which is where I learned that a deadline is a design constraint like any other.
Design, product and engineering in one reporting line is the part that matters more than the headcount. A product decision worth millions once came apart on my watch because a different department removed a two dollar cable from the box to save margin.
Nobody was wrong.
Nobody owned the whole path.
That is the system half. The other half is the people.
Three people who worked for me, writing years before they became what they are now.
He is amazing at helping others see their own potential. He loves asking you difficult questions that force deep thought, but will make sure you feel empowered in solving them.Charmie Kim · 2010 She now leads a game at Supercell.
Miles was instrumental in elevating design as a discipline. He cares so much about the composition of a team, the skills and attitudes necessary to craft a cohesive and driven unit.Denis Suhopoljac · 2018 He now leads design at Asana in Vancouver.
That rare combination of EQ and IQ that allows him to incite trust with those around him. This trust creates space for his teams to safely pursue innovative ideas and to take risks.Chris Brownlee · 2020 He is now an SVP of Product.
Eighteen of those forty-five recommendations, across nineteen years and nine organizations, say the same thing: the people who worked for me grew. Only one mentions numbers.
That is the half of the record with the most evidence behind it, and the half that outlasts me.
My job is the conditions.
The careers are theirs.
In 2017 Unbounce closed its Montreal office. It was a hard call at a company that cared about its people, and you could feel it in every room.
We rebuilt from the inside out: leadership attributes first, then culture and ways of working, and only then the brand the outside world saw. The word we landed on was remarkable.
I think it did more for that company than some of the product decisions I made there, because it held the team together. It is why this is called Remarkable Work.
One thing. Better you know it before you call.
I take on hard problems, including turnarounds. The one thing I will not do is help run a different plan from the one a board and a team believe in.
Deciding what a team can carry is judgment. Letting them believe something untrue is not.
I am an underwater photographer, which is a discipline that punishes anyone who is good at only one part of it. You have to dive well, understand animal behaviour, read light you cannot control, and stay calm when none of it is going to plan.
It has one rule I hold myself to here as well: an honest record. Nobody comes away misled. I taught diving for years before I taught design, and both taught me the same thing: a hard subject goes in one outcome at a time.
Ideas arrive alone, in stillness, and almost none of them survive there. They get built on over food, with other people, when nobody in the room is being measured.
Most companies have engineered the first one out of the working day and never built the second at all, and then wonder why nothing new comes out of a full calendar.
I like that it cannot be faked.
I want to spend more of my time with Canadian companies that are growing.
If you are about to commit a year to something, the useful conversation starts with one question:
What are you about to build, and who inside the company thinks it is a mistake?
If the answer is nobody, that is not agreement, and it is worth talking about why.