Navigating Product Leadership at the Financial Times: Insights from Interim CPO Debbie McMann

The Financial Times Today: More Than Just a Newspaper

The Financial Times (FT) has come a long way from its origins as a print newspaper in 1888. As Debbie McMann, interim Chief Product Officer at the FT explains, "It's not really a paper anymore. Yes, we absolutely do print the paper and that's still the flagship product. We're a digital intelligence product."

Today, the FT serves as a crucial resource for business leaders, CEOs, CFOs, and others who need to stay informed about current events and future trends to make critical business decisions. While financial and business news remains at its core, the FT has expanded to offer lifestyle coverage and broader political news as well.

This evolution reflects the changing media landscape and the need for even established brands to adapt. As McMann notes, "We're for business leaders, CEOs, CFOs, and people who want to know what's happening in the world today, tomorrow, what might happen in the future. Helping them make business decisions."

The Challenges of Product Management in a Legacy Media Organization

Leading product at an organization like the Financial Times comes with unique challenges. As a legacy media company with a long history and established reputation, there can be resistance to change and skepticism towards new product initiatives.

McMann highlights this challenge: "I think a lot of the skepticism on product in bigger organizations comes from, oh, there's a weird black box over there that we're not allowed to talk to, do anything with influence."

Overcoming this skepticism requires building trust through consistent delivery and results. As McMann puts it, "Delivery builds trust. You can't just expect somebody to trust you because of your job title."

Another key challenge is balancing the need to innovate and evolve the product with maintaining the core journalistic mission and reputation of the FT. McMann emphasizes that the content and journalism remain at the heart of the FT's product offering:

"There is something about keeping the journalism and the content at the heart of the product that ultimately is what the FT is selling. Unless we make it impossible to access the journalism, like if we make it if we make it worse than it is now, people are still going to come to the FD anyway."

This creates an interesting dynamic where the product team must focus on enhancing and amplifying the journalism rather than trying to fundamentally change or dictate it. As McMann tells potential hires: "If you want to tell journalists that the research says that we should we should do some celebrity gossip...don't come work here. There is no point because that is not what we're here to do."

The FT's Product Organization Structure

To support its evolving digital products while maintaining its journalistic core, the FT has built out a substantial product organization. McMann oversees a team of about 100 people, including product managers, business analysts, researchers, and designers.

The product organization is structured around customer segments and needs:

• A group focused on professional customers
• A group for specialist titles
• A group for internal products used by journalists and other staff
• A B2C-focused group
• A shared group that works on elements used across segments like the homepage
• A core platform team managing technical infrastructure

This structure allows teams to focus deeply on specific customer needs while also maintaining consistency across the overall FT product experience.

Key Priorities and Challenges for the Product Organization

McMann highlighted several key focus areas and challenges for the FT's product team:

Balancing Innovation with Core Strengths

As the FT expands into new areas, there's always a risk of moving too far from its core strengths. McMann notes they have to be thoughtful about new initiatives: "How do you make sure that you don't ultimately alienate your existing audience? They are there. They've been loyal to us many of them for many many many years."

Managing Dependencies Across Teams

With multiple product groups working on different parts of the business, managing dependencies and coordination is crucial. McMann has focused on shifting how delivery is managed:

"We used to have delivery people supporting teams, you know, a kind of quite traditional kind of let's look after the team and make the team efficient thing. But that's not what an organization like the FT needs. What it needs is what the people do now, which is my job is to manage this piece of work through the organization regardless of where it sits."

Prioritization and Focus

McMann emphasizes the importance of ruthless prioritization, encouraging teams to "do fewer things, faster, better." She's worked to streamline the organization's OKRs and focus on key metrics like driving habit for retention and moving up the funnel for acquisition.

Balancing Speed with Quality

While moving quickly is important, McMann cautions against sacrificing quality for speed. She encourages teams to focus on outcomes rather than just output: "Focus on the quality of the outcome and the quality of the actual piece of work that you're doing. And that will make it faster and that will give us better results but also help us learn quicker."

Leadership Lessons for Product Executives

McMann shared several valuable insights for product leaders, especially those transitioning into executive roles:

Shifting Mindset from Delivery to Strategy

Moving from a director-level role to CPO required a significant mindset shift for McMann. She initially approached it as running a larger delivery unit, but quickly realized the role required a more strategic, outward-looking perspective:

"It is much more about what's happening out here in the external environment and that could be the external environment to product and technology or the external environment to the company...have we given that group of directors the tools they need in order to have all those conversations I was previously having because we literally can't have them because sort of doesn't make sense."

Balancing Hands-on Involvement with Empowerment

As a leader, McMann has had to find the right balance between staying connected to the day-to-day work and empowering her team. She's addressed this by being transparent about the specific areas she'll be involved in:

"I have told people the three things that I'm going to be involved in...So I'm not going to be like swipping in. I'm just going to be there. But like if it's not one of these three things, then feel free to tell me to get out because like I should be doing what I preach."

Building Trust Through Delivery

McMann repeatedly emphasized the importance of building trust through consistent delivery of results. This is especially crucial in organizations where there may be skepticism towards product management.

Transparency and Communication

Regular, transparent communication about the product team's work and priorities has been key for McMann. She notes the importance of repeating messages: "You can never underestimate it might take a 1,000 one or 2,000 or 10,000. You always need to do a better job of that."

Balancing Empathy with Objectivity

McMann highlighted the need for product leaders to balance empathy with objectivity, especially when it comes to people decisions: "When you've got 100 people, you do have to be able to look somewhat dispassionately at what the right stuff to do is or what the least worst thing to do is."

The Role of AI in Product Development

Like many organizations, the FT is exploring how to leverage AI in its products and processes. McMann sees AI as transformative but cautions that its impact may be slower than current hype suggests.

At the FT, AI adoption is focused on two main areas:

1. Enhancing internal tools to help journalists, sales people, and customer care agents work more efficiently.
2. Experimenting with AI-powered features to enhance the customer experience.

McMann notes that while there's excitement around AI, there are still challenges in integrating it seamlessly into workflows: "We are trying to use AI more in how we build things and also in the true workflow of the people who work at the FT, but the workflow ain't great yet. You know, when you're uploading, copying, pasting, people people get fed up really quickly."

Advice for Product Managers

McMann offered several pieces of advice for product managers throughout the interview:

Focus on Outcomes, Not Output

She encourages product teams to prioritize the quality and impact of their work rather than just the quantity of features shipped.

Build Trust Through Delivery

Consistently delivering results is key to building trust and influence within an organization.

Develop Empathy

McMann considers empathy the most important trait for a product manager: "There will always be somebody whose shoes you're not walking in. And if you don't truly understand that or have a way of feeling that you're just going to find it really difficult."

Avoid Repeating Years

The best career advice McMann received was to avoid repeating years: "Are you learning? Are you growing? Are you doing something different? What is going to be what is going to change about this year coming that that wasn't true in the last one."

Be Pragmatic About "Good" Product Management

McMann encourages product managers to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic about product management best practices: "No matter how somebody writes about the beauty of product management or the beauty of product teams working effectively together, it only actually works if it works in the context in which you're doing things."

The Future of Product at the Financial Times

Looking ahead, McMann sees an exciting future for product development at the FT. The organization is committed to maintaining its reputation for high-quality, objective journalism while continuing to innovate in how that journalism is delivered and consumed.

Key areas of focus include:

• Further developing AI-powered features and tools
• Enhancing personalization and user experience
• Expanding into new content areas and formats while staying true to the FT's core mission
• Improving internal tools and workflows to empower journalists and other staff

For product managers considering a role at the FT, McMann emphasizes the unique opportunity to work on products that have a real impact on the world: "Telling the truth and having an objective view of what is happening in the world is becoming increasingly rare, complicated to achieve and important...if you care about that stuff and want to try and help our journalists tell better stories in more interesting ways and keep the like that truthtelling going, why wouldn't you want to?"

Conclusion

Leading product at a legacy media organization like the Financial Times comes with unique challenges and opportunities. As Debbie McMann's insights reveal, success in this role requires a delicate balance of respecting tradition while driving innovation, building trust through consistent delivery, and maintaining a relentless focus on quality and impact.

For product leaders in any industry, McMann's experiences offer valuable lessons in navigating complex stakeholder relationships, driving organizational change, and staying true to a company's core mission while evolving to meet changing customer needs.

As the media landscape continues to evolve, organizations like the FT that can successfully blend their journalistic heritage with innovative product development will be well-positioned to thrive in the digital age.

Article created from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HaRIZd-fBQ