Directing product management involves leading multiple product teams and stepping in to resolve complex product challenges. This role focuses on achieving key commercial and customer success metrics through effective people and team management, while navigating a product area with high complexity, ambiguity, and dependencies.
Responsibilities
Network across Xero to ensure products within the portfolio connect to Xero’s strategy, objectives, and future
Develop trusting relationships with senior-level stakeholders, leading to actionable outcomes
Articulate a narrative to a diverse set of senior stakeholders to influence outcomes
Understand the Xero context, map out the Xero landscape, and identify related value streams that might create collaboration opportunities or dependencies
Define customer vision and bring to life the long-term future state for customers
Define scope and approach, identifying significant value drops to customers over time, including desired outcomes
Develop a support strategy and plan, creating low-fidelity solution concepts to explore the solution space and determine the right direction
De-risk assumptions of value, usability, feasibility, and viability through ongoing #testlearnrefine loops, increasing investment in solutions only as confidence grows
Create high-level concepts to demonstrate the ideal future experience and set a north-star aspiration to guide future decision-making
Align with Customer teams on launch timing, approach, and specifics based on the agreed Customer Value Proposition
Lock in external messaging and other outward-facing assets
Run through a checklist of all considerations when launching a new product or feature
Nurture iterative product improvements
Take responsibility for managing risks (in line with Xero Risk Management Standard) arising from non-functional concerns including security, privacy, regulatory change and compliance, accuracy, responsible data use, and availability
Consult with stakeholders and lead trade-off decisions
Nurture lifecycle management and sunsetting, and product improvements
Continuously monitor the performance of the product against key success measures
Maintain an ongoing dialogue with customers to surface and prioritize new opportunities to optimize the product, while optimizing existing features
Standardize and improve product practice
Actively support practitioners to develop their skills and succeed in their contributions to XPF Activities
Work with practitioners to identify growth opportunities, and share knowledge and experience in service of that growth
Deliberately plan involved work, forecast key milestones and deliveries, and track progress against the plan
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Provide team leadership, shaping the team vision, culture, product team scope, and ways of working
Enable and empower people to work autonomously where appropriate, providing guidance, coaching, and mentorship
Actively engage with team members about their careers, manage performance, and support their growth and development
Recruit new Xero's as required, ensuring team members are high quality, fit Xero's culture, and are onboarded effectively
Manage team compliance with Xero policies, processes, and requirements
Role model exemplary leadership by developing leadership capabilities and upholding Xero values
Support the growth and development of direct reports, ensuring they have what they need to perform their roles and feel empowered and engaged
Foster a safe environment for people to experiment and learn
Drive performance and results in the team
Requirements
Leads others in the use of best practice user research approaches and methodologies to generate powerful insights
Mentors others in problem definition and articulation techniques to expertly define customer problems
Coaches others in techniques to create MVPs/MLPs, incremental solution decisions, and solution definitions, to expertly solve customer problems
Supports others to run complex or detailed experiments leading to validation of solution options
Runs education sessions for teams on a product/domain to increase depth of knowledge across Xero
Mentors others to develop product strategies and roadmaps that are compelling and align both business and product interests
Pilots new systems that support the development of innovative ideas across product
Leads a culture of courageous prioritization across teams and geographies to improve Xero’s product decision-making capability
Refines and evolves Xero’s PM ways of working to continuously improve Xero’s approach to PM
Designs innovative release strategies and processes to reduce release lead time and impacts
Develops new internal approaches and tools to accurately identify and size markets/segments
Interrogates and validates product-market fit to ensure products are commercially successful in the market
Drives Xero’s approach to product decision-making, to ensure decisions align to Xero’s short-term and long-term strategic priorities
Expertly facilitates improvised conversations on any Xero-related issue, with senior-level stakeholders, leading to an actionable outcome
Sets the standard in articulating a narrative to a diverse set of senior stakeholders to influence outcomes
Establishes or improves cross-functional processes to enable connections that support exemplary product outcomes
Coaches others in new analytical approaches to generate insights and improve the effectiveness of product decisions
Teaches others to meaningfully translate information and insights for different stakeholders and audiences
Collaborates across functions to integrate information from a variety of sources and teams and generate meaningful insights
Clarity: See the big picture and connect the work our team does to strategy. Cascade the operating plan and enable communication and feedback
Align & Engage: Be a good coach (ask good questions and listen to the answers). Have real, if difficult, conversations. Help your people remove barriers. Collaborates internationally to create horizontal alignment across Xero
Perform: Build inclusive, resilient, and psychologically safe teams. Drives performance and results. Grow your people and careers
Extensive experience in implementing new and improved approaches to product practice
Proven ability to drive strategic priorities and help others relate to and align with them
Demonstrated experience collaborating with diverse and senior stakeholder groups to realize customer/commercial outcomes
Strong track record of addressing customer needs through innovative use of technology
Effectively influenced outcomes at all levels in a variety of contexts
Extensive experience in defining product roadmaps and long-term planning at a Portfolio/Sub-portfolio(s) level
Extensive experience within industry sectors relevant to Xero
Previous experience at a Senior Manager level
Proven people leadership and ability to successfully motivate individuals and teams
Extensive experience managing a large and/or complex global portfolio/sub-portfolio(s) to deliver customer/business outcomes
Relevant graduate degree (preferably in a technology or business-related field) from a top-tier institution
Experience leading and coaching other leaders
Extensive experience in managing product teams, leading cross-functional teams, and fostering an open, collaborative team environment
About the Company
At Xero, the purpose is to make running a business beautiful by making small businesses more efficient, connecting them with big business technology, and empowering a community behind them. This helps small businesses and builds a stronger economy.
