Why All Leaders Need To Think Like Chief Product Officers

This expert opinion by Louise K. Allen, Chief Product Officer at Planview, was originally published on Inc.com.

Today’s business landscape would be nearly unrecognizable to yesterday’s leaders. It’s faster, more competitive, and more volatile. It’s also evolving in ways that few predicted. Even less familiar to leaders of the past are today’s executive leadership teams. They have expanded to include representatives from previously overlooked business areas alongside traditional roles like finance, marketing, and operations. Among these new additions to the C-suite are product leaders or chief product officers.

Product leaders have been elevated to “chief officer” positions amid the market shift toward product-first models. Since 2020, the percentage of Fortune 1000 companies with CPOs on their rosters has grown seemingly exponentially. According to a recent study, 10 times more of these organizations have product executives than they did five years ago. The same report also notes that companies with strong CPOs on their executive leadership teams outperform the market by 35 percent. By 2030, it predicts that nearly one-third (30 percent) of CEOs will be former CPOs. 

The shift toward product-first models is a big factor in this meteoric rise, but there’s more to it than that. I can tell you from experience that product leaders have a unique point of view on a business’ operations. They consistently collaborate with any and every team that touches development. Also, they have a keen understanding of their role in the process. It’s time for the C-suite’s old guard to take a cue from their newly minted counterparts. Here’s what that looks like: 

Ditch Projects For Product 

The classic project management mindset is focused on timelines, deliverables, and budgets. All are important. However, focusing on these elements leads to a narrow view of success—one that prioritizes short-term metrics over long-term vision. That’s backward, and product leaders know it from experience. To succeed, every choice should be outcome-driven. You must undertake every task in the pursuit of the ultimate goals: delivering value, solving problems, and driving meaningful progress. 

All Roads Lead To The Customer 

Product leaders prioritize understanding the customer’s journey and ensuring their needs are met. This customer-centric approach should permeate all areas of the organization, with customer experience taking center stage. Though finance or human resources may feel removed from the customer journey, I assure you, they are not. There’s no business without them, so all departments must operate with value to the user as the guiding light. 

Two Heads Are Better Than One 

The people behind a product that resonates must be as diverse as its end users, and it takes expertise of all kinds to ensure that everything works as intended. The same is true within a company’s operations, where siloed work and disparate goals can quickly hamper progress, add friction to experiences, and lead to missed opportunities. Leaders across disciplines will see more success when they foster an environment where every department works in unison to achieve common goals. 

Stop Finishing Things 

Projects feel static. They start, and then they end. The pursuit of a better product doesn’t. Moreover, product teams rarely get the chance to put a bow on their work. There’s always more work, more improvements, and more changes for teams to make. Leaders in other fields will benefit from shifting away from discrete projects. Instead, they should view their work as the ongoing process to overall success. This will create an environment where everyone chases continuous improvement and commits themselves to changing their approach for the better. 

Own The Work From End To End 

If there’s one lesson product leaders learn fast, it’s that the buck stops with them. They must own the entire lifecycle, from conception to delivery and beyond—whether the outcome is the one they wanted or not. Critically, they encourage their staff to do the same: Win together, lose together. Bringing this point of view to other areas of the business (or the organization as a whole) helps each individual contributor better understand how their work fits into the bigger picture, promoting a culture where everyone feels responsible for the overall success of the organization.   

The rise of the CPO is not just a trend. It’s a sign of the new era of organizational leadership, one that’s agile, holistic, customer-focused, and forward-looking. Those are all qualities that have been paramount to product leaders’ success since the very beginning. They’re accustomed to being champions of the voice of the customer, cultivating a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring that products anticipate future trends, and breaking down silos to drive results—which makes them a natural role model for the successful leader (in any area) of the future.