Jason Knight 0:00 Hello and welcome to the show. Now, when I was at school I picked up a copy of a book called the cynics dictionary. And I like to think that a little bit of deadpan humour and earthy scepticism is part of what defines the British psyche. But when does gallows humour and gritty realism start to turn into toxic cynicism and a limit to your ambitions? Tonight, we're gonna find out why you need to inject some optimism into your career. But before we go any further, I'm optimistic that you'll hop over to one night in product.com or wherever you get your podcasts from. Make sure you have a look around, check out some of my other guests. Subscribe or sign up to the mailing list to make sure you never miss another episode again. Go on, give it a try. So yeah, optimism messages that is not always easy, but it always pays off even in the face of adversity. If you want to hear about the benefits of an open minded, empowered, positive, optimistic mindset, keep those earphones in and join us. So my guest tonight is Claire vo Claire's a framework a first product and technology executive working mom advocate and avid Tiktok. Who says she hates cynics. Although she would say that, wouldn't she? Claire wants to work with horses but got tired of all the long faces and is now looking to bring a bit of positivity to the world of Product Management. Now, regular listeners to this podcast probably know I'm a ray of sunshine. So I'm all for that. And I'm absolutely positively positive. This is going to be a great interview. Hi, Glen. How are you tonight? Unknown Speaker 1:27 I'm great. How are you doing? Jason Knight 1:29 I am positively awesome. And looking forward to a constructive, happy and no way negative or cynical interview tonight. Sounds great. All right. So first things first you are the CPO at colour which I noticed you've spelt without a u, which is immediately testing my positivity. That's how we do it over here. So I've heard but colour promise extraordinary care and everyday places. Sounds really awesome. But specifically what problem does colour solve? Yes. Unknown Speaker 1:59 So colour really believes that public health and health care should happen more public life and life happens. And that the barriers to health care are not often that healthcare exists or that there are systems to deliver it that actually the micro frictions in the day to day life to get access to health care are quite high and result in people not getting the care that they need or that the care that they deserve. And so colours really been focused on building infrastructure for public health for a new wave of healthcare delivery. That means that we help organisations deliver to their populations, highly accessible high scale health care programmes that drive real tangible outcomes. This started in bringing clinical grade genetic testing to populations at scale in a way that was cost effective. But over the course of the past couple of years, you can imagine that the healthcare ecosystem has shifted a lot. And we've been able to bring our platform that delivers highly accessible health care services to things like COVID testing and vaccinations tests to treat programmes and protocols, as well as basic primary care. I'm really excited about how technology has been able to enable this for our customers and patients. But I also am excited about our real focus on high quality clinical services, really accessible patient experiences and the operations that allow us to do this for millions of people. Jason Knight 3:20 So quite an easy problem that you're solving the sounds of it. But you started there just under two years ago now, as far as I can tell. So you talked about COVID? I mean, you pretty much came into it. At the point when COVID started kicking off. Now, I don't know if those two things were related or if that was a coincidence. But that must have kind of shaken everything up pretty much as you were coming through the door. Is that how it was? Unknown Speaker 3:43 Yeah, I mean, when we when I joined colour in the autumn of 2020, we were really I wish I could say mid pandemic, but we were actually a very early pandemic at that stage. And what was really interesting and what drew me to colour was that they were very quickly able to pivot their clinical infrastructure, technology, infrastructure and operations to meet the need the biggest need in public health, which was response to the pandemic. And their ability to move so quickly to I wouldn't even say capture our market, I would say serve really a patient need in a time of just high uncertainty was quite impressive to me. And so while I haven't been in health tech before, it was something that it was a team I wanted to be part of, and a problem that I thought was worthwhile solving. Jason Knight 4:31 Now, that makes a lot of sense. And obviously, you've got to seize your moment when the time comes. But you just touched on it like you weren't in health debt before. Now you were working as originally I think VP of Product Management at Optimizely. Made it through to CPO there so and that's a much bigger company than colour as well. But then before that you were at Experiment engine as well which is another I want to say like optimization experimentation company. So that's obviously your background. Yep. Was it simply the fact You want it to work for, like a more worthy type. I mean worth is obviously a tricky one. But like a more worthy type of company that was solving like a problem that really hit you on a human level. Yeah, that was something else behind that. Unknown Speaker 5:13 I wish I was that primarily virtuous, although it is quite, quite a lovely way and a place to work. Really what was funny is when I was at Optimizely, I was leading our product management team, as you said, it was CPOE. There Optimizely had acquired a company that I founded called experiment engine. So I'd spent quite a lot of time in the experimentation, optimization and feature flagging space. So it was ready for a new challenge. And when I spoke to recruiters, I said, I know exactly what I want. I want late stage enterprise or infrastructure software. I don't even need a UI, I will sell API's and data infrastructure all day, get me to like the technical products, get me to the technical buyers, and put me in the enterprise and, you know, colours recruiter called and said, I think you'd be a great fit for this role. It's a really exciting company and a really exciting stage of growth. And I truly said to her, not my brand, it's like, not my brand, love it. But it was mid pandemic, and I would walk around San Francisco and I would see colour testing programmes, colour sites, on my Facebook mom groups, people were posting that they've had these amazing health care experiences with colour. And so I said, Okay, I have to speak to this team. And I got on the phone with Othman, our CEO. And he was so compelling about the vision, really ambitious about what he wanted to do in the market, low ego, and kind of really high intellectual horsepower, which got me excited. You coupled that with the fact that aren't their executive team was I think, at the time over 70% of women. And I got off that phone call. And I said, Well, now I gotta go work there. I've got to go impress these people. So I would say there are three things that drew me to colour one, the team is just exceptional to the mission is really admirable. And three, quite frankly, they needed me like they were at an inflection point of growth, where they really needed a product and engineering leader, who could help the team scale quickly bring enterprise grade practices and principles to the organisation, and really help them develop a broader set of product offerings. So good fit good time. Good team. And I'm always up for a new, new challenge. Jason Knight 7:31 Oh, there you go. Sounds like a match made in heaven. But you touched on a little bit there, obviously, again, you're moving into this new space and with the experience that you have been able to kind of help bring the company on. And of course, that's the dream of any product leader, right to go in and make a big difference. But speaking of differences, what are some of the biggest differences that you've seen so far between working in marketing tech and the experimentation stuff you're working on before and working in a presumably very heavily regulated and quite traditional health industry? Unknown Speaker 8:03 Yeah, I mean, the health care market is quite complicated, especially in the United States, the way we handle, handle health care and deliver care to our citizens is safe, there are things to be improved if I'm being generous. And so there were, there are a couple of challenges. One, the market is just more complicated to navigate. When you're an enterprise software, like there is an engine that is proven to work, you have business development, business development, feats, reps, reps, go and do their enterprise sale thing you bring in product managers to do the razzle dazzle. You give them a demo, you give them a pilot, and then you sign a three year contract. It's very straightforward. You price based on users, you price based on usage, you deliver expansion value, and you're focused on ARR and net retention. Yep. In healthcare, it's much more complicated. There are several organisations that touch an individual transaction, everybody from the employer that sponsors the insurance plan to the insurance plan that actually pays the clinicians, from the clinicians that provide the service to the you know, brick and mortar clinics where they're delivered. And so there are just so many more touch points on the patient experience and so much more, both regulatory as well as operational overhead. And so that's complicated to navigate from a go to market perspective. But it's also complicated to navigate from a product perspective. The other thing that's really different about building products and healthcare, versus building pure software products is there is just a breadth of problems you have to think about and solve that are not constrained to software. So while I'm a very technical kind of product, a very technical product background and definitely software first, we think about problems everything from how do we make it easy for somebody at home to provide a blood sample to what if somebody who says Oh, no, no, no, there's there's more it's more than one blood drop. It's actually multiple blood drops and for being really honest, so we have these like, you know, we Test blood collection devices, we asked ourselves, what if somebody who speaks Haitian Creole needs to register on behalf of their child like, there's these accessibility problems that you have to think about really deeply. And then you have to realise the end of the day the software is enabling the real product. The real product is a high quality clinical experience that makes someone healthier. And so there's a lot of partnership with our clinical team and our medical operations team to make sure that software is enabling what really matters, which is great patient outcomes. Jason Knight 10:31 Do you get a white coat? Unknown Speaker 10:32 I do not get a white coat? No, they do not let me practice medicine. I do not have any desire to do that. But they do let me beat boop and make some software. Jason Knight 10:44 Oh, there you go. Well to speak about the beeping and beeping actually, because like you've just said there that you're very technical background, I know that you trained as a software engineer back in the day, you've obviously got now responsibility for products, you've got responsibility for tech design and analytics. So you've got a very wide remit, as befits a woman in your position. But I know you and I have butted heads on Twitter before about CPTs with me being on a slightly sceptical side and you've been strongly Pro? I think it's fair to say I won that one. But of course, but what are some of the pros and cons of being that kind of joint products and technology leader and not having, for example, two executive leads for both of those functions? Unknown Speaker 11:25 Yeah, so two things to clarify, I think why we have this organisation structure the way we do particularly at colour and then to what that organisation actually looks like. So the reason why we've combined my remit, which is product management, engineering, data and design, as well as technical services into one organisation, as as I mentioned, healthcare services are very broad. And so unlike a software company, we have additional organisations that are represented at the executive level of clinical services, medical operations, these things that make actually our executive to very broad. And in order to keep sort of sanity to our structure, and a team that isn't to diffuse, we've actually subsumed some organisations under executive leaders that can handle broader leadership so that there's a single point of responsibility for some areas of our company, including the technical area. So I take responsibility for everything that feels as I say, I'm responsible for all the software that the company builds and how technology enables outcomes for our business. There are also organisations like our commercial organisation that rolls up our CMO or chief communications officer. So we have this organisation across the team, not just in one. The second thing I'll say, is underneath my organisation, we do have executive level leaders for each function. So we have an SVP of engineering, VP of product that leads product management, so on and so forth. So there are high level functional leaders for each organisation. But instead of this functional leaders reporting directly into our CEO, they report to me, some of them in particular SCPs are included in our extended exec staff group. So he sits in the same executive weekly meeting, as I do, and can interface with the CEO anytime he wants doesn't bother me. So that's kind of how it works and why why we're set up that way. I would say pros and cons are this one, I think, pros, there is a single person responsible for technology in an organisation where the effort of technology is very broad, my team has 200 going to about 250. And there's a need for product that all those functions to interact directly negotiate things. And rather than having our CEO have to make every call that happens between those teams, there's someone like me, who has a breadth of experience across all of them, that can do that. I also think it helps bring a united team identity to the group's building software, and that there isn't us versus them. We are all one team. And we're all working towards the same goal. And there's an expectation that there is push and pull but also collaboration across the organisation. I think three I'm just capable and competent of doing it. So is the right thing for us to do for our company. We needed to scale up our engineering organisation from about 20 people to 100 people very good at recruiting and hiring, I know how to do that at scale, I've seen that be done before. We need to drive a technical roadmap and and upgrade sort of our enterprise grade capabilities and qualities done that before know how to execute it. And so there were things we needed to do in our engineering organisation that it felt very capable of doing. And so I think it depends, I think it was my unique strengths that allowed me to play that role. Now cons. I don't think every person can step into this role. I do not think you can come into an engineering leadership role in any form without a software engineering background. I think that's very challenging. So you know, I spent time as my, the technical founder of my company, I built all that code and know my way around the Python app. I've done a React front end migration once or twice in my life. So I have the technical skills to speak credibly and actually understand and empathise with our engineering team, in addition to our product team. So I think it's really hard for anybody to do this role. And then also, this was a shift and things that I heard when this structure first came out is, is engineering going to get a voice at the table, because Claire has a product, classic product background, is engineering just going to become a execution arm for product management, I would say, my responsibility as steward of both of these organisations is to ensure that product has the influence it needs to have an engineering also has the influence it needs to have. And so it's actually my responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. And I've experienced enough. But sure enough to not let the fact that I spent more of my time professionally as a product person, guide, the fact that my role right now is to lead all these teams. Jason Knight 15:51 Now, that makes a lot of sense. And I think even when you and I were talking about it a little while back, there's this kind of idea that, as you say, not everyone can do it. But as long as you're not going into it just with one mindset, that that's something that can work. I just remember points in my career with colleagues that had to say joint roles that maybe they ended up having to argue against themselves sometimes and almost be like Gollum, like mixed at a pool like doing different voices to each other to try and persuade themselves that something was a good idea. Have you ever found yourself in that situation? Or have you got quite good compartmentalization? Unknown Speaker 16:26 I mean, my job is not to make engineering successful or product successful, my job is to make the business successful. So when you're an executive, that's the lens that you have to bring to every decision you make. So it's not about do I let have I let engineering win this many or product win that many, or, you know, pick my favourite child? It's really what do I think is the best decision for the business? And then I'm ultimately responsible for business outcomes, not for who got to make what decision or who was right. And so, you know, I think I operate with a high level of accountability. And then I hold the decisions, what I hold central in our decisions is what's great for our patients and users, what's great for our customers, and then what's great for the business. Jason Knight 17:06 Makes a lot of sense. I'm convinced. But But you've spoken about your distaste for frameworks before this. Now you're in a pretty large company, you said yourself, you've got something like 250 people reporting into you, or at least through you. Yep. And you've presumably got some of these medical regulations that we've been talking about to contend with as well. So yep, I guess the question is, you might not like frameworks, but presumably at this point, you kind of need frameworks at this kind of scale. Unknown Speaker 17:34 Yeah. So what I would say rather, I don't like but rather than I don't like frameworks, what I would say is a framework is not going to output great product in and of Jason Knight 17:45 itself, just is it and tell me the employees? Unknown Speaker 17:49 I don't tell the medium bloggers don't tell pm Twitter, because I think people sell this vision that if you master prioritisation frameworks, if you master strategy articulations in a certain format, if you write really good requirements, that the natural outcome of that is amazing product that delivers value. And that is just not true. It is maybe necessary, but not sufficient. And so when people are faced with really hard product problems, I sometimes think the advice is, what's your process? How are you thinking about it? Are you checking all the boxes, as opposed to the real hard scrappy grinded out work it takes to just come up with hypotheses, iterate on them execute, measure. And at the end of the day, sometimes that's the ugly process gets you that's what you need. That being said, You're exactly right, we have a large team and frameworks and to some extent, processes can help that team operate more quickly. And the metaphor that I like to use is I think of our team as a team, like a sports team. And you can't have a sports team and you say run your framework, and you'll win the game. You have to have great players, you have to have great coaching, you have to practice and how I think about frameworks is, these are plays, you know, your team can use and rely on and practice and get faster at doesn't mean you're always gonna score the goal. But it does mean that you have muscle memory around the things that you need to do the most. And so some of that may be how do we make sure that we're meeting our regulatory requirements? And do we have a great frame for that? Some of it is how do we make sure that we're systematically allocating enough time to tech debt or technical initiatives? Those are things you can apply. What I push against though is even though you apply them doesn't mean you're gonna make great decisions or build great product and so you'll have to hold yourself accountable to that as well. Jason Knight 19:42 Yeah, so conversation starters at best as we always claim it, although I do remember one job interview I went to where they very specifically asked me what my favourite prioritisation framework was, and I kind of gave much of the same spiel that you just gave around. Well, you know, that's just and they were like, their faces visibly dropped says like, yeah, Guess you got to realise what companies you probably don't want to work for my situation. And then Unknown Speaker 20:04 you just rattle off a couple letters and say like, rice, whatever. Jason Knight 20:10 But you and I are both active on social media we are and you've doubled down on Tik Tok, I have a you have and as we discussed before this call, as a bit of a nice that you could own, which I'm very excited about the it's almost like I'm at the origin story of the queen of product, tick tock. But one thing that I worry about when I'm meaning away on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or whatever is the oldest doing fun stuff on social media alongside some of the more serious stuff, which I know that you do as well. It makes me look a little bit less serious and maybe not quite so credible as a leader. And I imagine if it makes a middle aged white guy like me feel like that it's probably got even more potential implications for someone in a less privileged position. So is that something that bothers you at all? Or do you just kind of YOLO it and do whatever it is that you feel best represents you? Unknown Speaker 21:01 Yeah, so life is too short, to not be authentic, I would say. And so in some ways, I feel like it's really important that I am, who I am, and that people that work with me understand who I am, and understand that I am highly competent, super professional. And I'm funny and unafraid of new products. And I think that's the thing that I don't want to compromise on. That being said, I am, I've never, you know, making fun of our customers, I'm never making fun of the amazing work we do. I am only posting things with the intention to educate or state an opinion or share what I've learned in a way that people pay attention to. So, you know, I think I've struck a good balance in terms of my personality on social media, which is pretty representative of my personality, just in general. And if you want to work with me, I guess, I hope that appeals to you. You know, so I do think I do think there is something there to authenticity. That being said, I think it's really important that I don't post anything that I would be embarrassed to explain away in an interview. And I haven't gotten there yet. In fact, our CEO, got introduced to by Tiktok. He's known I've been doing it, he got introduced to my TED talk a couple of weeks ago, and he said he booked an hour watching my tech talks, as he was both more afraid and more impressed with me than ever. And so it's been net positive for my professional career to date. The other thing is, I've gotten probably a dozen product candidates and engineering candidates that have come through, which is really my secret goal. So it's less about who wants me to work for them and more about who I want to work for me. Jason Knight 22:48 But no explaining Product Management from a swim pool because we all know how that ends up. Unknown Speaker 22:52 No, no, no pool PMS at all. You can see me as directed, working from my desk. Jason Knight 23:00 Exactly like all good, productive people should be good, productive people. But let's do some proper promotion time. Why should people watch your tick tock channel? Unknown Speaker 23:08 Yes, I am at chief product officer on tick tock one, I've got the best handle and all the products are talking. And I will say I have a greater goal than being the queen of product tick tock, I want to be the queen of tech talk. So I talk not just about product management. I talk about engineering leadership being a working mom in tech and startups in the startup ecosystem in general. So a little bit of broader remit. Why should you follow my Tik Tok one because I have a goal to get to 10,000 Tiktok followers faster than 10,000 Twitter followers. So I have an internal that going on, please help me to videos by medium. So I have had a very broad experience as a product leader. I've been an entrepreneur, I've been a female executive. I've worked at large companies, I've worked at small companies. And video is a way for me to share my insights and experiences in a short way three minutes or less, that I think will make you a better product manager. But I think more importantly make you a better executive leader, especially if that's an ambition that you have. So hopefully the contents interesting and then I have a formula you'll get one funny tick tock for about every two informational so do you like your lip syncs? If you like your memes? We got something for everybody here. Jason Knight 24:20 Hey, guys, so one stop shop for your entire tech Twitter needs. But it's fair to say that there's a lot of cynicism and negativity about product management these days, especially on the social media and yeah, some of that's gallows humour, some of it's actually negative and I guess you could even argue some of its toxic I saw absolutely horrendous the toned post the other day, talking about how everyone was doing everything wrong. Now, you've come up against cynicism and you've advocated strongly for positivity and I believe even on your tick tock, you put a video out about why it's important to be much more positive in your Outlook. Yep. But what are some of the ways then that you can keep a sunny outlook in what biome is a very difficult job. Unknown Speaker 25:02 Yeah, so I, you know, just to clarify, I really believe in optimism versus positivity, I am serious. Often I am critical often I inspect deeply. But I try to nurture optimism and in fact, at colour where I work now, nurturing optimism is one of our operating principles. It's one of five ways we expect people to behave in order to win as a team. And I think it's really important that actually articulate how we stayed there. Because it's, it's, I think, a good articulation of why I believe optimism is important. So we say, optimists believe that it is possible to change the world and act on that belief. We do not equate optimism with a lack of rigour or realism, but rather the belief determination and bias towards action that it takes to overcome great challenges. We recognise optimism is fragile and fleeting, which is why we strive to nurture it in ourselves and the weeds we work with. So three highlights are like, You got to believe you can change the world, if you're working in startups, and you got to believe especially in healthcare, you can change the world. And that requires optimism, optimism does not mean being naive, it means that you're willing to move in the face of ambiguity and in the face of challenge. And I also believe that individuals as well as organisations really degrade towards cynicism. I think, if you've ever worked on a team, how to work bestie been on blind, you can see that, you know, people just degrade towards cynicism. It can be a natural operating mode for a lot of people in teams. And I think it is really, really destructive to our ability to create and build. And so I think it's actually important as managers, as leaders, as executives, to nurture a sense of optimism, a sense of, we can solve this problem, it's going to be fine. We can do it. Because without continually, you know, reinforcing that point, I think you can degrade to cynicism, which puts people I think it freezes people. So that's what I think. Go optimism. Jason Knight 27:00 Yeah, and I think there's a lot to be said for almost going for this, how might we attitude like, you know, what's our vision? What's our vision of the future, the world what we want to create, and all the things that people ask us to do, or that we need to do to get there? Like how even if they look hard, how do we get there? Yeah, I guess the kind of the counter argument is that, and this is something a bit of a cliche, I guess, but the there's this counter argument of like, well, do you want the doctor that hold your hand and says nice things while you're dying? Or do you want the doctor that's really kind of perfunctory and just kind of tells it like it is, but is gonna save your life now? Yeah, there's obviously a bit extreme, I guess, in some ways, but fits with the health care message. I guess that's the question, though, like, when does it become cynicism, rather than just kind of almost like, blunt realism about the challenges that are ahead? Unknown Speaker 27:48 Yeah. And I would say that, you know, people that work with me would probably reflect that I am highly realistic, very direct, when it comes to feedback and the challenges we face as a team as a product as a technology. I do not like to gloss over those things. And I do not like to sugarcoat how hard the things that we're being asked to do actually are. But I do not get frozen in the idea that those are unsolvable problems. Like, as I say, none of our we're not building novel technology. This is not an expedition to understand if we can do scientific discovery, or build a net new technology. We're building software, for patients to deliver health care. These are solvable problems by a team that I think is exceptional. And so I want to remind the team that even though we have hard problems, we have that doctor, we have the doctor that can save your life, we are the doctor that can save your life. And sometimes I think when you get in the mode of this is too much. This is too hard. It's kind of impossible. You forget that you're really empowered, and teams start to slow down and really stop trying, Jason Knight 28:57 without going into too many details. Because we can't do that sort of thing. But have you ever had to let anyone go because they didn't meet up to those ideals? Or have you managed to hire very well and keep people that do kind of fit in with your view of the way that work should be done? Unknown Speaker 29:09 No, I of course we have. I have let people go that aren't meeting expectations for a lot of reasons. I would say a disempowerment is often a factor when people don't work out in a team. And it's not just around this idea of optimism. It's really around the idea of controlling your own destiny and how people respond to feedback. And so when you're if you've ever been managing someone out, and you provide them hard feedback, there are two types of people. One person that says feedback is too hard. Can't do it. My boss just doesn't like me. This company just sucks. They don't use enough frameworks. If they only use frameworks, we will be better. And there's someone else that says feedback is a gift. I'm gonna go build a plan to prove to you I can improve upon these areas and takes the inherent responsibility and believes that they can overcome Have part feedback, I think that determines who stays and goes, especially even even if you have the same performance issues. And so, yeah, I think we've had to let people go really from a place of disempowerment, that sometimes seeds from cynicism? Jason Knight 30:15 No, absolutely. And I think we've all seen that one person at the pub at the end of a work event or something, jabbing their finger into the CEOs face, telling them all the problems that they've got with the company and never really felt that was a particularly good look. But obviously, that doesn't come naturally to everyone. So do you feel that you've just always been an optimistic person? And that's just something that's part of you? Or is that something that you've learned over your career to kind of not fall into those types of patterns and to actually concentrate on being the more optimistic kind of empowered, hopeful person, Unknown Speaker 30:47 I am not a naturally optimistic person, or I would say, I'm not a naturally positive personality, and maybe an optimistic person, but not a positive personality. I'm serious. I am dark, I, you know, you take things seriously and don't naturally have a bubbly personality. That being said, I have experienced over the course of my career and the course of my life, the self limiting impact of cynicism, the belief that I'm not good enough, or I can't solve a problem or a problem is not worth solving, or I hate it here. I look back at the times when I was in that mindset. And I realised I achieved much less than I could have, if I could just embraced a more expansive mindset about the opportunity and a willingness to act against the problems. So I wouldn't say it comes naturally. But I would say it is a lesson that I've learned is really important to embrace as a leader. I think the best leaders unlock big things out of teams and set ambitious goals. And without that, sort of, you know, that without stewarding that, I would say long term optimism tempered by short term paranoia. It's hard for big teams to achieve big things. And I think it's really important that I learned how to do that as a leader. Jason Knight 32:07 No, absolutely. But we can't talk about people's personalities without considering some of the biases against women at work. Some of the classic ones that you see listed out like women are too pushy. They're too emotional. They're too this. They're too that all of these horrible cliches that keep coming up again, and again, as examples of sexism in the workplace. Now, you spoke on tech talk recently about women, and specifically moms having a harder time at work. Yeah. So I guess the first question they have, and maybe this is something that sort of talks to your journey through your career as well. Do you feel that you've had to present more of a certain image that perhaps men don't have to to get ahead in the workplace? Unknown Speaker 32:45 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everything from when I was a CEO and founder of my own startup, I had investors tell me, they were so glad I wasn't pregnant and didn't have kids. Wow, too. Yeah, it was a good one, two situations where you're expected to behave at work in a way that other people aren't expected to behave, whether it's that sort of insidious smiley face that you have to put at the end of every slack, or, you know, really being expected to cater to people's emotions in a way that male leaders aren't expected to, to sort of this systematic things that are well studied and researched, like, women that have children are seen as less competent at work, women that are seen as competent at work are seen as less effective as are good as mothers. And so I think all those things have certainly been things that I've personally experienced and observed in others. One of the reasons again, why I'm so excited about joining colours, we have a majority female executive team and quite supportive culture that's really enabled me to thrive as a mom and as an executive. But it takes a really special team, a special culture. And it's, it's still hard. Jason Knight 34:01 Yeah, I remember one place, a guy took some paternity leave, which is something that is still relatively uncommon over here, and I'm not sure how it is over there. At least as bad. And he took off a few weeks, maybe a couple of months and kind of came back. And by the time he came back, he had been kind of sidelined and almost like his job wasn't there anymore, because they'd kind of hired cover and done all that stuff. That was kind of shocking, in a sense at the time, because obviously you sit there and think, Well, that doesn't normally happen. But then of course, you start to think well, actually, that really does happen quite a lot for any woman who goes off and has a child and take some maternity. Yeah. I mean, is that something that you've either experienced yourself or that you've seen from friends or other working moms that you're aware of in your network that there's been that explicit? No. Unknown Speaker 34:52 So I, you know, a couple good things. I think that technology companies and startups, particularly the States know that they cannot have have bad parental leave policies and cultures and attract top talent just can't do it anymore. We compete on benefits, we compete on things like parental leave. And so that's been really important. And when I had kids, I was actually running my own startup. So I signed the term sheet to sell my company, when I was fully nine months pregnant, I moved and came to work as the product leader at Optimizely, when my youngest was six months old, I have always integrated my identity as a mother, my identity as a an executive in one, my kids are on Zoom, I do it all. And so I think it's really important that I neither hide that I'm an executive and have obligations at home, nor hide that I'm a mother and have have obligations when I'm at work. So I've tried to show up kind of this is me Take it or leave it. This is this is my life. That being said, I've seen plenty of women in my network, I really struggle with how to come back from parental leave, how much parental leave to take, all those sorts of things certainly have had an impact on how women think about approaching their work. It's unfortunate. But the things that I would say, again, are great about the companies I've worked at is we've made it intentional to promote people while they're on parental leave. So I have somebody who's on parental leave, that's on a promotion track there. They're just things like that, that I think are really important to show that being a parent is not at odds with being very high performance at work. Jason Knight 36:30 Absolutely, I think it's a really tiresome trope that that should affect anything. I mean, obviously, all things within life affect something right? Like, there's always going to be externalities to your job that are gonna affect something. But I just think it's, I mean, it's easy for me to say, because again, I'm this middle aged white guy, and I haven't been prejudiced against him that way, but it just feels like a really tiresome argument to still be having in the 21st century that these attitudes still around. But I guess the question there is whether it's getting better, as far as you're aware of, or do you think that it's still something that's so entrenched within many workplaces, that there's still so much work to do? Unknown Speaker 37:05 You know, I would, I would say, kind of far beyond, you know, parent or no parent, there is still just so few women in technical and technical leadership roles. So that's the thing that I'm actually quite sensitive to. I mean, there, as I said, there aren't very many people that run engineering and product period. They're either less women that run engineering and product period, or women that run engineering period. And so, you know, I do think there is a lot of inherent bias and inherent inequity in the way that product and engineering teams evaluate for talent, source talent, promote talent, that in some ways, I don't think is insidious, but is real. And so I think it takes leadership in order to say like, Look, our product teams and our engineering teams need to represent the diversity of our customer base. And we need to be able to make a lot of people successful, whether whatever kind of representation or whatever background they are from, and so that could be a mom, it could be a technical person from an underrepresented group, it could be a lot of things. But I think it's it's important that we have you, we enable all sorts of people with all sorts of lives and all sorts of backgrounds to be successful, because at the end of the day, that's the profile of our users. And that's what's going to help us build great products. Jason Knight 38:31 No, absolutely. And I think that idea of representation of all different types of people is something that comes up a lot on the podcast, and hopefully something that we can nudge in the right direction, one tick tock video at a time. That's right. But obviously, everyone's situation is different. And we can't put it all on the plate of the candidates to try and get themselves into these positions. Because of course, there's all of that inequity that you've just talked about. But you've made this journey to the executive level yourself. So could almost be seen as a shining example to young ambitious women that are trying to make that same journey and following your steps. So is there any advice that you would give to maybe an early stage or mid stage, female PM, for example, who's looking to move into leadership or moving past team leadership into the executive suite? Other than just catching up on your tiktoks and motivational videos? Unknown Speaker 39:25 Yes, I have a piece of advice, which is stop asking permission. Stop asking permission to do the job that you want to do. There were two sort of two inflection points in my career that really got me maybe three that got me where I wanted to be one. I once walked into my boss's office who was deciding how to backfill a director level role that oversaw marketing. I was leading product was trying to figure out how to oversee marketing and I walked into his office and handed him an org chart with me at the top of both of those organisations, and he said, Oh, wait, that makes sense. And that was, you know, my first kind of director level job. Then I started a company, I said, I got frustrated with a product problem space, I just said, I'm gonna solve this problem, and started a company which gave me CEO and sort of startup founder experience. And then the last thing that I did is over the last five years of my career, I always knew exactly the answer to, what do you want is your next step. When I was at Optimizely, and VP of product? My boss asked me what's the next step? And I said, I want to be chief product officer. When I'm here at colour, and my boss asked me, What's the next step? I say, I want to be CEO of a software company like is very clear to me what I want for the next step, and then the people around you are motivated in your progress and can give you direction. And so I'd say stop asking permission, have the roadmap to your own career. And don't let anybody tell you no. Jason Knight 40:53 I think that's excellent advice for just about everyone, really. But where can people find you after this? If they want to find more out about health tech or get inspiration on their journeys to CPOE? Or maybe even find out a bit more about your videos? Unknown Speaker 41:05 Yep, I am. Clairvaux on Twitter, and I am chief product officer on tick tock. The best way to DM me is through LinkedIn and otherwise I am with my kids or beat pooping software. If you're a colour. Jason Knight 41:21 You can admit it Now have you ever let your kids beep the software and press return on the keyboard? Unknown Speaker 41:26 Of course I have of course I have the occasional slack gets through, you know, the occasional unmerited deploy. You gotta let the kids explore. It's a STEM education. Jason Knight 41:37 I don't know what it is my kids just never ever, at any point have ever tried to get into my office and bother me about anything during work. I'm starting to think that maybe, maybe I'm a bit boring or something like that. Unknown Speaker 41:50 No, you're not boring. Your work is boring. Jason Knight 41:54 My boss will help make sure to link all of those links into the show notes. And hopefully I'll get some positively positive, optimistic people heading in your direction to find out more. Perfect. Well, that's been a fantastic chat. So thanks for taking the time to bring a bit of cheer to the dystopian landscape of Product Management. Obviously, we'll stay in touch but yes for now. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks. As always, thanks for listening. I hope you found the episode inspiring and insightful. If you did again, I can only encourage you to pop over to white knight in product.com Check out some of my other fantastic guests. Sign up to the baby mist or subscribe on your favourite podcast app and make sure you share your friends so you and they can never miss another episode again. I'll be back soon with another inspiring guest but as for now, thanks and good night.