Director of Product Management

At Xero, we’re here to make running a business beautiful. By making small businesses more efficient every day, connecting them with big business technology and empowering a community behind them, their potential is limitless. When that happens, we’re not only helping small businesses, we’ll be building a stronger economy that can change the world.

As a Director of Product Management you will lead multiple product teams and, where required, step in to solve complex and protracted product problems. You will support and enable your team to do the best work of their lives through practising the great people leader framework. Your impact will be measured by your achievement of key commercial and customer success metrics through your management of people and teams. You will lead a product area with high levels of complexity, ambiguity, dependencies and/or stakeholder management.

Product

Be accountable for all the equivalent product management responsibilities, at a product area level, including:

• Network across Xero to ensure the products within the portfolio connect to Xero’s strategy,

  objectives and future

• Develops trusting relationships with senior level stakeholders, where conversions lead to

  actionable outcomes

• Articulates a narrative to a diverse set of senior stakeholders to influence outcomes

• Be accountable for all the equivalent product management responsibilities, at portfolio /

  sub-portfolio(s) level, including:

• Understand the Xero context, map out the Xero landscape and identify related value

  streams that might create collaboration opportunities or dependencies

• Define customer vision, bring to life the long-term future state - the difference you're

  going to make in your customers' lives

• Define scope and approach, define our approach to realising the vision, identifying the

  big bets we're going to make and the significant value drops to customers over time,

  including the outcomes we hope to achieve

• Developing a support strategy and plan, create low-fidelity solution concepts to

  explore the solution space and determine the right direction. De-risk assumptions of

  value, usability, feasibility and viability, in ongoing #testlearnrefine loops, increasing

  investment in solution 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

• Launch & monitor, 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 the things that need to

  be considered 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: consulting with

  stakeholders and leading trade-off decisions

• Nurture lifecycle management & sunsetting, and product improvements. Continuously

  monitor the performance of the product against key success measures and maintain

  an ongoing dialogue with customers to surface and prioritise new opportunities to

  optimise the product, while optimising existing features

• Standardise and improve product practice. Leaders actively support practitioners to

  develop their skills and succeed in their contributions to XPF Activities; they work with

  them to identify growth opportunities, and share their knowledge and experience in

  service of that growth

• Deliberately plan the work you are involved in, forecast key milestones and deliveries

  and track progress against the plan.

People Leadership

You will enable your team to do the best work of their lives.

• 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 your 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 on-boarded effectively

• Manage team compliance with Xero policies, processes and requirements

• Role model exemplary leadership by developing leadership capabilities and upholding our

  Xero values

• Support the growth and development of your 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

• You drive performance and results in your team

• You're responsible for the establishment of OKRs and your team's work is contributing to

  achieve OKRs

• You deeply understand our customers and their problems

• You have strong relationships with your stakeholders who are engaged and have a thorough

  understanding of your vision, strategy and roadmap

• You have an accessible, transparent, prioritised and well executed roadmap across a portfolio / sub-portfolio which focuses on value to Xero and the customer

• You champion product initiatives, narratives and vision, driving alignment across teams and

  the organisation

• Significant people leadership experience, with the ability to successfully motivate individuals

  and teams and develop individuals capabilities.

• Your team members are able to see the big picture and connect their work and their team’s to strategy

• You are an effective coach, asking the important questions, listening and having the real (if

  difficult) conversions

• Your roadmap is being executed according to plan and you and your team are focused on the most important initiatives

• Support your team to remove barriers

• You build inclusive, resilient and psychologically safe teams

• Collaborate internationally to create horizontal alignment across Xero

• You demonstrate and amplify Xero’s Values

Critical capabilities:

Love customer problems:

• 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

Look to the future:

• 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

Work the Xero way:

• 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

Demonstrate commercial acumen:

• 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

Do it together:

• 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

Explore the data:

• 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

Great People Leadership:

• Clarity: See the big picture and connect the work our team does to strategy. Cascade

  the operating lan 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 realise 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