The CPO & CTO relationship
The one relationship that can make or break your CPO stint.
In my tenure I had the privilege of working with two truly world class CTOs. First with Khaled Rashad, then with Sven Herzing. At talabat I've seen one of the healthiest Product & Tech relationships compared to other companies.
What did we do?
1) Used the interviews to assess mutual fit
During the interview process, Khaled and I spent hours together - understanding our shared views on product strategy, culture, relationship with the business, and what we wanted to build together. We started the conversation at 7pm and ended at about 11pm.
I encourage anyone who's interviewing for a CPO role to spend a disproportionate amount of time assessing whether they have good chemistry with the CTO. Getting it wrong means you will never be set up for success. This advice also applies for all levels (eg. Product Directors must do this with their Engineering Director too).
2) When I joined, we completely blurred the lines between Product & Tech
Product and Tech are ONE team at talabat. For the CPO and CTO, we shared the same budget, the same planning cycles, the same business objectives, and the same success metrics for ourselves. We structured our relationship and expectations with our CEO that there wasn’t going to be a win-loss scenario. We either won together or lost together.
3) We did a ton of work together (minimize "throw over the wall")
As Khaled and I were both relatively new to the company, we committed to doing most meetings (besides people-related topics) together. It meant that there were few meetings “with the business” or “with customers” that only I attended. I also committed to diving deep on technical priorities and topics (e.g. Khaled was very passionate about XP, and I had to teach myself a few things on this). Having consistently shared context was important for us to make our initial moves - priorities, team structure, hiring, and more.
4) We committed to driving performance across both teams
Sven Herzing and I also had a shared commitment of the performance of our teams - we pushed for accountability across our organizations and put our relationship and commitment to getting our partnership right over protecting our own teams.
Looking back, this partnership shaped far more outcomes than any individual product decision I’ve made. When you get this right, it cascades down to the other product and tech leaders too.