CPO Stories: Katya Denike - Holland & Barrett

There are so many of the product courses now, and some of them are actually teaching you the opposite stuff. I've seen people coming from the course being so precious about methodology that it actually prevents them from doing the thing, the actual thing you need and supposed to do. That you cannot just take a product person from the product-established company, and you cannot expect them to be successful in the digital transformation context. It is about different skills. Hello and welcome to CPI Stories, where I speak to the UK's biggest and best executive product leaders, as well as some of the upcoming stars of the future. On this episode, I'm delighted to welcome Katja Danaki. Katja started out at McKinsey before heading to Yandex and Ozon in Russia, before hopping over the pond and taking a product leadership role at Beyond 100, a UK-based health and wellbeing company, before moving to Holland & Barrett, the UK-based health and wellbeing company. I'm hoping she and her team are solving problems that are vitamins as well as painkillers. Katja, thanks for joining and welcome to the show. Thank you for such a really big musical intro. Delighted to be here, Jason. Yeah, well, you know, I've got to try and make people feel as loved and happy as possible to start with, and then after that it all kind of all works out after that. That was definitely enjoyable, mostly. Like, you know, most of those things are rather boring, so I think, yeah, to make it sound fun. Well, there you go. Well, let's keep that attitude going and start with quite a fun question, I guess, in the sense that Holland & Barrett is a household name in the UK, something that, you know, a company that I've seen all over the place, of course, on every single high street in the land, but also a huge presence internationally. But just for the record, just in case someone has been living under a rock for the last X amount, 150 years or whatever, how would you describe what Holland & Barrett does? To someone who doesn't know. Yes, sure. As you rightfully said, it's like a 150 years old company, which has started as a health and wellness retailer, really. We have a major presence across UK and Benelux as thousands of stores. But we are also going through a big and ambitious digital transformation with our overall vision to go beyond retail and with the mission to help people on their health and wellness journey overall, particularly around the preventative part of it. Interesting. Well, we'll probably dig into some of those things in a minute, but that international presence is an interesting one for me because, you know, obviously looked at Apen, I've done a bit of research because, you know, I actually do have to do some research for these things sometimes. And like for me, again, as I say, Holland & Barrett, that's, you know, it's kind of like almost as the quintessential British high street brand. But that international stuff sounds like it could add a lot of complication because, you know, as you say, you've got Benelux, you've got all these different stores in different jurisdictions. Yeah. Do you kind of treat, or does that kind of help make you treat things kind of individually as like individual almost sectors that you do different things for, or is there a lot of kind of generic stuff that you can do across the board across all of those countries? Overall, I feel that there is a good balance. You have to hit to be a successful global company, right, with the things you can afford to do globally, which makes customer experience better, because if you put kind of a global effort and focus on it, so you don't have to do it, let's say for UK separately, then for France separately, for Netherlands, etc., they actually will be of the better quality. Like the universal example of it would be going straight into like digital products as on, let's say, search engine on most of your website capability, because that's pretty universal, right? Amazon is tailored, but mostly the same everywhere. Hence you can put most effort to doing... Enhance and develop your global capability. And then what we are working on and defining as a company, what is this 20% of tailoring we need to do to make each market special. So, to summarize, we're trying to use as much of our global capacity and global brain power as possible, being it in the digital product creation or being in the physical mind, but we're also very mindful of the market differences and how we need to tailor across. And it's a never-ending balance. Yeah, and I've definitely worked in organizations that have that kind of balance, although maybe not at the sort of scale that you're talking about. But it kind of feels like one of the benefits that you have, you know, in an organization that solves the problem that you solve is that ultimately, despite the little differences, like humans are pretty much the same around the world. They have the same biology and the same kind of makeup and the same basic, you know, the ways that you fix some of their problems that you fix are kind of the same. But it feels like there might be a regulatory angle there as well, like the differences in regulation between different markets. Is that something that you have to kind of pay constant attention to, or does it not change as fast as it could? Like, how does that look for you? I think, of course, you have to pay attention to that, right? Regulations generally, thankfully, do not change this fast. It's not that of a dynamic space, right? Usually it takes time. Thanks EU, thanks EU. Yes, exactly. Might be quicker in some other places, but let's not go there. But of course, you have to be mindful and almost get it into your core thinking of how you provide the fix that are global and scalable and can fit to both regulations or be tailored. I'd say even though, even on the people problem level, you mentioned, right, you know, that generically people problems are the same, but you still... Persona, like a health persona, for example, is still a little bit different in the UK and in the Netherlands. So you need to always think at how do you feel this, how do you fit this flexibility within the framework, almost. As in, for example, in the UK, people are, many of them are much more into the sports than we are in the UK, I'm sorry to say, but that's a true statistics. But that's something that we should be mindful of as we are creating the customer, for example, the materials for the customers that speaks to the customer, some things like this. So there is this level of regulation, you're absolutely right, which is something that needs to be baked in in everything as a non-negotiable. And then there is a level of customer needs. What are the same things versus what are the things that people need, slightly different things across the locale, also might have different preferences versus the same. But overall, that's pretty manageable as a global system. Well, I'm sure that your team are all over that, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But another thing that occurs to me, and kind of mentioned already, that Holland & Barrett is a huge high street name, especially in the UK, obviously, where I've seen it all over the place, but also in these other markets, like you can't walk down a single high street in the land without seeing a Holland & Barrett somewhere down there, and in all of the shopping centres. And obviously that, I guess in some ways is, you know, kind of almost like a reputation boost for you because you can say you work for a company that literally everyone's heard of. But I'll also say that the high street has been taking a bit of a battering over the last few years, or maybe even longer. Like, you don't have to open a newspaper too often to find the latest doom story about some store falling apart or running out of money or getting bought and then stripped. And that's obviously something that's going to be on yours and the leadership there is mine because, of course, you know, you're on the same high street as everyone else. And you talked a little bit about some of the things and the ways that you might be changing, but how do you see that kind of battle for the high street? Is it something that's going to be, you know, kind of okay to kind of just keep there, but you just add things around it? Do you think the high street's going away at some point? Like, how do you see that high street battle? That's a very good question. So I think if you go through, if you step back and go through a little bit what has happened on the market, right, what is basically driving the behavior you described is very few things. One is undeniably cost of living crisis people are dealing with, right, particularly in the UK. So there is a real reconsideration of what you want to have versus what do you need to have. And another thing is, I would say, and I have to say as a big advocate of the digital space, and as the person who is working in tech my entire life, is the whole digital transformation, right? I'm going to quote here one of the famous product leaders, Marty Cagan, that is, I believe it's his quote, Every successful company nowadays is a tech company. And what it means, it's really, really very hard for you to be successful unless you have the scale tech systems in all the processes of your business, pretty much. Because what it means, it means that you're spending money efficiently, you're spending them in the right place, and you effectively can have leaner, much faster business in terms of reaction to the challenges and things like this. Basically, and these are two beats: digital transformation. It's very, very hard thing. I came to realize, especially in a country as the UK, where lots of businesses have a rich heritage, which might be your advantage, but it also might be the thing that is kind of preventing you from change, because you developed this huge identity of how you do things over the years. And it's a huge technological change. It's a huge cultural change, and many companies are struggling to deal with it. And that's why then the whole economics, macroeconomics, are not that favorable for retail overall. It kind of becomes a struggle with lots of sad news we see in the newspapers or LinkedIn, etc. In this particular climate, it's very rewarding for us to see at Holland & Barrett that we are doing really well, right? We are growing double digits on double digits year on year, and everyone could have done it, like let's say five, seven years ago, when you had the whole boom of spend, boom of lots of other trends you can ride as a company. Now it requires more of the stronger product-market fit in terms of the attention that you're delivering exactly what the customers need, and requires the real transformation being done, making sure that in non-places the money going down the drain, and every, basically, everything you do, it's kind of for the customers. So I would say for us, we are in a really, really good place now. Hence, it's not like, you know, I'm almost getting all the positivity you've mentioned and none of those negative counterfacts. I wouldn't say it's all of the rosy journey, because it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get there. We weren't just at the beginning of our transformation five years ago, right? But now it's, yeah, now we are seeing the fruits. Yeah, it's interesting, that kind of double-digit growth that you're talking about as well, because of course you could sit there and, like, as you say, like, yeah, sure, there's plenty of companies that are growing double digits and doing really well, but, like, you might not expect a 150-year-old retailer to be one of those, right? So obviously, I guess that's testament to some of the work that you and the team have been doing. But, like, what are some of the key aspects, like ones that you can share at least, that have kind of driven that growth and, like, the types of things that you've been focusing on? Like, you've talked about preventative healthcare, for example. You've talked about online as an example rather than just everything being on the high street. But, like, what are some of the things that have really driven that double-digit growth and the things that you've been kind of working on and continue to work on? And I wouldn't see it that much in retail, you're right. So it's particularly humbling and good to see this kind of growth in the retail space as the one we're experiencing now. In terms of the things that have driven it, I think one of the things to double-click on is the whole business transformation, right? So this is probably the biggest thing to unpack, which has lots of multifacets. I think we'll mention a few of them as we go, as, like, you know, the strategic parts, almost the things like this. But I think if we have to talk about, like, one big thing, that around five years ago we made this brave decision to go and invest and completely remove the old existing processes. And it all starts from your warehouse, right, where you might have, like, we had lots of paper-based operations, people going around with the paper spreadsheets and things like this. And then it gets to your how do you deal with your vendors, for example, which has been also historically a very manual process. And then where do your master data goes, like all the data you store about your products, promotions, prices, all the commercial backbones of the system. Because if you don't do that digitally, or if you don't do it in a sufficiently flexible digital system, then you cannot give people best commercial terms, best promotions, you cannot give your vendors best stuff. So which is a huge, huge factor. It's almost like a hygiene factor. Which you couldn't teach you make or break, and that's forever you are a digital leader or a digital lagger. So for me, that was like the biggest pivotal point and the biggest decision the business made. And then we are bravely stumbling for the five years, but never, like, always persevering. We kind of proceeded, proceeded, proceeded on this road, going through iterations, which led us to where we are now. If we have to unpick a few of the concrete things, I would probably put it like this. One of the success criteria, just to continue the theme we talked about already, is building firm foundations, so to speak. So it's make sure that your backbone of the business, you have all the data stored in the scalable systems, hence you can say, hey, actually, this discount mechanic would be the best mechanic for your customer. It's an incredibly difficult space to manage it manually, and yet many retailers have to manage it manually for a number of reasons: your demand and supply, right? If you have empty shelves, if your customers do not receive what they need to receive. Also another basic factor. We call the different names over the transformation. It's firm foundations, or it's delivering the basically brilliant basics, it was called at some point. So, like, you know, there is lots of names for it, but I think the simple description is there is ten things your customer wants from you in this space, and you better nail those things in the absolutely right way. And wherever there comes a layer of delighters or things that are things you want to invest in as your strategic bets. So, for example, for us, one of the clear strategic bets was our mobile app. When I joined the business, we had a third-party mobile app, which was super. And I'm not saying just to put it out there, not all the vendors are bad vendors, but you need to work with the vendors that make your business stronger. But I do think that if the capabilities is your strategic advantage, you need to own it in the process of digital transformation. One of those, yes. Anyway, moving back to the beginning of the point, we had a vendor-owned mobile app for our customers. It had less than 5% of the digital users, so the tiny digital share, 3-point-something rating, a rating flexible, pretty hard to change. So this is one of the things. This is one of the strategic bets we made straight away as on Right. We need to get it in-house. We need to move our focus to strengthen our app because this is where most loyal customers for us will be. And it doesn't mean that they will not shop in stores, because we have so many other additional things happening in stores, right? Your connection with colleagues can be unbelievable, whereas, like, we even have the stores in which you can get, like, your reformer Pilates program and things like this. So there is lots of experience things happening there, but it's kind of the app will be a home of the transaction for you. And we consistently invested in this as one of the big strategic bets over the years. And now it's moved from less than 5% of the revenue of digital channel to more than 30%, with the ambitious goal to go to the half. And yeah, our rate, like, we are pretty much on top of the app store ratings, as I believe it's 4.5-something. From the product, which was a nuance to our users, it came to the more of the delighter stage. And again, it's like, you know, I'm telling you like a little bit of the marketing story there, so let me wind down because, for example, it doesn't mean that we are now sitting there relaxed on our hub, because like even two weeks ago, I've had a call with the teams and it was, It's not good enough, guys. What we are providing now, it's not good enough on this particular area of experience, so we need to make it radically better. But it's about, it is constantly getting improved, and there are more and more and more things for the users. But yeah, as a direction of travel and focus, that's probably one of the big ones. I'm going to stop here for a second because I feel I've been monologuing at you. No, I think it's really fascinating to sort of hearing some of the kind of the building blocks, and I think that kind of idea of the ten points as well, and it's almost like there's a, if I can use the word, like a certain level of kind of unsexy work that needs to be done to kind of move you into the new era, right? There's a lot of supply chain stuff like you're talking about. There's a lot of kind of logistic stuff and things that your organization just completely and 100% relies on that without which nothing works. Yeah, the only thing I would say, just to interrupt you there, that I find this work actually being very sexy. Oh, really? Okay. Yes, because, like, it does sound—I know, like, when you look at it at the surface, it does sound that people only want to create customer-facing, beautiful prototypes, whatever things there that is on the front end. But then you look at the power and value you get from the master data system, you get from intelligent forecasting management, pricing and promo and things like this, when you can apply the power of machine learning to get there the best thing for the businesses and customer. I find it being absolutely fascinating and, like, you know, one of the most rewarding spaces. So I think it's—the reason I interrupted you there, it's because when I meet, like, let's say with my product leaders in the supply chain or one of those spaces, many of them are starting conversations from saying, Oh, we know it's not that sexy. Oh, we know it's not, like, not the most engaging or exciting space. And I'm like, No, guys, what are you talking about? It's actually one of the best spaces out there if you only take one level under the surface. Yeah. No, I think, you know, one of the things, you know, when I work with product teams as well, especially ones that are in maybe large organizations working in a lot of internal tooling, like, you often find that dynamic where you have the product managers maybe feeling a little bit, I don't know, kind of down in the dumps because they're a bit far back from the front line. But, like, again, exactly as you say, like, without these things, none of it works, right? So I think that these people need to get a bit more credit. They need to kind of just, you know, kind of almost own some of the success that they're enabling rather than just sort of owning the success of the little bit that they work on. Because, you know, again, big up the internal product managers. Like, again, they keep everything moving, right? One hundred percent. They enabling—some of the internal products enabling much more customer-facing metrics. That's some of the customer-facing products done. So, 100%. Well, let's talk about that product team then. I know that we could probably talk about the Holland & Barrett strategy for days or decades or whatever, but the product management team that you've got supporting that, like the organization that you lead. Yeah, we talked a little bit about those internal product people that are working on some of the stuff. I'm sure you've got some external people looking after, for example, the mobile app you talked about and other stuff that is customer-facing. But how does the product management organization look like at Holland & Barrett? Like, how big is it? How do you kind of set it up? What are the kind of dynamics that you have in the team there? So we have circa, like more or less 100 people, slightly less now at some times. The more, you know, like with numbers is pretty flexible. The number is split in between designers, product managers, and UX researchers. And we also have, obviously, the functions we are collaborating very, very closely with, like TPM function, technical program managers, or data functions and things like this. If we double-click on the team itself around the squad structure, we have two key verticals. One of them is the term you already heard of in our conversation called firm foundations, which is exactly dealing with all of those systems that needed to be there for the whole business to work and function. And another is called omnichannel customer experience. That was a very deliberate strategy choice on my side to keep omnichannel customer experience together. And then we have, like, brilliant heads of product within it for the retail and for the digital. But one of the biggest things we need to figure out as the next strategy step, it's how the whole omnichannel experience links together now that we are feel more comfortable with getting our website, our app, and our store experience on Par and digitized and part of the same ecosystem. So, yes, that is the second team. In both teams, we have a series of leaders. I also have a separate product ops team, which is very small but mighty, helping us to figure out basically the best process to get to the best product decisions and do lots of, lots of life-saving tasks from me on top of it. So, yeah, and that's more or less a structure. Then in each team, you will have heads of product. You have a design team, which has a VP of design and very senior designers also mapped more or less to the same structure and the same squads as an engineering managers. And after, with each head of product team, you might have product leaders, senior product managers, product managers, and APMs as well. Now, when I think of products in the context of Holland & Barrett, obviously there's the stuff that you just talked about. There's the fundamentals that are being used to kind of keep the business running. There's the omnichannel stuff that you talked about on Big Tick for the bingo card on omnichannel as well, e-commerce bingo card. But you've also got another type of product within the organization that I imagine may or may not fall in your remit, which is the actual lotions and potions that you sell in the stores, right? Like those are themselves products. And I know that sometimes there'll be external things that you buy, like third-party stuff that you get from other suppliers, but there's also your own stuff that you make yourself that presumably have like chemists and Dietitians and physicians and stuff looking at all of that. Does that fall remotely within your remit, or is that something completely separate and something that you just interact with? First of all, I've never heard it being called lotions and potions, so you kind of made me chuckle there. But, yes, so we have—it's absolutely a big part of our overall vision. It doesn't fall under my remit as a creation of those products because, as you can imagine, creating the physical products and creating the digital ones requires a completely different skill set. And albeit the more we are talking with the brilliant director of, let's say, our own products, who's actually been on my podcast recently, April Preston, where we talk about motherhood. But the more we talk about the work topics, we hear the more similarities we see across the digital and physical products development. But that being said, it is a big part of our business vision. And I do believe that we are now—we've done the product transformation, as in not digital product, but actually our own line, our branded product transformation, along the same time. And I am now a huge fan of Holland & Barrett products. Like, I love the chocolate, I love the kombucha we are producing. So I do believe these are, like, you know, they are high-quality products on the market. And funnily enough, just before our podcast, like literally an hour ago, my meeting was a meeting with my product managers to say, Look, guys, we've produced those beautiful products, which are of high quality. I do believe they are beating the benchmarks on the market across many consistent indicators. Can you please provide me the strategy which will help us to integrate better within our digital ecosystem for the next, yeah, for the next quarter? Because the reality is that people think about the brand. They don't think about physical or digital. They just think I'm gonna trust these guys versus I'm not going to trust these guys. So I want us to do much more in this direction as an ecosystem linkage. And my product team, I'm going to spotlight them here. They promised — today is Friday — they promised to come back to me on Monday with the first draft. So we'll see how, like, we'll do much more in this space as an integration, yeah. It sounds like you drive them hard at least, which I guess is, yeah, you said earlier before we started recording, you know, not good to be bored, right? So it sounds like you're living the dream there. To be honest, I've asked them whatever the deadline they would like, so I wasn't a bad cop in this particular scenario. They said they can come back for Monday, credit to them. Fair enough. Well, you know, big up the product team there then. But you talked a little bit about those similarities as well that you've seen with regards to kind of some of the crossover. And of course, product management originally came from kind of the physical world, you know, with P&G and stuff back in the old days. But do you see a lot of then mobility, for example, between the types of people that are working on the physical, the chemical products almost, and the digital teams, or is that something that's still kind of emerging, like the ability, for example, for people to transfer from one to the other? Not that much of the mobility, to be honest with you, with those two particular teams. The similarities are indeed like you have a discovery cycle and stuff like this. But if you look at the superpowers and subject matter expertise, right, people who are coming to work for the physical products team, they would usually be an expert in this, like understand types of ingredients, understand, like, probably have a related degree and stuff like this. We do, though, encourage the overall cross sections. For example, we have product managers who transferred from a contact center, which is, I actually think, one of the best places to start your product career because it develops lots of empathy, right, for the users. We do have product managers who have a background in retail, so they worked for years and years in the retail stores at Home and Barrett, and they developed a natural curiosity and interest for the technology, and kind of they came and they are very successful in the areas of the business being the product managers. And we have an absolutely brilliant product manager at the early stages of career coming from the DC. So basically, we do, I'm always very welcoming to those cross-team collaborations because I think there has also been early on a little bit of a, how to say it correctly, it's been considered a little bit of an elite profession almost, if you know what I mean, as in, like, you have to be of a certain background or you cannot get into this. And I'm really, really keen on breaking it because I think it's not about the background, it is about your mindset, your passion, and effectively your desire to work hard and drive change. No, absolutely, and I completely agree with that, by the way. I think, you know, we need to get as many different types of people into product management as possible. And I think, you know, I've worked with people in other retailers as well that have a strong kind of pipeline of people coming from in-store. And, you know, I used to work in a call center many, many years ago as well, so I know what you mean about empathy as well. But there's also then kind of a potential difficulty for yourself there, or certainly for your leaders, maybe the level below you, is like these people are coming in with incredible... Let's say mindset and also knowledge about the business and potentially knowledge about aspects of the business that maybe aren't always common within digital product management. But at the same time, they also probably lacking a certain set of hard skills, a special set of skills like in taken, you know, where they can come in and become a nightmare for all of their stakeholders or whatever. This idea that they need to be trained up. So, like, do you then have to run, like, programs within the company to help get these up, or do you do that kind of one-to-one? Like, how do you bring those people in and get the best of those people whilst also turning them into actual product managers as well? So there is a number of great training programs, right? I think you do, if you're converting from a completely different role, you do need to get a number of things to get what—you do need to get a proper education in it. It doesn't mean going to five years of university degree. I don't think when we all started, the university degrees in product management even existed. Now they do. But it does mean that going on a really well-defined product course. I'm pretty precious and pretty selective about these ones. I have a few places and providers I like because, you know, like generally there are so many of the product courses now. More and more every week. Yes, more and more every week. And, you know, like the funny thing is not all of them are actually helpful to the product managers. That's the thing. And some of them are actually teaching you the opposite stuff. I've seen people coming from the course being so precious about methodology that it actually prevents them from doing the thing, the actual thing you need and supposed to do. So I have, like, almost a few coaches and a few... Good providers that I know will be aligned with our values and things like this. We recently actually launched the product training portal, which has things like, here's all the, here's everything that is available to you. We are not creating those things in-house, but we are collecting them on the same portal. And I did spend quite a lot of time, especially over the last couple of years, trying to explain to people and highlight the difference between general product versus digital transformation product manager, because those two are quite different profiles, really. And one of the learnings I've had, I've learned the hard way through the transformation. I do think we talked about it on some conference recently, as in we've been together, but anyway, it's about the fact that you cannot just take a product person from the product-established company, let's say, I don't know, Booking.com, Google, whatever, Apple, Amazon, and you cannot expect them to be successful in the digital transformation context, because it is about different skills. You do have already established system, established rules of the game, and people who are familiar with tech and expecting tech to be your partner in those companies. And actually, like finding your way and opening the doors for you is a different skill that a transformation product manager needs to have. So I'm trying to, I'm spending some time on highlighting this and also investing in this particular part of education, because you will not get it on the digital, you will not get it on the generic course. But our product people need to know it and need to be pretty aware about the difference to be successful. So, for example, in our product training portal, you would see, hey, here is, like, Katya's reflections on difference between the digital transformation versus the generic product management, and here is a number of other resources for you. You can go and explore to reflect on it and to reflect on what you can develop. Well, hopefully this podcast interview will end up on there at some point as well. But let's switch tracks a little bit and talk a little bit about you yourself. So obviously you've had a decent career now in a number of different companies, both back in Russia and then in the UK. You've worked in a few different spaces, and of course, when you moved into Holland & Barrett, that was, I believe, the first CPO role that you took, having taken other leadership roles in other organisations. But when you kind of made that step, I mean, obviously you made it not within a company, but when you moved to a different company, so that's slightly different. But there is a bit of a leap that all CPOs talk about when you kind of go from being the IC to the kind of the mid-level leader to the executive leader of a large organisation, a transforming organisation, like you say. So what was the biggest surprise that you had going into that role? I mean, maybe something that was not quite as you expected or something that was harder than you expected it to be. Like, what kind of surprised you on the way in? Yeah. So when I moved, first of all, not only it was my first CPO role, but also I was the first CPO at Holland & Barrett. I didn't have one before, so it was kind of— Double whammy. Yes, exactly. It was kind of a complete match in this sense. But when I just joined Holland & Barrett, I joined as a director of product and engineering. So I've been in this role there for like circa slightly more than half a year, I would say seven, eight months, something in between that. And in this process, we are still developing, like, how the transformation new structure will look like, which I was supporting the process of development of that as well. And in this new structure, like CPO role has appeared alongside with the other roles we needed as an organization, because it became clear that we need this. We need effectively the product transformation, we need a separate product function that will not operate under business, but that will operate as almost, yeah, as an independent yet connected powerhouse. And the CPO role appeared, which was offered to me at the time. And to be honest with you, my first inclination was not even to take it. And I was like, can I please do something smaller? And this is probably the advice I can give to everyone in their career. One of the biggest things that helped me to succeed in my career is having the people who had the faith in me. As my boss at the time was like, You can absolutely do it. So, and he was right. He was right. I was like, Can I do something like, you know... It was like, can I do something, like, you know, maybe a little bit smaller? I was like, Nope, absolutely not. I've seen you in action now. You're doing the full role. You'll be, yeah, you'll be successful in it. So, and so he took a bet. So something, and I think everyone needs to have the moment in their career like that, and everyone needs to be lucky to see the manager who will help them to make that leap. In terms of, yeah, in terms of the how did, what were the surprising things, and bits like this, I think, to be honest with you, most of the surprising things were not connected to the role itself, because through the previous leadership roles, I've kind of had the right combination and the right feel for how good looks like in a strong product organization. So it wasn't like, Oh my God, I have to, like, understand how this pipeline and process works, or how do I create the team, how, et cetera, et cetera. So I felt all of those more of the CPO-native skills were actually not the biggest part of my problem at the time. But I think the biggest part of challenge and learning was how do we tailor it to the organization? Because you cannot just come and say, Here's the framework. You just follow the framework I added somewhere, or it worked in another company, right? It's understanding the whole landscape of the organization and understanding how product can fit mostly organically into this. And to be honest with you, I've never even thought about... So this particular feeling of surprise was not in my mind. As I know, I've expected it to be this, and it became that. It was never probably a frame of thinking. It was always more like, we need to achieve this huge thing, like we need to, for example, make everyone aligned. So, like the product and tech function existing, and to the fact that we will deliver roadmaps now like that. Okay, how do I do that? I do the big workshop, and then I talk to these people and that people, and then this is the plan of education we need. So probably it's been always like, here's the big challenge. Let's just dive into this challenge and let's kind of be, let's find the way to resolve it, and then again, and then again, and then again. What if I reflect, if I'll try to reflect for 30 seconds, though they retrospectively indeed, like any things I haven't expected, or any surprising things. The big one is probably the percentage of product and people work. Overall, I've expected it to be slightly more on the product, slightly less on the people navigation of various things internally, externally stuff. I think it's a surprise of every bigger leadership role that actually you get really, then you become really good at your job. You're getting into the position when you stop doing this job, or you stop even having something remotely relevant to this, and it's fine. You learn a new skill and you balance. Yeah, there's almost that kind of cliche about moving into, again, sort of executive leadership. It's almost like a completely separate role versus just an enhancement on the old role, effectively, because you have to kind of get involved in so many different things. So do you find it easy to do or to not do the things that you would have used to have done back in the past? Like now that you've got this new role, you've obviously had it for a bit now, but like... Is there some part of you that always has this kind of almost like an instinct to try to get involved, like you say, in the product stuff, or do you feel that you've managed to scale yourself in such a way that you don't need to worry about that anymore? To be honest with you, it's been like almost five years now, right? Time just flies at H&B, so it's almost five years I've been in this role, and it's always a growth path for me, right? Like each new year I'm learning a new skill, a new thing of like how can I develop my team more efficiently, how I can develop the strategy more efficiently, how I can coordinate the board more efficiently. Do I miss the times when I was closer to, like closer to doing product itself? Of course I do. It's like one of my favorite meetings ever is when I'm getting with the team and when I'm like, Okay, tell me about your product challenges. How do you resolve them? What is your strategy on this, that and that? Oh, I remember, so connecting it with the old experience. But I think this is the nostalgia we all have, right? That that always will be there. And then I think thing to remind yourself, it's never go, or like extremely rarely, you can afford and allow yourself to go to this level of the low altitude. But if you have a very, very good reasoning for doing that. But actually just always, always pulling yourself up. I do think, to be fair, there is lots and lots of interesting tasks and challenges that can be formulated in the product way, that can be resolved on the CPO level. And I always, I'm kind of always thinking, Oh, that's my product now. That's my product now. Now product org can get in it to the best shape and the best metric. It's my product. So how do I do that? Hence this mentality stays. But yeah, won't complain. I have a very interesting job, so no complaints from my side. Well, you know, it's that whole cliche around, like, everything is product management at the end of the day, right? Everything's a product if you make it into one. Yep, yep, yep, if you think about it long enough. Well, let's finish with a few super quick lightning questions. I know you've got other meetings to go to where you've got to go and reimagine omnichannel retail again, or whatever it is you need to do of your Friday. One thing that you wish that your team knew about your job. That's not the quick lightning round question, but I would say, you know, there are times if you rewind back to... I think one thing probably maybe many leaders would love for the teams to know, if there is reasons for things. In most of the cases, there are reasons for things that are being done. And I remember sometimes, as in being in IC roles, being frustrated with some leadership decisions and thinking like, Ah, why wouldn't you just do that? Or why wouldn't you do this? And then revisiting back where I am now, I'm like, Ah, that's why. That's why. So I think one of the things, even though it's not always possible because we are seeing different parts of the elephant, is understanding, like always trying to rewind back and going, right, what is the part of the world I am actually seeing? Why am I making certain decisions? But I think the leaders should do absolutely the same thing for their teams, thinking what is the part of the world they're seeing, so they'll achieve the best. Providing the context, you know, ahead of time, I guess, rather than just, like, saying to do the thing. What's one skill you believe every CPO should master? I'd say for the... Product leadership, definitely high agency, definitely high emotional intelligence, but almost like the ability to manage crucial conversations, let's say, because the further you go, the more things you will have smaller interactions with people, which actually, where everyone have a very, very busy brain space, but these interactions will matter a lot. Hence, you need to be able to do that efficiently. Absolutely. Most important trait in a product manager. That's same as a product leader, high agency. There you go. No, absolutely, 100%. No fate but what you make, right? You got to get out there and take control. I think, yes, it's like, I think the probably worst situation is when product manager is waiting for the perfect conditions to make the job done, because first of all, they never exist. Second of all, that's, yeah, it's not the way to progress. Okay, hopefully an easy one to finish up with. Why should product people consider working for Holland & Barrett in the product team there? You should consider, as a product person, to work for Holland & Barrett if you want to be a part of the ambitious vision of actually changing something for the wellness of people across as a global player and bringing the difference there, because there is a big gap now on, there is a big industry gap and a big need. We are in the right place to hit. You should consider working for Holland & Barrett if you... If you're ambitious, you should consider working as a product manager. And if you can work hard and you're not afraid to work hard, because I think it holds in particular, and digital transformation in general, if you prepare to bring your full self to work and kind of do... there are so many places to make the difference and to go exponentially, to achieve an exponential growth for both business results and your own growth. So I would say, whole-hearted product management is not for everyone, but it's for those ambitious people who are eager to make the change, eager to be a part of the bigger vision, and eager to grow themselves. Absolutely, and they can take some protein powder to keep the growth going as well, I guess, as well. Whatever flies their boat, yeah. Now, obviously, one way they could maybe come and work for you or kind of catch up at least is they could connect with you after this. So where's a good place for them to come and do that? I know you also talked about your podcast as well, if you want to give that a shout-out. Yeah, thank you for giving a shout-out to my podcast. That is less work-specific, though. It's called Broke in, Cribs and Careers, and it's more about highly accomplished working moms. So if you want to work for Holland & Barrett, probably do not contact me on my podcast, or it's going to be slightly confusing. Probably the best place to reach out to me is LinkedIn. There is lots of vacancies, as in lots of online vacancies you can find for the product management, which probably, because I'm taking quite a while to reply to the messages usually, so fastest way would be just to go to the career portal and find whatever product role fits you. But yeah, don't be a stranger. I'm trying to always finally reply. Absolutely. Well, I'll link that all into the show notes, and hopefully you'll get a few people heading in your direction and trying to find out more. But Katja, all I can do for now is thank you ever so much for spending some of your valuable time and telling us some of your CPO story. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Jason.