The 3 speed problem: Jason Richards speaks to Oji Udezue on CPO leadership in the age of unlimited engineering

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Orbit - An Hg software leadership podcast 29 min 5 chapters transcribed 1 month ago

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What is the “three‑speed problem” and why does it matter for tech companies?

Oji Udezue 0:04

The three speed problem is the fact that there are three parts of building valuable technology companies. One is the product process, which is essentially customer divination, market divination, the combination of customer understanding, market understanding. And saying what will win the market. The middle is the building, which is engineering capacity. And the last one is a go to market. And for the longest time, this middle thing has been constrained. And it's now fixing to be completely unconstrained. And so over the next decade, what product people have to do, marketers have to do, is to maximize the speed.

Jason Richards 0:52

Welcome to Orbit, the HG podcast series, where we talk to successful leaders of technology businesses and hear how they've built some of the most successful software companies across the world. I'm Jason Richards, head of portfolio technology at HG, and I'm delighted to be joined by OG Adezaway, principal at Product Mind, and one of the most experienced product executives in the technology industry.

How does the guest describe the three core speeds – product, engineering, and go‑to‑market?

Jason Richards 1:13

Hey OG, good to see you.

Oji Udezue 1:15

Hi Jason. It's good to be here with you as well.

Jason Richards 1:17

Yeah, fantastic you joined us here today in New York for our CPO AI summit. Um if you don't mind, I'll jump straight into some questions for you. I think our listeners will be really keen to to hear from you. Uh you've had an extraordinary journey through some of Tech's most influential companies, so Microsoft, Twitter, Atlassian, Calendly and Typeform. Um so looking back, was there any kind of pivotal moments or decisions that fundamentally shaped how you think about and practice product leadership?

Oji Udezue 1:44

You know, I I've been a product manager since Day one. I I I got out of grad school, you know, with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. And I wasn't always the best developer, I don't think. But I had a gift for thinking about a future, about leadership, about persuasion. And I decided to throw my hat into the ring for becoming a product manager. And the most important thing is I've had to learn different skills at different times. You know, Microsoft was a really good technology company. I have like fourteen patents, so in those days we used to invent our way out of problems, uh, because there was nothing else to do. There was no solutions, there was no open source or anything like that.

Oji Udezue 2:29

But I think as I became, you know, started climbing the ranks, I had to sort of add on new skills on how to build companies. So I started to diversify. So because you know, product touches everything. I learned to be a great marketer. I learned to how to fill the sales pipeline. I learned to lead and be think about through design. Think about engineering. Fortunately I'm an engineer. Well maybe the most important evolution was leadership. You know, how to not do personally, but to do through people, to inspire them, to lead them. Um all in all it's just I'm really besotted with the idea of building things that people use and make give them superpowers that makes their lives better through technology. And it's sort of weird to say that, but

Oji Udezue 3:23

I've always been fascinated by that process and I still enjoy being a builder empower. Yeah.

Jason Richards 3:29

And it may be touching on a little bit of the sort of the leadership aspect you referred to, but in addition to the skills that you learned and developed along the way. Is there anything that sort of naturally, innately, behaviourally is you know what you think is important from you and from your perspective that's aligned you well to product management, product leadership?

Oji Udezue 3:48

Yeah. Um I'm eclectic as a person, uh I'm quick, multiple skill sets, and that aligns very well with product management. I think a good product manager is a good engineer. Is a good designer. They know how to tell stories, they know how to persuade. They have to be a little bit of an anthropologist, a psychologist, a behavioral economist. Um you have to sort of s such an integrative uh job. And their hard skills and their soft skills. And my own particular mean is to you know, I I you know, that eclecticness just f fits the sort of stuff that I love.