CPO Stories: Debbie McMahon - The Financial Times

Welcome to CPO Stories!

In this new "podcast within a podcast", I'll be speaking to executive product leaders from the UK's biggest companies as well as up-and-coming stars of the future. I'll be digging into how they approach product management within their organisations, how they approached the leap into executive product leadership and trying to get some deep insights into how they view product management practices and culture. If you're a CPO and would like to come on, drop me a line! Or, forward this episode to your CPO and tell them you want them to come on 🙂

About the Episode

In this episode, I speak with Debbie McMahon, interim Chief Product Officer at the Financial Times, one of the UK's most well-known and distinctive newspapers. Debbie started out working at the Department for Work & Pensions, moving into a product strategy role there before spending time at the BBC and onwards to the FT.

We cover a lot, including:

All about the FT and its move away from being "just" a newspaperHow the FT structures Product; size, scope, dependency management and whether they have product ownersHow to advocate for the value of product management with non-tech leaders and editorial stakeholdersBalancing product management idealism and book principles with the real world of the FTThe importance of being honest upfront about your organisation's context when hiring peopleMaking the jump to CPO; what was different, what was the sameHow CPOs can avoid being seen as ivory tower thinkers or, worse still, "poop and swoopers"Why product people should work at the FTCheck out the FT

Check out the FT's website: https://www.ft.com, or their careers page: https://aboutus.ft.com/careers.

Connect with Debbie

You can connect with Debbie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcmahon/.

I’m your host, Jason Knight, and One Knight in Product is your chance to go deep into the wonderful world of product management, product marketing, startups, leadership, diversity & inclusion and much more!

My goal with One Knight in Product has always been to bring real chat to the over-idealised world of product management and mix thought leader interviews with day-to-day practitioners from around the world. I want to ask hard, but fair, questions and bring some personality and good, old-fashioned dry British humour to building products.

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• No. of episodes: 247
• Latest episode: 2025-05-15
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