Who SHOULDN’T the Product Management Team Report To?

A while ago, I ran a poll on Twitter as I’ve spoken to a few people unhappy with how product management is treated in their company and I wanted to see what other people thought. The premise of the poll was simple… which C-suite member would you least like the product management team to report to?

The results are in and there’s clearly no love for the poor old CMO!

Now, it’s fair to say that most people’s judgement is going to be clouded here. Clouded by That One Exec™ that railroaded everything through and never listened to anybody. We have to bear that in mind when trying to interpret these results. There are many excellent execs out there across all functions, and we should celebrate them!

But! I do have some thoughts.

In an ideal world, it shouldn’t matter

If you’re operating in a well-functioning company, with good product practices, a culture of trust and a leadership team that believes in (more or less) empowering their teams then you could report to the CFO for all I care. We have to realise that executive leaders are supposed to necessarily take a more…