Why is product so hard? - Charity Ibhadon (Global Product Director, WPP)

Charity Ibhadon is a Global Product Director at WPP, where she leads the development of an AI marketing tool. With 15 years in product — including three formative years at ASOS during its high-growth heyday — she came to the discipline via a decade in investment banking and an executive MBA. She has operated at VP and CPO level, leading large international teams across consumer technology and media.

We discuss:
— Why the explosion of product frameworks, books, and LinkedIn benchmarks has made it harder, not easier, to feel like you're doing the job well — regardless of seniority
— How the physical symptoms of burnout can masquerade as markers of success, and why high-achieving women in particular are vulnerable to that misreading
— What it actually takes to recover: stepping away, finding what your body needs outside of work, and stopping short of making your job your entire identity
— Why being genuinely enjoyable to work with is a more durable career advantage than any certification or methodology
— How the Eisenhower matrix — do, defer, delegate, delete — can be a practical daily tool for protecting energy, not just a poster on a wall
— The case for "happy high status": remaining calm and unflappable under pressure as a learnable leadership behaviour, not a personality trait
— Why commercial curiosity — understanding what moves the business and staying interested in the world — will matter more for long-term product careers than AI certificates

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:29 Charity's background
4:00 Why product feels harder than ever
6:34 Why fun at work matters
8:45 Recognising burnout
10:25 When burnout feels like success
12:13 Finding your way back
16:18 Fun as a strategic advantage
18:00 Staying calm under pressure
22:26 The "CEO of the product" myth
22:41 Mindset for a long career in product
24:45 Building resilience
26:35 Wrap-up

Referenced
Eisenhower matrix | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priorit...
Charity's keynote at #mtpcon London |    • Product is Hard. It should still be fun: C...  

Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.

Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, product is hard. But I feel like it is harder now than ever before.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

There's no gold standard. Even when you're in work, you're worried about being out of work. When you're out of work, you're worried about being in work. Product is more so of an art. So that standard of what does good look like is highly dependent on the situation, the company you're in. It's like 86% of product managers aren't doing X, Y, Z, and it's like, well, I'm definitely a failure. Do you feel like you were having fun? That there are elements of burnout that feel like success. I thought that was excellent because I was like, the more stressed I was, the more I was like, I am earning that salary. But we're not, you know, building rockets. If it doesn't get done today, I will be fine. The world will be fine.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Charity, welcome to the product experience. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. How are you? Yeah, I'm really good. Thank you. Um, thanks so much for joining us today. And we're gonna have a chat today about one of my favourite topics, which is how to have fun in products. I'm literally like so pleased that we're talking about this because I think all this chat about AI and all the pressure and all of the layoffs that people have been dealing with, and just you know, the all of the drama basically. Um, it's good to remember how to have fun at work. So before we get stuck into that, it would be great if you could give us a quick intro to yourself and your kind of career in product and where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Gosh, career in product, yeah. So I currently am a product director at WPP, building an AI marketing tool. For as much as I'm not a fan of the hype around AI, it does have its wonders. Um, yes, I've been in product for about 15 years, and prior to that I was in investment banking and then in different technology companies and the most recent years, kind of VP CPO level, kind of leading large teams. But yeah, I was saying to you before, I hate like reading out a CV to people about myself. I'm still a very normal person. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

And was your did you come from a kind of straight into a product role? Oh no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Like when I finished uni, yeah, no, no, I did uh my brother was asking me what my degree was the other day. I don't remember. I went to the LSE that I know, and it was something with management in the title that I know. It's like economics with anthropology. I remember doing a lot of anthropology stuff, and then I went into Citibank. That was investment banking, and then about three years ago I was here graduating because I did an executive MBA. So yeah, no product role. It was like 10 years of banking finance. Then my first forum into product was at ASOS.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Which was bananas, but it was great.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

ASOS. So that sounds like an interesting. Was that when they were scaling into uh the great school?

SPEAKER_00 2:49

When was that? That was 2015. It's so funny. Whenever I think about ASOS, I remember sitting at my computer on the IT floor, as it was called then, and literal models running up and down with like rollers in their hair, like you know, those what you could like um mobile wardrobes kind of thing. And it was like, okay, I'm writing like a PRD, but also there's a lot happening right here. So yeah, it was definitely definitely scale up, definitely it wasn't like I think things have changed now a bit. So it was like the heydays of ASOS, where it was a little bit wild and very fun, and very much like I mean it's kind of it's kind of an old company now, right? It is, it is then it was like young and fun, and I could still very much like for the 20-something year olds, but back then there wasn't Boohoo, a pretty little thing, or all of these things, or shein, or anything like that. It was ASOS, yeah, and that was where you went. I it it sounds fun just hearing you describe it. It was some might call it a bit cult-like, but that's a good thing. It was a good thing, I promise. So yeah, I spent three years there, um, three really good years.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Amazing. Um, okay, so product is hard. I say this to my team all the time when they're having like a bit of a moment, and I'm like, it's okay, product is hard. But I feel like it is harder now than ever before. What are you kind of seeing with your network and teams and things? Are there, you know, are people struggling?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, I think so. And I think it's a mixture of different things. You've got people in work, people out of work. Even when you're in work, you're worried about being out of work. Yeah. When you're out of work, you're worried about being in work. So there's that. And I also I was just thinking earlier, I was like, I don't know many other careers in technology that have so much written about it. I could be wrong, because obviously I'm only gonna really consume mostly product, product and design type things. But even on my bookshelf at home, there's like 50 different books about product. And if I was just entering the industry, I would have no clue where to start. And it's always like you need to do this, this, this, this, this, and work in this way, this way, this way to achieve this result. There's not much room for individuality or how my I approach something. So the standard from early on is really high. And if you feel like you don't meet it, then automatically you've ruled yourself out. Or you go on LinkedIn, and I'm gonna talk about this in my keynote tomorrow, is it's like 86% of product managers aren't doing X, Y, Z, and it's like, well, I'm definitely a failure. So I think that and it doesn't matter what seniority level you're at either. I think there is something about being told you've not got what it takes to automatically just make you feel uncertain.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah. I also feel like there's something with product people where we kind of hold ourselves to account or we we hold ourselves to that high standard. Um I haven't met any product people who are just like, yeah, I just wing it and breeze through. Like everyone's like, no, I want to do it perfectly and I want to do it right, and I want to, you know, I want the best outcomes for my customers and for the business and everything. So I think there definitely is something about people who are attracted to the role of product. Oh, yes, the shop that um, you know, that makes them put that pressure there.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Yeah, because there's no gold standard. I have, you know, friends that are doctors. I think again, I'm gonna simplify the fields of medicine massively now, right? But say I have a patient, they're not very well, I operate, they're well. There's a science to it, right? I did this, this happens, therefore. Product is more sort of an art. So that standard of what does good look like is highly dependent on the situation, the company you're in, do they respect product or not, do you have budget or not? So so many factors go into what makes success. Is that everyone's just like, I'll just chase the top, yeah, and hopefully I'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah. Okay, so why should we care about having fun at a product in a product role?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Oh I think you should have fun in any role. And I don't mean like, you know, like the early days of just eat where they're skateboarding up and down the empty corridors. I don't mean that. It's just it's very hard to, and I've been out of work, I've had periods where I was out of work. It's very hard to not enjoy your job. Sorry, I don't mean it's hard to not enjoy it, I mean it's a very hard experience when you don't enjoy it. So if every day you're thinking, you know, I'm not good enough, or you have the imposter syndrome creep in, or you're constantly paying coaches another thousand pounds to teach you how to be resilient, it never stops. But if there's a moment you could be like, you know what, I think I have what it takes to do this, I'm gonna just enjoy it for a while. That sounds overly simplistic, but there has to be a point where you're like, I've done what I can, let me try and enjoy this now.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah, I agree. I was having a chat with my team the other day, um, and I think we were talking about sort of like work-life balance and you know, working hours or something like that. And I was explaining like quite often I will, you know, work out of hours. Yes, but it's because it's not because anyone's expecting me to, it's because I'm really enjoying the work. Yeah, yeah. Um, so they were like, no, I never do that. And I was like, Oh, you do you uh have fun at work? Do you like your job? Yeah, um, and I think like for me, I kind of just really want everyone to feel excited about their work and to to, you know, to not necessarily to work out of hours, but to have that enough joy in their work that if that happened, it was because they were having fun.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, rather than they feel pressured to. But it's also okay, and this is a very wild thing to say in 2026, it's okay, I'm gonna say it, for people to view their job as just something to pay the bus. But we don't talk about that enough, especially in product, it's like becomes all of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Some of us are mothers, fathers, husbands, all so on and so forth, right? The job doesn't have to be the thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

That is your whole identity. And I'm saying that as someone for who it was my whole identity. So sort of a Ferris session almost, because I'm like, it doesn't have to be the be and end all of who charity is or who Lily is.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah. When when did that what what happened? When did that change for you? When was the switch? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Uh I think because we're gonna talk about burnout, aren't we, a little bit? So I think it was the realization of like the physical symptoms of burnout for everyone is different. But for me, when I was, I think I was flying at some point, maybe like twice every two weeks, New York, LA, New York, LA home, doing my NSEC MBA, had like a C-suite level job, had a huge team. And for a long time I thought that was excellence because I was like, the more stressed I was, the more I was like, I am earning that salary. And then when like I started feeling ill, it was like things that is basically the um effects of stress. So um, like digestion problems and like a horse throat and a cold that never goes away. And then I lost that job, not because I was ill before anyone, but it's actually because you went very well. And then I purposely I got a new job, but I took three months out. And I went horse riding in Ecuador for about three weeks, and I was riding every day for eight hours, and I was like, oh, this is what it is to be free. My body doesn't hurt, I feel fine. So when I started my job after that, I was like, how do I best? I can't get a horse every day, but how do I best work in elements of what I like outside of work? Because work cannot be the only thing that fulfills me. Yeah, me personally, some people find for me I had to make that shift.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Yeah. I mean, that sounds like a dream. Oh, Ecuador? Yeah, it was great.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

I was talking about the illness.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

No, no, the Equador.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Ecuador was great, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

And did you know, so did you know before you went away that you were kind of on the edge of burnout? Or was it more kind of in hindsight?

SPEAKER_00 10:25

This is gonna sound so bad. I think that there are elements of burnout that feel like success. I think that when I was, and I'm a bit sure what Mammy's saying this, at my friend's wedding, I was having my henna done by my Indian aunties, and I was on a board meeting call, like here, and I was like, and I remember being like, this is not normal. I'm at my friend's wedding in Slovenia, yeah, literally next to the mountains, and I'm like, it's just so it's not that I just thought I was like, oh look at me getting so many things done, but I think that's an element of burnout. I'm not saying don't multitask, but the fact that I was obviously stressed, I was at my very, very good friend's wedding, but I was still cramming in some work and kind of so it's I don't know, I I don't, you know, what's it called? Retrospect is a beautiful thing. But in the moment, I do think, especially for women, sometimes when you are feeling stretched to the point where you feel like you're gonna break, it's like, oh, this is what it feels like to be successful. But after your body is like, can we just slow down before we stop?

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Did you at the at that point, if we bring kind of the element of fun back into it, did you feel like you were having fun?

SPEAKER_00 11:39

No. No. No, henna was brilliant, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I won't mention the company, but no, I didn't, no, no. I really like the people I worked with, but I just felt, you know, when you've like, say you run around the garden ten times, that was fun, but I'm also could do with a nap, that kind of feeling. Yeah. Like this has all been fun, but I don't think I can do another lap of this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

You know? And how did you so how did you kind of bring the fun back? Or how did you kind of fall back into a healthy space with your job?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

That's a good question. I don't know. I think sometimes life just has these moments where you just a light bulb goes off. So there wasn't, you know, there's not clear steps that I took. It was more of a I think time away from work helps. That is a very privileged thing to say, I get in this um day and age. So I'm not saying everyone quit your jobs and go find yourself in Bali. That's not what I'm saying. But even if you're working, like maybe you have a quieter Friday or whatever. I think just having that introspect in what's that word? Introspect. Introspect. That sounds weird. Yeah, introspect. Just have a minute. You don't have to take weeks of work off for that. It could be a Saturday where you're like, Am I enjoying this? How do I bring elements of what I like? I love art, so for me, I've got um a membership to the Tape Modern. So I will try once a month just go and see some artwork. So just how do you bring in more of your job into your life? Which sounds really silly, but if your job is your life, just going to the art gallery once a month will be like, oh, right, I'm back. Yeah. And you mentioned that you have carried on horse riding? Yes. Yes. I don't horse ride in London. That's the weirdest thing, it's whenever I travel. People always say, like, I don't know why I don't. I don't know. Maybe because you have more space like in Cuba or Greece, wherever I horse ride, it's just like here's some wilderness. I don't know if we have the equivalent in London, maybe Hyde Park, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

So thinking about how you operate now, like how do you protect your space and your energy so that you are avoiding burnout?

SPEAKER_00 13:41

Um I it's it's such an old school principle, but you know the Eisenhower matrix of like do first, do last, schedule, delete? Oh wait, that's the thing. And I'm like, who told me about this? Because the way I was told about it, it was like everyone. Do you know about this thing called H2O? That's what I thought. It was like this known thing. So Eisenhower, like the 83rd president, I think, of the US, or 43rd, whatever number we're up to. Um, yes, he's got this matrix called the Eisenhower matrix, and you basically sketch, like plot your work into do, delete, decide, and I don't know, you can check it later. But essentially delegation.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Because I can't do everything.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

And that's not so a delegation in terms of not just chucking things over the wall at my team, but realizing what are the things I can delegate, what are the things I need to do today, what are the things I can defer, what do I not need to do? And this sounds overly simplistic, but just taking that time sometimes to be like, do I need to do that today? Because that extra pressure of like forcing yourself to do one more thing, one more thing, one more thing before you know it is nine o'clock, ten o'clock, and you're exhausted. And realizing, you know, we're both in like leadership positions, that this is gonna sound awful again. But we're not, you know, building rockets. It's not, if it doesn't get done today, I will be fine. The world will be fine. Um, and yeah, building in elements into an evening of things I like to do, whether with friends or with family or whatever, is just like I say, just bringing more of myself into my day.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah. I rem I had that piece of advice early on in my career, and you know, I luckily wasn't building anything that was life-saving or life-threatening, but um, someone we were working up to a massive sort of editorial uh website launch, um, and it was being announced at CES, and it was all like lots of pressure, and I was very, very stressed. And then the publisher came over to me and he was like, At the end of the day, nobody's gonna die if it's not launched on time. That's a thing. People will be grumpy, but it'll be fine. They'll soon forget. They'll soon get everyone's like ship, ship, ship, ship, ship. And I'm like, yeah. And it similarly kind of just that switch went on in my brain of like, okay, yeah, yeah, it's fine. I can enjoy, like, I can actually enjoy the stress rather than let it overwhelm me.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah, and it is just a job. Yeah. As awful as that sounds, it is just a job.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Yeah, yeah, for sure. One of the things um I think you were gonna talk about as well in your keynote is how having fun at work can be a strategic advantage. So tell us a bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

I just like human nature, isn't it? Just boring when everyone's boring. I think that's just kind of it. Like, I know this is me, I've signed boardrooms, I've done the whole like fancy senior thing that isn't actually as fancy as it as you know, right? Um, and the whole traveling for work and everything. I just think that the more, the most senior people I've met, like CEO, I mean like level, CEO, CEO, CFO, like the golden trifecta, as I call them, the more human they've been, the better they've been to work with.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

And that's what I mean. I don't mean that it's always like cracking jokes. It's like, how human can you be? Because I think no matter how much experience you've got or the qualifications you have, if you are a nice person to work with, I think that trumps a lot of things. I'm not saying like I can randomly tomorrow go and be like a neurosurgeon as much as I'd like to. But say I was to get the training qualification, so on and so forth, and I had neurosurgeon peers. Someone has to pick like who do you want to work with? I don't mean myself, it would be the people that people get on with. Yeah. And I think that's the element sometimes we miss the like all these books we're reading and qualifications we're trying to get. It's like, but are you fun to work with?

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah, yeah. Yes, I think that's and product is about so much about relationships.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Exactly, exactly. So if you're just I don't know, I don't know. I again, this is a a newer revelation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

So strategically an advantage if people just enjoy working with you. Yeah, do you think so? I think I definitely think so. Yeah, yeah. So when things are a bit tense, how do we sort of approach those if we're trying to, you know, stay calm and enjoy, or in not even enjoy the moment, but just embrace the moment.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

My old boss once, like a couple of jobs ago, she recommended this book called Happy High Status. I've not fully finished it yet, more like a reference book for me. And it's about, you know, in the world, like your world of work might feel like it's falling apart a little bit. I don't mean in terms of like impending redundancy, I mean like the product isn't doing very well or someone in your team is having issues. She's like, the essence of that book is how do you remain unflappable? I'm a very flappy person. So like I remember many times I've been in boardrooms and I'm just like, oh, it doesn't project a sense of confidence. I'm not saying everyone should be stoic and like not crack a smile, but I think when all that is happening, the way you can kind of maintain a little bit of control over the situation is one of the things I need to back to the Eisenhower thing. What do I need to do now? And how can I put aside all the things that aren't going to contribute to that goal till tomorrow or the next week? Yeah. And then within this chaos, how do I remember? Like, I'm still alive, like pinch yourself, I'm fine, everything's fine, it'll get sorted out. But to also, this is again, might not sound great, but as a leader, especially, your team will feed off your vibe.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

So it's like, how do I maintain that happy high status so that even if everything in my head is like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, but they're getting a sense of, oh, this is still a leader that you would follow and that we trust, and everything's in control. So if I start panicking, domino effect.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

It's that classic thing of the duck paddling into the water.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Or the maybe it's meant to be a think they're on top of the water, the legs are moving a lot, but you're just seeing it glide on the surface ever so elegantly.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah. And are there any sort of techniques or you know, tools that you've used to cut, I don't know, reframe uh the problem into an opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, I know it's a shock. It's an opportunity. I think that's a good way of looking at it, to be fair. It's kind of the same way I'll think about like when people are job hunting, every no, as painful as that rejection is, not even just job hunting, just in life. I do think you learn a little bit more about yourself with every rejection you get. Yeah. Whether it is no, you didn't have this, this, this experience, and then for the next round, you make sure you draw upon that experience if you had it. So I think the reframing, I don't want to call every problem an opportunity, because some problems are actually problems, but it's back to that thing of what can I do today? What is actually within my control? I am very much type A, if that's still a term people use. So even things that aren't in my control, and let me go figure that out and let me go solve that. And sometimes, I think as well in product and tech, it's always like, what more can you do? Like, okay, I'm doing my job, but I also do 10% of Lydia's job or 10% of Luke's job, and you know, so on and so forth. But actually, how do I just get my thing right? Yeah. I mean, next week I'll go back to picking like bits and bobs, but right now, let me just have a bit of control over what I can control. So the techniques, there's always obviously things like breathing and taking yourself away and having a moment. I really believe in just shutting your laptop if you can for five minutes, even that's all you've got, and just going for a little wander around the office. If you can go outside, get some fresh air. Again, these are new revelations. Before I would have just been like around the office, but now it's like just project a sense of calm internally and that will appear externally.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah. I also think just like giving something a bit of time, yeah. Like in just sitting with it and being like, okay, yeah, this is a problem, or you know, this is a thing that I wasn't expecting to happen, but I don't need to solve it right now.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

I'm not rushing to decide.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

There's this awful phrase that we've copted, copted, whatever. Um the products the product manager or the CEO of the product, I think that is awful. I think it's terrible because it puts too much pressure on you.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

That's why something goes wrong. Like say you're a product manager that looks after browse and something goes wrong in, I don't know, checkout, and then you're panicking. It's not like, no, you're not the CEO of the product. The CEO is the CEO of the product. You can just focus on your area. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah. You can lean on the team around you. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

That's the hope.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

So thinking about um, you know, how product has changed and evolved over the years, and thinking about, you know, how many more years we have as working individuals, like what kind of mindset do you think we need to take into the future to continue on than like a nice long, happy career in product? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

I think, and this might sound controversial, is I think we need to step away a little bit from theories and frameworks and books because I think we're losing a little bit of individuality, just a tiny bit, in how you do your job. Um, uh, I will never be, never sounds really dramatic. I don't think I'll be the kind of person that's like this skill, this skill, this skill, this skill are gonna be the things needed in 20 years in product. I think product will continue to evolve as it has been. Um resilience is something I always talk about. It's not about working harder or really smarter, it's just how do you manage to tolerate the ambiguity that comes with the job? I think people staying abreast of like what you call um current affairs. Books are great and theory of product management is great, but I really appreciate product managers that are commercially minded, that understand, okay, the company's share price is falling or it's rising. What could we do to improve that? Even if their little thing is like a slice, but that kind of mindset, I think that is going to be what stands people in good stead going forward with a company, even if you're a charity, we'll still want to make money. So thinking about how do we improve commercials, how do we improve revenue, how do we look at growth, it's not so much really about it, is about the frameworks, but all those you can tailor to however you want to use them. But if you are as an individual, nice to work with, understand what's going on in the world, can appreciate and be curious about what's going on in your company and the competitors, I think those which sound very basic are going to be the things that continue, not your AI certificate.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

That sounds really mean.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

No, I love it. It's great. It has a certificate to find, but I still don't think it's the thing. It's like almost like such a nice place to wrap up. But I do have one more question. Okay. Um do you have any other tips for product people that are just trying to build a bit more resilience?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Oh, watch people, not in a creepy way, but like when I talked about people that are unflappable, I have worked with many people in the past that I'm like, how are they remaining sane? I had a director of engineering at Just D that was looking after a huge team and there was so much drama happening. We was always just walking around the office smiling. He'd always, he knows what you probably know if he watches this, he'd be like, oh, just PMA charity, PMA, positive mental attitude. So watching people that are more senior to yourself or even your peers, how they handle chaos and conflict. I think knowing how to disagree professionally is a great skill to have. I think healthy tension is not just a cliche, I think it is really great, especially as our jobs, you know, our product is it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of this. I think if you can sit and disagree with a delivery manager or designer or an engineer because you understand an elements of their job, I think that is great and it will help you build a sense of I feel confident at this table and not just like waiting for people to tell me what to do. So, yeah, autonomy, all the usual things, but I think that element of like watching how other people handle stress, and it's not a bad thing to kind of steal people's tips and you know, look at their ways of working. And like I said before, like your job isn't your life. So even if you have to do it as a mantra every five minutes, okay, even when I finish this day, I will still be fine. My family will be well, I will still get paid if I do a good job. Obviously, if I do a good job. And I again, it sounds very trivial the way I'm saying it, but I'm genuinely like have fun with it because that will seep into a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Charity, it's been so nice talking to you today. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you. You're welcome. The product experience hosts are me, Lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day. And me, Randy Silver, also host by night. And I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work. Luran Pratt is our producer, and Luke Smith is our editor.