It seems like a natural path – Product Manager to VP of Product to Chief Product Officer.
Then you find yourself as a Chief Product Officer in a ScaleUp.
You’ve signed on the dotted line and willingness to take on the leadership and equity that comes with it.
What you might not realize is that you’re signing up for a completely different job than you’ve ever had before. The sooner you realize that, the more successful you’re going to be.
On that same note, the sooner you fill in those gaps the more successful you’re going to be.
One of the biggest gaps we’ve seen at ScaleUp Edge is lack of true financial acumen.
Why is financial acumen so important? Because as a ScaleUp Chief Product Officer, your breadth of job all of a sudden scales from features to products to managing a portfolio to answering department P&L that you own, company P&L balance sheets and financial statements that your actions and decisions directly affect. This all directly contributes to your companies valuations, the amount of cash your company has, how you build your company roadmap, and expand the company portfolio are all things that your knowledge has an impact on.
You now find yourself in a position where you are presenting this information not only to your fellow C-Suite executives but also often the Board and/or investors.
The challenge here? Presenting all this information in terms that the CEO, Board, and Investors are going to understand. This is often something you’ve never had to do before because you’re really good in product. Your path was product successes, not financial acumen.
It’s important to have financial acumen and in order to be successful in it you need to understand how to include data driven numbers in your product strategy.
PRO TIP – You need to be able to describe different terms to different stakeholders because they all have something unique and different they care about. Think of the financial statements as a puzzle or hidden treasure map where you need to provide the key to tie the numbers together and tell a story. Each map will have a different why for that individual stakeholder.
In short, you need to be able to tie your company’s financial statements together with what’s going on in your product strategy.
Turn Product Speak into Financial C-Suite Speak
When you gain the ability to read those financial statements and read what they mean it’s like unlocking the secret to success and winning your product strategy goals the way you know they should be.
At ScaleUp Edge, we love unlocking the keys to the ScaleUp ecosystem with impactful workshops.
Get your Financial Acumen Edge today with the Turn Product Speak into Financial C-Suite Bootcamp Speak today.
Learn how to be a scaleup powerhouse by joining our community and enrolling in our other scaleup courses.
For a look at a prior bootcamp member’s CPOs perspective, check out this blog A CPO and a CFO walk into a bar.
