Expanding your interests - Michelle De Mott

00:00

You have to have that passion about what that company is, the problem they're trying to solve, and their product. Because if you haven't got that, then you're not going to enjoy your job. You're not going to be able to relate to what the problems are. You won't be able to prioritize the problems, or talk to your customers and really understand what's going on.

00:24

Who was the first ever woman in the workplace that you wanted to emulate?

00:29

So it's very fortunate that my first role was at PlayStation. I'd just done two degrees, and I knew that I wanted to sit in between technology and business. I didn't know what it was, I didn't know what it was called, but I just knew I wasn't going to be a coder. I'd done coding at university. I'd done some Python. Modules in my degree were coding and I did like it, but I wasn't that great at it. I loved the documentation. So I loved framing the problem, saying why, what my Python or SQL could fix, and why I was doing it, but I didn't really enjoy the coding. So I knew I wanted to not go techie-techie, but I wanted to be on the fence. Not on the fence, but the in between.

01:20

And so I got a job at PlayStation, and I walked in and Sinead and yeah, Tannu, both of them took me under their wing. I did a lot of process mapping and figuring out the problem. But yeah, they just really set the scene for how technology worked, understanding the problem, framing the process. You know, you don't just rush into something. Understand why you're doing it, who the customer is. And so, I learned a lot then in the space of two years, just really understanding the customer and the problem. And that was a good foundation for me to then take my career into, first of all, it was a business analyst, which progressed very nicely into product.

02:06

Is there something unique to soaking up the mentorship of another woman?

02:15

I think, naturally, women want to prove people wrong. We want to, because especially in technology, you are the minority, you will say, "Yes," to everything, want to be involved in everything, no matter how big the project is or how tough the challenge is. So I think it's always being at the table, understanding the problem, not shying away from anything. And that's what I've always seen is that the females that I've worked with and the very strong ones, have just known everything. Not in depth, but they've had a broad enough exposure to the business or the customer problem, that they can dip in and out, but they can really understand where we're going and why we're doing it.

03:05

It seems like an odd place. Like, of all of the places for you to begin your career, I can imagine that at that time PlayStation was full of males?

03:16

So I think, just taking it back a step, is why I ended up there in the first place. So I was very fortunate that I loved computers at school, building databases, and I did IT A-level. And I didn't really ever think about the gender bias or girls versus boys because I was very fortunate I wasn't exposed to at school because I was just surrounded by girls at school. And I signed up to do information systems at Newcastle University, and I didn't really think anything of the mix of men versus girls. Or, boys versus girls, [inaudible 00:03:53] want to talk about it. And so, I just rocked up to my first day at uni and there was five girls on my course and 200 boys.

04:03

Oh, right.

04:03

And I just, I don't know why I went into that thinking it would be different. I think, because I'd obviously just been with girls doing IT A-level. But we were always together. We did everything together. My group of peers at uni were all boys. We just coded together. We did our documentation. We spent nights in the data science lab till midnight doing our projects. It was never girl versus boy or, we were just the same. So when I then rocked up to PlayStation and I was the minority, as girls were there, it wasn't a problem for me because it hadn't been a problem when I was in the education system. So, I just got on with the job. I just was so excited to have my first job, and it was really exciting with PlayStation 3, the first time it had gone online, was we'd been rolling out. It was really exciting. It was just, everyone was in it together. It was never really a boy versus girl thing. So, yeah.

05:15

And I think, at times, that's why I want more girls to be in my team and I'm really excited when I hire a female because it's, there's such an opportunity and we're all equal. Like, we can all do the job and just need to all be in it together.

05:39

When you've decided where to work, whether it's been at the BBC, or Tesco, or Photobox, has there been a part of your decision-making that has taken into account what the gender split will be inside that company? Or is it something that actually, you know what, it doesn't matter?

06:00

It's never been something I've thought of. My thing is, I wanted to work on something I love. For me, the problem has always been the thing that's drawn me into a business, and throughout my career, some of those problems have never materialized in the way that they were talked about in an interview, which is obviously sad, but it's reality. But when I've gone to think about the thing I want to do every day, it's been the customer problem. It's been, "What am I going to do? What am going to wake up and go into work? And what's going to get me out of bed? What's the problem? It's never been like, "Oh, what sort of industry is it, and what's the split?"

06:44

Earlier on in my career, when I was at CBS, I was doing a project where we were rolling out barcode scanners on the London Underground for all the posters that go up. And it was totally male dominated because I was educating the teams that were putting up posters in the middle of the night. And I was there at 26, trying to tell them how to use barcode scanners. But I didn't shy away from the role because it was extremely male dominated, I was just like, "Oh just, it's a really interesting problem to solve, and it's a challenge." So I've never said, "No," to a role and I've never explicitly looked for it. But I think it shouldn't hold you back, but if that's something that you'll naturally be conscious of when you are at work, then it's something that might hold you back. Or you might be worried about it, I think it might be something you'd want to look at in that sense.

07:45

How do you go about assessing the, how passionate you are about a customer's problem? I ask this question specifically to you because you work for, and you have worked for companies that people will recognize as consumers, like the BBC, Tesco, Photobox. Like, when you're going through your interview processes, when you're assessing which companies you want to work for, how do you make the decision of which customer problems are the ones that matters most to you?

08:28

So with my current role at Bother, e-commerce, I wasn't looking for a role. I was on maternity leave. My daughter was six months old and I got a LinkedIn message. I don't know why I was looking at LinkedIn. She was obviously asleep. But the problem came in around trying to save people time. Like, you spend so much time on boring stuff like buying bin bags and washing powder, and that the problem came in and the job spec came in. I was like, "Oh, my God. That's what's been ..." My husband and I were talking about the other week, and like, "Why are you spending so much time on e-commerce sites buying boring stuff? It shouldn't be that hard." And so that was like ... I was like, "I've got to apply for this role." I hope my daughter doesn't listen to this. But yeah, so I was like, "I've got to apply for this job."

09:19

And then other things, so when I was interviewing at Tesco, the problem there was that there was no consistency on talking to the customer. So a customer would get one email about Baby Club, they'd get another email about fishing, as in beer, and there was no, it was all bitty. It was like 17 emails going to a customer, and I was like, "Oh, I can see that in my inbox every day," and it was such a big problem. And it was like, "Well, that's really interesting because if that customer could have one email with all the right bits, the right message at the right time, that would be groundbreaking." I was like, "Oh, that's a great problem to try and solve."

10:01

But some of them haven't been that explicit in a job spec, but when talking in interviews and going in with an open mind, because product management where I am now and will hopefully remain is, and sorry, it's a generalist kind of role. You need a good toolkit, you need to be good at the foundational stuff, but you should be able to apply it to different businesses and different problems. So quite a lot of the time you go in for an interview and it mightn't necessarily be that obvious on the job spec what the specifics are. But when you get into the nitty gritty in an interview and really talking about what happens now, where do we want to be in the future, you do get that information out.

10:49

And also it's like, seeing what they've been doing, what does the product, or what's the experience like now, and really understanding. Especially in big companies, making sure that you are going into an area where you could make a difference in the problem that you want to help solve. So for Tesco, I was going into marketing because that's where that email explosion was happening. So yeah, it's really understanding that you are going into an area where the impact that you want to make, or you can see happening, is achievable.

11:24

It sounds like you're interpreting the companies that you're interviewing with as the consumer, and you're already imagining being that consumer and going through that experience. I guess another way of thinking about it would be, someone might say that the product that they wanted to work on was one that aligned with their values, or the things that matter deeply to them in the world somehow. Do you think you have to choose between the two?

12:06

Previously in my career, or obviously, you work with recruiters and they're like, "I've got these jobs on my board. You could apply for this. You could apply for this," and it's like, No, I don't want to work for gambling." So I was like, "No." And then they're like, "Well, what about this?" And so, "I don't want to work for a dating app. I can't really relate to it. I'm married. I don't know what I want to do." And I see this now actually, when I'm interviewing, you have to have that passion about what that company is, the problem they're trying to solve and their product. Because if you haven't got that, then you're not going to enjoy your job. You're not going to be able to relate to what the problems are. You won't be able to prioritize the problems, or talk to your customers and really understand what's going on.

12:59

So when I've moved roles into potentially something that I thought was good for me on paper, so very early in my career I went to consulting. I was blinded by the fact that someone older than me had told me that, "You need to go into consulting. It gives you a really good solid framework." And I was 24, and I was like, "Okay, I'll go to consulting." So I got a consulting job and I tried to make it work, but it was in a domain that just didn't excite me, just didn't interest me. And I tried my hardest for two years and then I just had to admit defeat that I was like, "It's just not my bag. It just, it doesn't excite me." It just wasn't the right thing. Whereas the roles that I rave on about, and the things I get really excited about is where I really enjoyed the company, I liked the culture, and I enjoyed the problem.

13:59

It sounds like you are seeking it out in some ways. Like, sometimes it's really difficult to actually know what your bag is. And almost as if you're like a journalist, it sounds like in some ways you're seeking out the story and your curiosity is allowing you to recognize those moments you want to latch onto somehow?

14:22

Yeah, I did. I would relate to that because my career's been 50:50 in permanent and contracting. So I've gone permanent where I'm like, "Ooh, I can definitely see this probably being something very long-term." The contracting roles I took on were more like, "Well, three months. Yeah, I can do this. I can do this for three months. And if it's something that I really like, I'll probably be here longer." And some of those three-months contracts turned into over two years and then I was the one going, "I think I'm done now. I think I've delivered what I came in to deliver." Well, you know? "And it's been amazing." And other contracts, "I came in three months ago and I didn't think this was going to last because it was a very dry subject. But no, it has last."

15:18

Yeah, in that sense, it was a bit like dipping in and out, but making myself vulnerable in a sense going, "I could only earn money potentially for three months and then I have to look for another job." But actually, it gave me the freedom to be like, "If it doesn't work, it doesn't work." And I think that's why some people are extremely cautious when looking for a role because they feel that they're in it forever, and it has to be the right thing there. But from contracting and from roles where I've walked away, I think you just have to be honest with yourself and go, "If it doesn't work out, a future employee would rather know that you tried it and it wasn't a good fit, and walked away after three months, rather than three years, when you just didn't really enjoy what you were doing and you weren't giving your all."

16:13

So, yeah. So I think contracting for me, and obviously contracting is very relevant in the tech industry. If you can get a contracting role, you get the hardest problems to solve because no one else in the business wants them. So you come and you do get given the data project or the broken thing that no one can really figure out. They're very challenging and they come with, obviously, their own bag of fish. It that the right word? No, not really. But they're very different ways of working, but they still challenge you.

16:48

How do you know when to persist with an idea that might be getting a little old to you, versus follow your curiosity and when it's time, it's time, and you move on to the next thing?

17:03

For me, from what I've done before, quite a good line in the sand is when you go from discovery and getting something in front of your customers for the first time, and then moving more into the business's user-face. So when I was at the BBC, we were re-platforming the e-commerce platform, which was amazing. You know, we did it in the UK, America, and Australia, and so that took a long time and it came with all its challenges of like a global team doing that. And then I decided to move on when we'd just done the last territory. We'd done Australia. I could have stayed longer and optimized the platform, but the team that we were working with were super users by then, they didn't need necessarily product help. You know, we'd set the platform up for how they needed it there and then, so that was a really nice clear cut. It was like, we worked together on this project for two years and then it was time to fly the nest.

18:13

And then other places when moving on, obviously I am a mother, so I have moved on naturally after my two children. So yeah, that was obviously been, obviously not everyone will get to that point yet or ... But yes, moving on after pregnancies is a natural break point for, well, both of my last two pregnancies. And so, other things. Yeah, it's mainly been the project has finished, the deliverable is done, and you move on. But now where I am, obviously we're building a product from scratch which comes with its own challenges, but it evolves and evolves. And so at the moment, I don't see when that decision will be need to make because at the moment there's so much to do. There's not going to be that kind of decision made anytime soon.

19:21

I guess, it sounds like it's when you've achieved whatever your definition of success is in that role. When you're talking about the contracting, it sounded like the deliverables were the success, but now at Bother it's bigger and it's more perhaps ambiguous, and therefore it's harder to define what, well, in that moment will be?

19:48

Yeah. And also for me now in my career, I'm moving into a leadership role. I'm working more on strategy. I talk to investors a lot. I mentor my team. So yeah, I'm obviously, my day job is probably only 20% of my actual week because the rest of the week is setting the business up for success, and making sure we've got the right team, and the team are clear on their goals and they're just empowered to do them, and everyone is working like a well-oiled machine. Whereas yeah, rightly as you said, before it was a contract role so I was more of an individual contributor and I was there, I was doing what was defined for that call. So that year, all my objectives, and then yeah, being fulfilled when I'd delivered on that individual thing.

20:41

I'd love to ask you how you develop your interests. I've found recently that I'm interested in whatever book I read last and I, where once might've had a specific sphere of interest, they seem to be popping up all over the place and I find it difficult to know where to contain them. And you've done so many different things and have so many different, I don't know, quirks and ways of understanding the user. Like, how do you go on developing your own interests and broadening them?

21:18

So I think this is one of the questions we ask in interviews. So we have a very prescriptive interview process, and we have culture questions, and I ask this question. I'm going to ask it again today at 12:30 in an interview. I ask this question all the time. Like, "How do you grow?" And at the moment for me, my growth at this point in my career has been quite a high learning phase, has been around the startup world and investing. I didn't know any of this stuff before I started this role, and I'm just lapping it up. I'm just trying to understand so much about series A and series B, where does it go? What does an IPO mean? What are our plans? To understanding how other businesses have done that.

22:13

And then in terms of personal development, at the moment quite a lot of my stuff is around growing teams and empowering teams. I'm living up to the team that I want to build in the future, where we have a metaphorical mission, we have a very clear North Star, and everyone can just work without being micromanaged or having to always talk about what they're doing. But we're all like a well-oiled machine as such. So at the moment, my education has moved more from my, a few years ago reading books around product management and what does a great acceptance criteria look like, in that granular individual contributor stuff. And now it's more the wider, more business side of my development.

23:12

I think one of the good things about learning is to complement it with the opposite. So when I say that, I mean, so obviously there's learning I do for work, I have the polar opposite at home. I have two small young children and I'm constantly learning through them. I'm learning also about the education system. My son's just started and all that. So I think just being open to learning, whatever it might be. And you might not think that something, my son's education, I don't really think it's learning, but it is because I'm trying to understand what I'm going to do for the next 10 years for him. So I think, yeah, learning's everywhere, I think. It might not be in a book, it might not necessarily be on a podcast or an article, but just making yourself open to those opportunities will allow you to become a more rounded person.

24:13

What do you learn most about your work through your children?

24:16

Wow. What a question. Patience. Patience and well, no, because children actually want everything instant, and so I think having children really makes you realize that when something needs to be done ... so, that's my dog having a little bit of shake. When something needs to be done really urgently, it's like taking a step back an going ... I'm going to sound like a right product manager, "What's the problem? What are we trying to do here?" So it is, my children teach me patience every single day. They've also taught me honesty and being vulnerable as well. Because I think especially in the last two years, we've changed the working dynamic so much that what was embarrassing two years ago.

25:25

Like my son coming onto a conference call two years ago, I'd have been like, "Very sorry," and shooing him out the room. And now I'm just like, "Yep, my daughter's here because my taco's gone to pop. Here she is. She's on my lap. And my daughter and I are now going to give you a presentation on the next three months," because I have to do this. I'm being honest. I'm like, "It's either this or nothing." So I'd rather give them the duo, that is my daughter and I giving a quarterly update, than not doing that update to my team. So yeah, definitely honesty is something my children ... and not being afraid to just show them who you are at home as such, and who you are, not have a facade as such.

26:14

And what do you learn about work from the trials of being a mother?

26:18

I think that at the end of the day, everyone's human and no matter what you're racing towards or the goal, getting to understand and know your team is ... It helps you as a manager, but it also helps your team and to feel happy and feel confident. And so, even yesterday my team and I were sitting around a table in London, we were having lunch and just the little things that we've missed, like a birthday cake and stuff like that. And so I think, yeah.

26:59

But my kids have taught me in a more of a leadership role that, I don't want to use the word family as such, because I think there's many articles that say you shouldn't call your colleagues your family because family argue, and everyone disagrees, and there's all different dynamics in families and you don't want to relate them back to the office as such. But yeah, you have to be open and honest, and I think that's what my family life translates into my work life is, yeah. And same again, what I just said a few minutes ago, just getting to know everyone and being there for them, because when you are there for them, for non-work related stuff, they'll really want to be there for the work.

27:48

It strikes me that being a mother, or perhaps even being a parent, adds another dimension to your ability to work and perhaps as a society. I think it's certainly up until a couple of years ago, thought about it the other way around, where instead it was something that was inconvenient and would get in the way of the real work that had to be done. But as you spoke about it there, I was almost thinking like, "I wonder what type of head of product you'd be if you weren't a mother? Almost like it's hard to decouple the two.

28:30

I think it depends on the culture. So, very fortunate where we are now is very outcomes driven. So for example, today I finish work at 3:30, and tomorrow because I don't have any childcare for my daughter at the moment. But head of people the other night was like, "Well, does it ..." As I'll probably catch up the hours here, here, and here. I was doing this Jenga thing in my head and she's like, "But it doesn't really matter, does it Michelle, because it's outcome driven? So it's almost, you getting to those outcomes, and don't bust a gut working til midnight on Wednesday night to make up the time." You know, it peaks and troughs. So I think the natural speed as such, I think is what's being a mother has slowed me down, I think.

29:21

If I reflect where I was a few years ago, I would be finding bugs at 8:00 at night, and getting them in Jira, and the next morning at a standup going, "I found three more bugs last night." I think definitely from that perspective, I'm not on the standup's in the morning to my team going, "What happened at 7:00 last night? Why was no one online?" Not at all. But yeah, so I think it's definitely given me that prioritization angle, and outcome-driven angle as well.

29:56

Thank you so much for running me through your story, Michelle. Loved it.