After rising rapidly in the tech sector, Lisa Arrowsmith switched to automotive as Chief Product Officer at CitNOW Group. She tells Al Clarke, Chairman of the Ennis & Co Advisory Group, that her career has been a series of unexpected opportunities that have taught her to always say ‘yes’ to difficult challenges.
AL CLARKE: Tell me about the key points in your career that brought you into the automotive industry.
LISA ARROWSMITH: After finishing a degree in Business Management, I worked for a series of small but ambitious tech companies where there was a big appetite for new product ideas. When you’re in a smaller company, it’s natural to take on a wider range of responsibilities. One of the areas I really enjoyed was coming up with product ideas, and working out how to make them economically viable, how to get them built, taking them to market and pitching them. The aim was to work out where we had a gap in the market, how we could compete with other firms, how we price them right, and how to sell them in the right way. So, from early on, I had quite a lot of responsibility for product concepts that I’d created from the ground up.
In 2014, the company I was working for at the time, a small UK firm, was acquired by a much larger US-based business. That’s when I was first introduced to the concept of Product Management. Until then, I’d never actually heard of it as a career, even though it epitomised all the activities I had been so passionate about, and so I stepped into my first formal Product Management role.
The company went through a series of different acquisitions, mainly as the acquiring firm, and as a Product Director, I was responsible for a lot of the product strategy – managing product integration, engaging with the new businesses and planning product portfolio rationalisation where it was needed. Following a restructure, I was promoted to running the company’s consumer technology solutions business unit, which was a slight move away from product management but gave me a much wider perspective on the business. That business was latterly acquired by a division of a large UK-based firm, where I was appointed Chief Product Officer of the newly combined divisions, where I was able to draw on my previous experience of running the portfolio integration and rationalisation of recently acquired businesses.
After establishing the business in its new structure, I came to a point in my career when, having spent 12 years in B2B tech data, I wanted to experience a different sector. So, in 2021, I moved to a private equity-backed business in the brand protection space, as Chief Product Officer. Brand protection is a huge source of concern for brands in terms of the misuse of their IP, trademarks or rights, whether through counterfeit products, pirated content or the misuse of a brand name in phishing attacks. This move also gave me my first exposure to managing physical products as well as digital ones. Having come from a purely digital background, suddenly I was thinking about machinery CapEx, machine and factory utilisation and shift patterns.
In 2024, the company completed a successful sale, and I took the opportunity to experience another sector by taking the Chief Product Officer role at CitNOW Group, my first introduction to the automotive world, which I’m loving.
Reflecting on my career, I didn’t set out to be a Product Manager, but it was something that evolved organically. I love the creativity of the role but also the structure and the varied nature of my work.
AC: You talk about your career developing organically, but having to deal with so many acquisitions and sales must also have been very disruptive and uncomfortable. Where did you learn the ability to be comfortable in discomfort?
LA: I think I just learnt to accept that you can’t prevent change. Change is going to happen one way or the other. I’m naturally quite objective-focused and outcome-driven, and although change can be instigated by things that are beyond your control, you can control the outcomes of that change. Instead of worrying about the change itself, I focus my energy on what I can influence, like driving a new product portfolio which will have the biggest positive impact on clients.
AC: Reflecting on your experience working with technology across multiple sectors, what has been the difference between leadership in automotive and other sectors?
LA: The critical tenets of leadership are consistent across the sectors I’ve worked in – communication, empathy, being able to lead with vision and being comfortable making big decisions, often with imperfect information.
The biggest difference for me has not necessarily been between automotive and non-automotive but between software and physical products. With software, you have a greater ability to be agile, and there’s a lower risk when driving innovation because you can start small and then test and learn. You can get an MVP [Minimum Viable Product] out quite quickly and then validate and learn through the product development cycle. With physical products, you often have to make a fairly sizable initial capital investment in machinery and equipment.
While it’s nice to be able to test and learn when developing software products, the flipside of having that agility is that there is a much greater threat of disruption. You have the opportunity to disrupt other players, but there is also the danger that you might be disrupted yourself. That means you need to operate at a higher pace.
AC: Do you think the career path you have followed is something that others could follow, or would you say it’s unusual?
LA: In terms of today’s career pathways in product management, it is a function that is now more established and well-understood than when I started out. As I said, I hadn’t even heard of production management before I realised there was a formal career around what I was doing, but it has much more recognition today.
Although my career path has been quite quirky, it’s more than possible for people to grow their roles in a similar way. It’s all about being passionate about what you’re trying to deliver and making sure that you’re delivering it. I’ve ended up in situations that I haven’t necessarily planned, but I’ve been able to drive positive outcomes. Change is inevitable, and its all about how you accept it and make it work.
AC: Given that product management has become more accepted as a function, are there now more structured pathways that people could follow?
LA: Yes, there are, and that’s something I feel very strongly about. Through all my CPO roles, I define a well-structured career path, and I make sure I include entry-level roles. Where possible, I create new Junior Product Manager roles as entry-level roles for people who are not expected to have a formal background in product management but who can demonstrate a passion for product and a willingness to learn. I’m very keen to establish clear pathways to help people get into and progress within product management. CitNOW Group echo this ethos with its range of early talent initiatives and a culture of promoting from within. Product management is both a challenging and rewarding role, and a great one to aspire to. I love the idea of little children running around saying they want to become product managers when they grow up, in the same way you see with other professions.
AC: Your role as Chief Product Officer requires you to engage with multiple stakeholders within and outside the organisation. What is your advice on how to manage these key relationships?
LA: You asked me earlier about the differences between automotive and other sectors. Automotive is very people-centric, even more so than some other sectors I’ve worked within, and building relationships is particularly important. My main advice would be to invest your time in those relationships and to spend time with people physically whenever you can. At CitNOW, for example, we meet face to face as an ExCo two days every month without fail, always in the same physical location. We do intensive days of strategic planning, but we’ll go out for dinner as well and build that team bond and trust. Similarly, spending time with customers is really important, particularly for a Product Manager in terms of understanding what’s driving their needs and building a set of friendly customers you can run ideas and product concepts by is invaluable.
Internally, as a Product Manager, you are at the centre of a lot of different things, and you’re often the gatekeeper to engineering resources. A key aspect of internal relationships is understanding what’s driving a particular request and being transparent in your response. For example, as a Product Manager you can easily get ten times more roadmap requests than you could ever fulfil, so you need to understand what the person who is making the request is trying to achieve, both internally and from the lens of the customer.
If we do have to turn down requests, we need to understand the impact of that decision, but we also need to help articulate the reasoning behind that choice. It could be, for example, that a customer is asking for a very specific feature that isn’t going to service any of our other customers. It’s not just about saying, ‘No, that’s not on the roadmap.’ It’s about explaining that we are focused on certain things that are going to have an impact across our user base to meet a strategic objective and highlighting the other valuable work that is being delivered and how that also feeds into a customer’s needs.
AC: How does this play into your time management? Are you the kind of person who needs a clean inbox by the end of the day?
LA: I’m very organised in the sense that I flag things that come in via email, and at the end of the day I’ll double-check that I’ve dealt with everything that requires an urgent response. I’m quite structured with my team in that while I’ll respond via Slack or Teams for general discussion, if they are looking for a specific action from me, they need to send it via email so that it goes into my system.
Time management can always be a problem when you’re running with a varied and complex set of objectives that require cross-functional collaboration, and the reality is that I’m comfortable with working very long days because that’s what I need to do to be successful at my job. Getting things done has always been what drives me, and I get a lot of satisfaction from closing down difficult challenges and meeting objectives.
AC: Technology is obviously evolving rapidly in the automotive industry, and the Chinese, in particular, are making things happen at a tremendous pace. How do you, as a senior product person working for a leading British technology company, keep up with developments?
LA: My primary focus from the product side in a tech organisation is understanding our clients and our prospects. What are they trying to achieve? What’s keeping our biggest customers up at night? What do they feel is getting in the way of doing their job effectively? What are their core challenges, objectives and goals? This is always the lens I look through in terms of developing product concepts. A good product is one that offers an innovative approach to resolving a client problem or delivering client value. It might be unlocking a problem that a client doesn’t even know they have, or it might be something incremental.
When we’re developing new products, the customer need always comes first. We partner very closely with our engineering and technology teams, but the process starts with product outlining what we are essentially trying to achieve in terms of the product and customer outcomes.
From there, looking through that lens, technology then becomes the enabler, but the focus needs to remain on the impact it has on customers. Staying up to date with technology is critical, but it’s technology because of the customer impact. It’s not technology for technology’s sake.
AC: Looking to the future and the next generation of leaders, what do you think will be the most effective and relevant elements that prospective technology leaders need to develop and master?
LS: The core leadership skills will continue to be very important – being able to lead with both clarity and compassion but, equally, to manage to a pace. If I look back, I think P&L management is a great way of demonstrating you’re comfortable with decision-making and risk management, and so a key moment in my career was my promotion to become head of a business unit. Being accountable and responsible for a sizable business unit and owning the P&L really helped to develop wider leadership skills. Not everyone can be thrown into that, but even managing a smaller team budget can help build those skills. You need to lead your team while also being comfortable with the fact that the buck stops with you in terms of meeting P&L or budget objectives.
AC: A lot of people we talk to say the younger generation of managers are impatient to move up faster. While it’s great to have ambition, how do you ensure people in your team learn things properly rather than skipping on to the next thing and that you get the maximum benefit from them?
LA: I’ve led multiple product teams that have evolved through a series of acquisitions, and so there have been different definitions of product management grades and responsibilities. One of the things that helps to ensure learning and development is providing clarity about the different roles and levels within product management and how people can develop to move between levels or prepare themselves for when new or more senior roles become available.
It’s important to make it clear to people what’s expected of them in the role they are doing now, and I’m open about the areas where I think they need coaching. I’ll also proactively put people into situations to give them the opportunity to demonstrate certain skill sets and capabilities. I want to give them a clear message about the growth they’re expected to show and provide guidance on how to enable them to achieve that – whether it’s through coaching or more formal training or often just being exposed to new situations and learning through that – in order to reach the next level in their careers.
AC: Given the significance of China in the automotive industry now, do you think there is a benefit for aspiring leaders to work in China for a period?
LA: I wouldn’t say it’s critical for people to work in China from an automotive software perspective, but I do think it’s helpful if you’re able to demonstrate that you’ve led multinational teams, particularly if you’re thinking about career mobility and moving into a larger organisation. It’s challenging but enjoyable to manage diverse teams across different geographies and across different time zones, and it’s an important capability to be able to evidence.
I also think that demonstrating you can work with a multinational client base is important from a product management perspective. For example, at one of the research businesses that I worked for, the needs of clients in Taiwan and South Korea were completely different from the needs of our clients in the US, despite them purchasing and using the exact same product. Understanding your customers and whether there are any differences across the user base is a key part of product management.
AC: Are there any people who have been influential in your career? If so, what was it about them that makes them memorable, and what did you learn from them?
LA: Looking back, I’m fortunate to have worked for some really great leaders – too many of them to mention – and that’s still the case at CitNOW. If I reflect on how my skill sets have developed, the leaders who had the biggest impact on my career are the ones who have trusted me to take on wholly new challenges rather than me asking to take on certain responsibilities.
I’ve led a substantial business unit that’s based in Asia. I’ve taken on responsibility for a holographic R&D facility made up of incredibly smart and expert holographers, chemists and physicists. I’ve also run an investigative services business. In none of those cases did I think, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I did that one day?’. They were challenges that were entrusted to me by really great leaders who believed I could do it. They put me in situations that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of putting myself in. Each felt really ‘sink or swim’ at the time, but it was comforting to know I had their backing, and I wanted to really run with that trust to make great things happen.
AC: Are you fearless in that regard? Are you the kind of person who thinks, ‘Somebody believes I can do something, so I’ll just go and do it?’
LA: I definitely wouldn’t say I’m fearless, and that’s why I’m so lucky to have had leaders that put me in those situations and believed in me. Maybe they saw capabilities in me that I didn’t realise I had at the time.
I remember my first big step up in my career when my boss rang me to say he was retiring and that he was recommending me to take over his role. I was the newest person on the team, and I’d only officially been doing product management for about 18 months. I could never have imagined that I would be given that opportunity, but it was very exciting, and it felt great to be trusted like that. Feeling you are trusted in an organisation is so important, and the way I manage and develop my team is to trust them with difficult challenges when I know they can handle it, even if they don’t realise it at the start. They may not appreciate the challenge at the time, but I think they appreciate the trust I put in them. For me, being able to adapt, flex and take on complex challenges at short notice is almost a prerequisite for growing leadership skills. You need to put yourself in a position where people trust you to take on complex problems.
Being able to trust and develop people in my team is one of the things I love most about my job. If there are three fire drills at once, I want to know that I can take one and two others in the team can jump on the other two. That’s a huge thing, and it doesn’t just happen by accident. You have to help those people cultivate the experience and skill sets to rise to the challenge, and you also need the organisational structure to give them opportunities.
AC: Is there one piece of advice you wish you had been given early in your career?
LA: The key advice I would give to anyone early in their career is to say yes to the challenges that people give you, even when they’re unexpected. Sometimes your first thought will be, ‘But what about my day job? ‘I’ve already got too much on my plate.’ Even today, I sometimes catch myself thinking like that when something large and unexpected comes my way. But you should say yes to the challenges. Work out a way to do it. It’s often those unexpected things that have the biggest impact, and if you feel like they’re being chucked over to you, it’s because you’re a trusted partner.
