Thirty-eight years of increasingly explicit product commitments

Mandate

Choose the operating situations each energy-service family will serve and sustain a funded account for installed customers.

Outcomes

• Bounded the 2023 storage feasibility proposition to five shorter-window operating profiles, excluding three six-hour profiles.
• Supported C$14 million storage feasibility without treating nominal capacity as a certified customer-service duration.
• Reserved C$6.4 million for older-control support from 2026 through 2033 after the 198-site upgrade review.

Decisions in context

I took the CPO role in July 2020 and began presenting product matters to the board as an executive. The wider portfolio required an account of both proposed additions and continuing obligations. A storage family could not credibly address every duration requirement, and a newer controller could not make sixty-six incompatible installed sites vanish from the service plan. I had to put those exclusions and retained responsibilities into the expense conversation. The 124-person function and C$41 million 2026 delegation describe my present remit; they do not include unrestricted authority over the company’s revenue, engineering decisions or customer operations. I work with colleagues responsible for those areas when a proposition crosses their responsibilities. The current chapter is therefore about choosing what the product organisation should undertake and making the consequences visible. It is not a record of having personally certified system performance or occupied a statutory directorship. The chronology preserves that distinction alongside the decisions.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; would examine a first board role only with the required preparation, relationship assessment and employer clearance.

Mandate

Develop service families whose commercial commitment fits the customer situation as well as the intended equipment life.

Outcomes

• Examined eighteen customer premises situations before retaining a universal twelve-year fixed-service proposition.
• Identified nine shorter-than-seven-year leases, six longer leases and three owned locations as different commitment contexts.
• Funded C$8.6 million development and four portable-service pilots without declaring a universal financing advantage.

Decisions in context

The vice-president period widened my attention from the release decision to the commitment that followed it. In 2018 the proposed twelve-year service family looked orderly from the equipment perspective, but half of the eighteen customer situations involved leases shorter than seven years. I wanted that mismatch discussed before individual negotiations made it look like a collection of unrelated exceptions. Four portable-service pilots provided a bounded way to investigate another proposition. They did not establish that relocation was simple or that a particular funding arrangement suited every customer. By 2019 I led eighty-eight colleagues through five direct reports with C$24 million annual expense, within a company reporting C$1.65 billion revenue. This stage explains why installed obligations later became central to my CPO work. The customer’s ability to make a commitment and our ability to sustain it belong in the same product discussion, even though different specialists assess their practical and contractual conditions.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CPO to bring the product-development and installed-service accounts together.

Mandate

Translate industrial operating conditions and permissions into usable energy-service propositions.

Outcomes

• Separated facility activity from the permission granted for a control action in a ninety-facility programme.
• Retained forty-eight bounded automatic participants and forty-two manual-confirmation participants as different modes.
• Used C$3.8 million development to release both routes without claiming delivered capacity from participation counts.

Decisions in context

I joined Norvelen in April 2005, bringing the lesson from the maintenance-calendar error into a broader energy setting. Product development now had to consider what the industrial customer permitted us to do as well as what equipment could support. The 2012 load-control programme was decisive for that distinction. A continuous process, a batch operation and a cold-storage facility could each contain particular constraints that their category name did not settle. Forty-two participants wanted manual confirmation, and I accepted the resulting product complexity instead of making automation the only legitimate route. My 2012 team and expense figures describe this director appointment, not the larger remit I hold today. The company’s 1500-person workforce was likewise historical context. This was the stage at which I learned to resist presenting a permission count as a measure of energy performance; the release decision answered one question while operational outcomes would require separate evidence.

Reason for the move

Promoted to portfolio vice-president as the work expanded from release definition to longer service commitments.

Mandate

Develop controls-related propositions and the planned service arrangements through which customers could use them.

Outcomes

• Approved a weekday-stop maintenance proposition before testing whether the calendar fitted all intended customers.
• Changed the product after twelve of forty factories could not use the assumed window.
• Supported C$480000 development of three planned service-window options and site-specific agreements.

Decisions in context

Product management gave me authority to decide which assumptions became part of a standard. In 2004 I used that authority badly when I treated our preferred weekday maintenance schedule as a suitable default for every factory. Mara Vellensby’s challenge made clear that twelve of forty sites were not exceptions to a sound customer proposition; their circumstances exposed a limitation in the proposition I had approved. Revising it cost scheduling simplicity and required more explicit agreements. I describe that consequence without inventing a subsequent universal availability result. The twenty-three-person remit and C$2.6 million expense were meaningful management responsibility, but the company’s 900 employees and C$210 million revenue were not mine to direct. Leaving for Norvelen in 2005 followed a desire to work on the wider service relationship. It did not erase the earlier decision, which remains a useful account of how a product manager’s internal perspective can become the customer’s obstacle.

Reason for the move

Moved to Norvelen for a broader industrial energy-service development remit.

Mandate

Help examine the circumstances in which customers would use proposed control capabilities.

Outcomes

• Built application-analysis experience after completing electrical engineering in June 1988.
• Learned to describe access, production timing and responsible operators alongside equipment capability.
• Progressed into product management without treating supervised analysis as independent engineering approval.

Decisions in context

I began in August 1988, shortly after graduation, with an individual contributor’s view of industrial product use. The applications group required me to ask practical questions about the site rather than assume that a catalogue entry answered them. Production timing, access and the person authorised to act could each change what was possible. I helped organise those circumstances for more experienced colleagues; I did not lead the group or hold independent approval authority. The C$58 million revenue and 420 employees recorded for 1995 locate the work within the company at the time. They do not turn the early analyst into the owner of a business of that size. This appointment supplied the practical interest that later product roles developed, but the subsequent maintenance mistake shows that early exposure does not prevent a leader from forgetting the customer’s calendar when internal planning becomes more convenient. That fallibility belongs in the career account too.

Reason for the move

Promoted to product manager after almost eight years of applications work.