A retrospective
Chief Product Officer · 2008 — present
Room I
Product leadership is a discipline of choosing. I connect customer evidence with commercial judgement and technical possibility, so teams understand why an investment matters and what would cause us to change direction.
Charles Reed
Room II
The disciplines to which this career has returned, again and again.
Room III
Each work is a decision: its context, the choice made and what followed.
Work 01
Medium: judgement, people and capital
The product portfolio had become a collection of commitments without a shared view of customer value. I worked with commercial and engineering leaders to identify the problems each initiative addressed, the evidence behind them and the capacity required. We reduced competing priorities and gave each remaining investment an explicit learning objective.
Work 02
Medium: judgement, people and capital
A proposed feature had strong internal support but an unclear user problem. We ran a focused discovery programme with customers, observed the work surrounding the request and tested a smaller proposition. The findings changed both the product scope and the way the team described the value to customers.
Work 03
Medium: judgement, people and capital
A launch met its delivery milestone but required a clearer path to adoption. I brought product, customer success and sales into a common review of onboarding friction, usage signals and customer expectations. Product decisions were then informed by the whole customer journey rather than release completion alone.
Room IV
12 M
Active customers
Across four product lines
+46
Net Promoter Score gain
After a discovery-led redesign
3
Products to $100 M ARR
From zero, in five years
70%
Roadmap retired
To focus on what customers valued
Room V
A career, hung in chronological order.
2008 — 2013
Kestrel Systems
2013 — 2018
Lumen Payments
2016 — 2020
Fairhaven Holdings
2020 — Present
Aldermoor Group
Room VI
Boards and institutions that have entrusted their stewardship.
Non-Executive Director · Product & Customer (Chair)
2023 — Present
Advisory Board Member · Accessibility Standards
2021 — Present
Room VII
Gave the whole company a shared definition of what customers actually need.
Says no with more clarity and kindness than anyone I know.
Room VIII
Essays written alongside the work.
A feature list tells a team what has been requested, but not why one investment matters more than another.
Read the essayCustomer interviews and experiments should answer a question that matters to an investment.
Read the essayShipping a product moves the work into the customer's environment, where onboarding, expectations and existing habits shape its value.
Read the essayRoom IX
Honours
Reviews
The Product Leaders Forum · 2025
“Retiring 70% of the roadmap was the best decision we made”
The Technology Leaders Review · 2024
“Discovery as a leadership habit”
The Leadership Ledger podcast · 2024
“Episode 125 — The problem worth solving”
An invitation
For board, advisory and speaking enquiries — a conversation is the best way to see the work.
office@charlesreed.example