I learned to let the household change the proposition I had preferred.

I joined the fictional Cervellan Homewares in February 1994, shortly after completing industrial design at Ternovale Design College. I belonged to a twelve-person product-analysis group and had no spending or management authority. My early work sat between the object shown in a catalogue and the questions raised when someone tried to use it at home. A dimension that looked ordinary on a drawing could determine whether a container fitted a cupboard. A sequence that seemed obvious to its designer could be difficult for a person encountering the parts for the first time.

I moved into product management in July 2001. By 2007 I led twenty-four colleagues through three direct reports with A$1.8 million annual product expense. Cervellan's A$140 million company revenue and 620 employees described a different scale from my own delegation. The lesson I remember most clearly came in 2006, when I approved perspective-only instructions for a flat-pack stool. Of forty-eight participants in an observed assembly exercise, thirty completed the sample assembly and eighteen reversed a cross brace. I initially thought a larger copy of the same drawing would resolve the problem. Owen Calverden's observations made that explanation difficult to sustain.

We changed the orientation shown in the sequence and labelled the parts, using A$280000 for illustration and instructional development. A second exercise involved forty different participants: thirty-four completed the assembly and six still needed assistance. I withdrew my earlier view that the original drawing was self-explanatory. The revised exercise supported a narrower claim about those observed tasks; it was not a safety certification or proof that every household could now assemble the item unaided. Quality and engineering colleagues retained their own assessments. That mistake changed how I listened when the user's interpretation differed from mine.

In April 2008 I joined the fictional Belvarel Retail as product development director. The move brought the product into a wider retail setting, including the choices made before purchase and the routines that followed it. A 2012 refill-format study included seventy-two households. Forty-four preferred a smaller pourable format and twenty-eight preferred bulk. I supported two formats instead of asking every customer to accept the bulk proposition. The later ninety-household pilot split fifty-two choosing smaller and thirty-eight choosing bulk. Those groups informed a bounded development choice, not a national demand estimate or an environmental claim.

The portfolio vice-president appointment began in July 2015. By FY 2019–20, Belvarel operated 142 stores with A$1.32 billion company revenue and 3300 employees. I led eighty-six product colleagues through five direct reports with A$17.6 million annual function expense. The 2018 furniture-cover project made a familiar commercial word difficult: universal. One existing pattern fitted twenty-four of thirty-six frames; twelve required different patterns. I supported an A$3.2 million programme for those differences instead of extending the universal-fit description. A cleaner range message would have transferred the unresolved problem to the person trying to fit the cover.

I became CPO in July 2021 and began executive presentations to the board. In 2023, visits to sixty households challenged a storage proposal built around one assumed cupboard depth. Thirty-seven had shallow cupboards and twenty-three had deeper ones. We selected eighteen formats around three common lid footprints, then examined a 120-household pilot in which eighty-four accepted the proposition and thirty-six still had unmet needs. More recently, a replenishment trial showed why a regular delivery schedule should not be confused with a shared household routine. Sixty-two of 180 participants wanted the same interval, seventy-eight wanted variable timing and forty preferred manual ordering.

Today my remit covers 138 product colleagues through six direct reports with A$28.4 million delegated FY 2026–27 expense. Buying, store operations, quality, supply chain and technology decisions keep their respective owners. The fictional record contains no statutory board seat and no claim that product research establishes legal or safety approval. Across thirty-two years, the thread is a willingness to change the proposition when the life around the object contradicts the life imagined for it. The most useful product story explains the people and situations it serves, and also the situations it has not yet resolved.