Maintaining a Collaborative & Inclusive Product Culture at Scale (with Anna Curzon, Chief Product Officer @ Xero)

An interview with Anna Curzon. Anna is the Chief Product Officer at Xero, with long experience in business strategy & digital transformation. She's also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Advisory Council, appointed by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Anna is passionate about creating a good working culture, and driving for diverse teams and working practices to support that goal.

We speak about a lot, including:

• The origin story of Xero, how it came from the founder having a problem he couldn't solve, and how he started a company to solve it
• How they had to fire themselves as Xero users as they scaled out of their own target market, and how they stay in touch with customers
• How she moved from her career in banking into disruptive tech and how she was always "the freak in the phone book"
• The parallels between her original passion for anthropology & understanding humans has translated into her day-to-day work
• How she developed a passion for product management & how she approached her move into a CPO job without any direct product management experience
• Whether she had any pushback when taking over a team of product managers, and the approaches she's taken to be seen as just one of the team
• The importance of diversity on the teams and why people should be able to bring their true selves to work
• How they've managed to keep the Xero culture going and nurture it through massive scaling and acquisitions

And much more!

You can contact Anna on Twitter or LinkedIn.