Jo has more than 20 years experience across digital and technology. Jo has led a number of product teams at News UK, Which?, Microsoft, the BBC and Babylon Health. Born and raised in Australia, Jo started her career as an Aerospace Engineer, moving to the UK in 1998. In 2000, she got into tech, joining MSN during the first dotcom bubble. She is currently Product Director at Zoopla, helping to drive enterprise growth and radically improve the consumer and customer experiences of property.

Leadership Values

Help people learn how to learn
Connect people
Be conscious of the energy you bring into the room

LinkedIn

What are the key milestones on your path to leadership?

I joined Zoopla 12 months ago as Director of Product and I’m so excited. Zoopla was acquired by a private equity organisation just over 2 years ago and they want to transform the property experience for customers, so it’s a rare opportunity to work in an established profitable organisation with a healthy customer base, but take it to the next level.

To bring some of that startup mentality to internally disrupt ourselves to transform the industry is the dream come true for a product person.

The great thing about this organisation is everyone is geared up for that. I’m not having to convince people we need to be innovative. I’ve never had that in my career before. That’s the dream come true for me. 

One of the really exciting things about taking this job is that I’m finally able to do green-field innovation, which makes me so excited!

A bit more about how I got here… One of my challenges to find these sort of career opportunities has been my limitations staying in the UK. I started my career at Microsoft and most of the Engineering and Product was driven out of the US, so my experience at Microsoft was more product marketing rather than product development. And then I worked for the BBC, which is innovative, but because they spend public money they are hyper-sensitive to user feedback, and risk averse because of it. Then I worked in other media companies in what you’d call legacy business so the idea of innovation is pretty foreign. That task was always about convincing senior stakeholders why we should experiment, and why we should try and disrupt ourselves because there were all sorts of new players who were trying to take away our business.


What are the key challenges you have faced as a leader?

For me it’s always been about coming into incumbent businesses where there are leadership teams who have been there for a long time. They know they want to change so they bring new people in, but they’re not really ready to allow change. And that’s so hugely frustrating. And I do boil that down to a lack of CEO support and buy in, and eventually I would run out of steam. So that’s been a recurring theme and that’s incredibly frustrating and de-motivating. It makes you doubt your capabilities as a product person because you don’t feel like you’ve got the support you need to exercise those product innovation skills.


Describe your leadership style / what are your core values as a leader?

I’m a connector. I know how to bring different people from different functions together to solve problems. 

It’s not a style thing, but I always bring energy and I think that passion and enthusiasm and energy helps change the dynamic in a team, when you just inject a bit of humour and light into a room. That’s a part of my style that’s helped me be successful. ‘High energy’ has always been the feedback I’ve had. And I have learned over time how to be a leader to help people learn for themselves, rather than telling. Less ‘tell’ and more ‘coach and mentor’... and that can be hard to do well.


What advice do you have for women who are trying to establish themselves as leaders?

I do think there’s a few things that anyone, male or female, needs to do: 

1. Don’t expect a promotion just because you've been in an organisation for a while. You have to demonstrate that you act like a leader. Take the opportunities to mentor. Prove that you’re already operating at the level that you want to get to. That often means taking on extra responsibilities over and above your day job to prove you can do it. Mentoring and coaching, taking on a little side project, with the support of your boss or mentor.

2. That leads me to the number two thing. I’ve had people actively seek me out to mentor them. I feel I’ve given them some good advice, so perhaps if you’re struggling with your own organisation and looking to move, having those industry sponsors is really important. Seeking out mentors is a definite way to help with that.

3. And the third is building your own profile. There are career speakers, people who are constantly at conferences, and perhaps not necessarily great practitioners. It’s not like you need to go and chase that. If you’ve been successful and built a solid reputation, then people invite you to events and you get the opportunity to speak. It's important to speak about experience, not just the theory. Ground it in actual experience. What’s the problem? What did we do to solve it? What was the impact? If you demonstrated that, then you’re marketing yourself. But that should come later in your career. The earlier part is about mentorship and taking on more responsibility.
   

How would you advise organisations who want to foster diversity and gender equity in leadership?

 Put more women on the executive board! 

Also, help your employees foster balance in their lives. Whether it’s men or women, a lot of people have children and we’re all conscious of creating a balanced life. That doesn’t stop when you get to your 50s and you’re an exec. I don't want to have to move to Scandinavia to get that balance. Britain is way behind on some of that stuff.  

It’s not for women only; having better balance will help everyone. Businesses need to be more supportive of that. It would be really bold for some companies to make that part of the interview process. “If we could make this the perfect job for you, what would that look like?” And you know what? Actually make that real. If I wanted to dare greatly, I would have that conversation. Maybe that’s something I’ll be able to enable for someone someday.


Do you think you’ve been hindered to get into a position of leadership?

My opportunities to go into more dynamic tech focused companies have been limited. When I started in tech in London there were no startups. Product was non-existent. That’s changed quite a lot over the last 20 years, now we’re flooded with lots of great tech startups. But if you have lots of corporate experience, the startups frown upon it. They think you don’t know how to work in a startup.


Were there any particular moments when you were trying to do things differently (in some of these incumbent led organisations) that went badly?

I was doing a talk about product (in an exec meeting) and we were talking about the opportunities to evolve the way we were doing product. I was talking about OKRs and the opportunity to align teams around metrics. 

And one of the MD’s hadn’t turned up and the meeting was going fine; the C-suite were really engaged. Then this MD showed up and clearly wasn’t having a good day and I happened to be talking about his portfolio as an example. And he just decided to jump on some numbers on the side totally out of context and was a complete £%$*, essentially. I was able to get myself back on track but was very taken aback by this person who just derailed the presentation for about 15 minutes.

That was abusive in my eyes. Completely inappropriate and disrespectful. The others in the room sat there in stunned silence. So I wrapped up and that is probably the first time in 20 years that I was pushed to tears. I had to go for a walk and get out of the office so I could let it out. My boss was in the meeting and she knew that it was wrong. That was a moment where I realised that I do not deserve to be spoken to like that. I needed to get out of that organisation, and I left there within months. 

I was just shocked that this can still happen, perhaps typical of more traditional corporate cultures, and that it can be allowed to happen. Was it the fact that I was a woman? I have no idea, but it was definitely a power thing.


What advice would you give businesses navigating times of uncertainty?

Each business will have a unique position in the current climate; many will struggle with a decline in customers and revenues though a few sectors like supermarkets are struggling under increased demand. No matter what the circumstances are, it is critical that businesses develop a plan for their own response and communicate it clearly and as transparently as possible to their customers and staff. We've seen many organisations doing this very well, reassuring their staff and customers and coming up with short term plans to support those that they can and adjust their business plans as necessary. The best organisations are being empathetic to how people are feeling and factoring that into their messaging and plans.


How are you currently planning for the future and leading others into it?

We are in the fortunate position to be able to keep our business operating, albeit at a different pace, during this period. We made a very quick decision to take action to support our customers during a time which is severely hitting their revenues, and we've also done an amazing job at supporting our employees to work successfully (and flexibly) from home. Most importantly, we're very conscious that many people will suffer from anxieties through this period, have family members or themselves that become unwell, and / or be struggling to juggle caring for their family and trying to continue working. We recognise all of these challenges and are doing our best to support and nurture people throughout this period - more regular communications with teams and individuals. Sharing our personal challenges as leaders trying to deal with all these factors ourselves.


What’s your favourite quote or mantra?

I’m really bad at remembering things that I read, but most recently I’ve been reading lots from Brene Brown.

I always struggled with being ashamed of who I am. I bumble over my words, I twitch and move around a lot. I’m really loud. And now I believe that I am probably on some sort of “spectrum”. I’ve been told in my 20s that ‘You don’t have gravitas. You’re not executive material because you don’t have gravitas’ - which felt like “you’re not a posh middle class (white male) who knows how to speak a certain way.” 

But I learned through having amazing bosses who told me, ‘that’s bullshit’, these are all the ways you are different and stand out. Yes you need to moderate in certain places at certain times, but it’s also a super power. And then learning to accept who I am.