Diya Jolly (Incoming CPO at Xero, ex-Okta)

Diya talks product culture and product building at Okta, shares advice for young professionals, and more!

Mar 20, 2023

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Guest Profile:

Interview Guest: Diya Jolly (LinkedIn)

Role: (Incoming) CPO at Xero, ex-CPO at Okta

Previous: Prior to committing to join Xero, Diya served as Okta’s Chief Product Officer, where she led the company's product team and was responsible for Okta's product roadmap and innovation. Before Okta, Diya spent over seven years at Google as VP of Product Management for YouTube’s Monetization and then for Google Assistant/Home. Diya currently serves on the board of directors for ServiceTitan and is an advisor to Amplitude.

Quick Note: This interview was recorded via a Zoom call between Diya and Roshan (that’s me) in March.

Roshan’s favorite quotes from the interview:

On measuring success in product management: “Lagging indicators for product success are typically tied to revenue. If your product generates revenue, that's a clear indication that it's successful. The mid-level indicators for success are typically related to usage metrics, such as which features are being used in the product, and how frequently the product is being used overall. Early indicators of success are more subjective and might include feedback from target customers on whether the product is meeting their needs.”
On building product culture: “In terms of building a strong product culture, deep customer empathy is important, along with metrics that are focused on business growth and the growth of the user base. The team should have a drive to learn and acquire knowledge, as they touch and interact with many different domains. No one person can know everything, so it's important to have people who are curious and eager to learn.”
On what drew her to product management: “So my dad started a small technology business in India. It doesn’t exist anymore, but it was there most of the time I was growing up. Being the older kid, I would go to his workplace, sit in the back, do homework, and overhear various discussions. I found the ones about products, architecture design, and customer needs the most intriguing, and I realized that I wanted to do something similar. I think I was twelve or thirteen when I was like, “yeah, that’s what I want to do.”

Roshan: Hey Diya, thanks so much for coming on. So to start, what exactly does the role of a Chief Product Officer at a company like Okta or Xero look like?

Diya: Sure, thank you for having me. As a Chief Product Officer, my main responsibility is to identify what our company's customers want and determine how we can meet those needs. This involves balancing various considerations such as which target customer segments to focus on, what needs to be fulfilled, and what needs to be left out, not just for a single product, but also for an entire portfolio of products that we offer. As a product leader, I need to work closely with other executives because launching a new product requires the involvement of different departments because you need engineering to build it, customer support to support it, and sales to sell it. Many people think that as a product leader, you can go off and have your own product strategy, but that’s not true. Ultimately, I need the entire company to be aligned with and excited about our product strategy.

Roshan: Taking a step back, how did you become a product manager, and what drew you to this field?

Diya: Sure, I’ll go into the second part and then come back to the first part. So my dad started a small technology business in India. It doesn’t exist anymore, but it was there most of the time I was growing up. Being the older kid, I would go to his workplace, sit in the back, do homework, and overhear various discussions. I found the ones about products, architecture design, and customer needs the most intriguing, and I realized that I wanted to do something similar. I think I was twelve or thirteen when I was like, “yeah, that’s what I want to do.” I was interested in the interplay between the left and right brain, and I thought that product management would be the perfect field for me. However, back then, tech product management didn't exist. I thought my dad was just talking to his engineers, but really he was being the product manager since CEOs are like the product managers of small businesses.
When I came to the US for undergrad, I started studying computer science, but I realized a couple of things. One is that I had a slight eye problem that made it difficult for me to find grammatical errors in my code. So, I began looking for ways to get closer to the customer and the business impact. Product management was a new field then, but I was really interested in it. However, at that time, you couldn't be a product manager until you had an MBA. So, I decided to go to a strategy consulting firm and sell that experience as an MBA. I worked at McKinsey and then moved to Motorola as a product manager with one of the partners who had gone there to run a division.

Roshan: That’s a fascinating story about being interested in product management from such an early age. Now, going back to Okta, can you tell me about some of the things you worked on at Okta and some of the things you're most proud of?

Diya: Sure, I’ll divide this into three key categories. Number one, Okta was built in an era where password-based authentication was king, and our product was built in a way where passwords were super native and hard-coded in order to support that. However, with the advent of biometric authentication methods like Face ID and Touch ID, we realized the need to make Okta completely passwordless and biometrically enabled. We achieved this across multiple devices like Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Chrome, but it wasn't an easy feat given the complexity of authentication and verification. I'm proud to say that this move put Okta ahead of its competitors and the reception was phenomenal.
Second was taking the core Okta product and launching a full suite of products for employee sign-in. There’s this product we launched called Workflows which helped with security workflows, and a product called Identity Governance and Access, and these products broadened the Okta portfolio for employee sign in.
Third, we established a new business line called customer identity, which was a small segment when I joined the company. We grew it significantly, and then eventually we acquired Auth0 to expand it even further.

Roshan: How would a product or feature at Okta go from inception to market?

Diya: Products and features follow different processes. For a feature, we first look at what the customer is asking for. Then, our product area leader decides how to prioritize the set of features. Once we decide what to spend time on, we form a three-legged team comprising product management, design, and engineering. The team starts by understanding the specific customer problem and what they are trying to achieve, conducting customer interviews, building mockups, and testing them with customers. Then, engineering builds the feature, and it gets shipped. Generally, features have release notes and some learning but don't require extensive sales enablement or marketing, unless it's a shiny feature that needs highlighting, such as passwordless. In that case, we do some product marketing around it.
Products follow a different process. We start by looking at the strategy perspective and determining where we want to grow our business. We analyze which customers we want to solve problems for and what problems we can solve that will delight them. For example, if we want to solve problems for the world's biggest enterprises, we may target their auditing problems for security. Then we analyze the market size, the players in the market, and our ability to build it cost-effectively and within the time frame. Assuming we decide to proceed, we build a cross-functional team comprising product leads, product managers, engineers, sales, marketing, and sales engineering. The process is similar to that of a feature, but it's more complex and involves launching multiple features simultaneously. We start by talking to customers, specifying the features, testing them, and having engineering start building pieces of it. As we progress through the process, we start working with marketing to determine how to launch the product. Will we go to a trade show, make a big bang in the press, or do a closed beta until we're ready? We also do sales training, sales enablement, and work with sales engineering to onboard people. That's how we bring a product to market.

Roshan: Seeing as you're the Chief Product Officer and leading the product orgs at these companies, how do you think through building a great product culture at a company like Okta or Xero?

Diya: That's a great question. In my opinion, a strong product culture is built on a few key factors. Everybody knows product managers need to be customer-obsessed, so that’s a given. But the best product managers are also obsessed with how to grow the business. The ultimate gauge of whether or not you are successfully adding value to your customers is if they are willing to pay for your product. So, when you are deciding which features to include in your product, there are many trade-offs to consider, and often they can't be quantified. The ultimate metric to measure the success of your product is revenue growth, which is a strong lagging indicator. Therefore, I encourage my product managers to have a general manager (GM) mindset. However, this doesn't mean that they are not technical. They need to have a strong technical understanding as well. So, you really need someone who is a jack of all trades.
In terms of building a strong product culture, deep customer empathy is important, along with metrics that are focused on business growth and the growth of the user base. The team should have a drive to learn and acquire knowledge, as they touch and interact with many different domains. No one person can know everything, so it's important to have people who are curious and eager to learn. Additionally, it's important to create a team culture that encourages collaboration rather than competition. In tech, everything is interconnected, so often the beauty of a product comes from two features working together to create something even better.
To build this culture over time, you need to find the right people who believe in the same values and incentivize them accordingly. You also need to have strong disincentives for things like territorialism. It's important to role model the desired behaviors as well. Lastly, you need to have your team's back and push them to do more and achieve more.

Roshan: How has the shift to remote work changed the role of product management?

Diya: I believe that for product managers who are not in a leadership role running multiple product teams, such as VPs or those at the IC level, director level, or early manager level, being in person with your engineering team and other product people helps a lot. Being able to get on a whiteboard and sit next to your engineering leader to discuss ideas or build things together is invaluable. Unfortunately, this has become challenging with remote work. For junior and newly starting PMs, the learning curve is harder, but people have developed ways around it, such as using Slack channels and other tools. On the plus side, remote work allows for more time to read and learn more deeply. For experienced PMs and leaders, I don’t think it makes a big difference. Yes, you want to see your team in person, form a relationship with them, et cetera. But I think you can do that by meeting once a week, biweekly, every month, or whatever. So I actually don’t think it has tremendously changed leaders’ lives.

Roshan: How do you measure success in product management?

Diya: Lagging indicators for product success are typically tied to revenue. If your product generates revenue, that's a clear indication that it's successful. The mid-level indicators for success are typically related to usage metrics, such as which features are being used in the product, and how frequently the product is being used overall. Early indicators of success are more subjective and might include feedback from target customers on whether the product is meeting their needs. Ultimately, success in product management comes down to how the product manager is thinking through the target customer profile, how the product will add value to the business, and how the product will be designed to meet those objectives. It's a craft that requires a lot of strategic thinking and decision-making.

Roshan: What advice would you give to young professionals looking to go into product management?

Diya: Well, there are a few different paths you can take. I think having a technical degree can be tremendously helpful, but it's not always necessary. The best product manager I've ever known doesn't have a technical degree, but he did learn how to code himself. Having said that, a technical degree can help you communicate better with engineers. In addition to that, I would encourage young professionals to spend a couple of years coding to get a better understanding of what can and can't be shipped, and to get a sense of what the true blockers are. So overall, I would ultimately say that the best way to break in is to spend a couple years in engineering and then move to product.

Roshan: What do you think are the most important traits and skills of product managers?

Diya: The most important traits and skills of product managers include customer empathy, business understanding, tech understanding, EQ, influence without authority, and drive. For a starting product manager, it's important to have a desire to do everything that the team cannot do and to put out every fire. It's kind of like being the CEO of a startup where things are blowing up. Not exactly, but somewhat. An ownership mindset is also essential because ultimately, the success of the product rests with the product manager, whether they have authority or not.

Roshan: Outside of work, what hobbies occupy most of your time? How do you stay physically and mentally fit given the high demands of your job?

Diya: Well, I'm still working on that. If you think of life as a pie, and you think that pie has health, which includes sleep, workout, family, friends, work, and then whatever you want to put in, for short periods of time, anything can be unbalanced. But if it is unbalanced for long periods of time, you're not going to have the steam to go at stuff. The best advice I got from someone was that you can't balance everything all the time. The way you balance stuff is by focusing on one thing at a particular time and then coming back and focusing on another thing. So, for example, 10% effort in your friends and 90% effort in work might be fine for a month, but then you need to make up for it by giving 25% to 30% effort to your friends and 70% effort in work. So, you're constantly always balancing and prioritizing. I don't think there's a magic solution. As long as you know what's important to you, you can put it in the pie and you can gauge where you're at with that and what is the most important move right now and reassess that every so often.
In terms of staying mentally and physically fit, I think sleep is very important. Different people need different amounts of sleep. I'm a camel. I can store sleep and then deplete it and then I need to store it again. I work out, and I watch what I eat. You should always make time for those things in your day. Those really help you perform better.

Roshan: Last question, do you have any favorite books, movies, podcasts, etc. that have been a big influence in your work or in your life as a whole?

Diya: It's hard to pick one book, but I can recommend a few. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a great one. I also really enjoyed Creativity, Inc. Quiet by Susan Cain is another good one. Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan is worth a read too. And lastly, Sapiens is a fantastic book. You can pick any of these and give it a try.

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