Product leadership consulting · training · coaching
I help organisations build a product function, move onto a modern product operating model, and develop the leaders who have to sustain it once I have gone.
What I do
Most engagements start with one of these and grow into another. I am equally comfortable advising a board and sitting with a product team on a Tuesday morning.
Standing up product management where there is none yet, or where it exists in name only. Discovery, customer-led development, outcome-focused strategy, team design, governance and P&L accountability. I have built and led the product function in two businesses and advised many more through it.
The shift from project delivery to product outcomes, made without stalling the business. Portfolio strategy, team design, roadmaps and governance rewired around outcomes rather than output, with the board and executive advisory to lead it from the top.
Training, coaching and mentoring at every level, from new product manager through Heads of Product to CPOs and executive teams. Over 1,000 product managers trained and coached. Workshops, capability programmes and executive briefings, delivered in the UK and internationally.
CPO and CCO roles on a part-time basis, embedding product discipline and product behaviours in-house rather than leaving a document behind. Board advisory, and chairing customer advisory boards where product direction needs a customer voice at the top table.
Why this is different
Two decades leading product from the inside as Head of Product, CPO and CCO, then six years consulting, training and coaching. I teach it having done it, which shows up in the questions I ask before I propose anything.
I am not a reseller for a methodology. The operating model has to fit your market, your regulator and the people you actually employ. I would rather be precise than enthusiastic, and I will tell you when something is not a fit.
Twenty years in UK social housing and the public sector under ODPM e-Government directives. Consumer credit data with Experian. A large German financial institution, the UK’s largest care home provider, identity-verified consumer platforms. Balancing customer outcomes against quality and control is the day job.
Global brands through to 50–500 employee businesses and pre-revenue startups, as consultant, founder and investor. Startups need a different register from enterprises, and I move between the two comfortably.
Track record
Alongside a large German financial institution, the UK’s largest provider of care homes, and the world’s leading manufacturer of electrical testing equipment.
Chief Product Officer, then CCO
At hedgehog lab, a digital product agency ranked world number one by Clutch and an FT1000 fastest-growing company, delivery went from 100% late and 96% unprofitable to 100% profitable and 90% on time. Client retention rose from 4% to 74%, and the business posted its first four consecutive quarters of profitable growth.
Head of Product Management
At Orchard Information Systems, serving a regulated market of around 190 housing clients, I launched fifteen products between 2009 and 2013 that were solely responsible for the company’s overall margin — accelerating growth from static to 33% over three years, from £10.7m to £14.3m.
About
Twenty-five years in software. I started as a full-stack developer, spent two decades at Orchard Information Systems moving from e-Government consulting to Head of Product Strategy, then joined hedgehog lab as Chief Product Officer and later Chief Commercial Officer through its fastest-growing years.
Since 2019 I have consulted, trained and coached full time — directly through Samepage, and as an Associate Senior Consultant to Product Focus, Europe’s leading product management training and consultancy provider.
I am also a co-founder of Frntir.ai, an AI business solutions platform for mid-market companies. When I talk about building AI products, it is from current practice rather than commentary from the sidelines.
Based in Hexham, Northumberland. Available for UK and international travel and delivery.
Contact
A short description of the situation is enough to start. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person, and if I am not, I will usually know who is.
Prefer email?
aidan.dunphy@samepage.digital