CPO Burnout

Cold take: most of the CPOs I know are unhappy, frustrated, burnt out.  (My selection bias: mostly B2B/enterprise, primarily 15-plus-year veterans, many current or former coachees).  Over and over, I’m hearing quiet questioning about whether they’d want another CPO gig, even if they're currently between gigs.  A lot of “I’m experiencing the same C-level challenges that made my last 2 or 3 VPPM/CPO jobs so taxing: demands for certainty, mortgaging the future for current quarter revenue, lack of trust, and scant interest in how we make products.”

The why’s tend to cluster around:

1. Product strategy smacking headlong into not-our-target-audience-but-we-could-close-this-one-quickly revenue opportunities.  Exec suites tired of hearing that engineering/design/product really is at capacity.  Roadmaps and commitments blown up for enticing opportunities.  (Just this once!)  CxOs uninterested in how development actually works, or how product folks add value - versus engineering value. 
2. Relentless pace, rolling crises, exhaustion.  Putting out this morning’s fire, knowing there’s another this afternoon.  Simplified sales vignettes about purported product failures overshadowing slow-and-steady progress.  “What has the product/maker team done for us lately” measured in weeks, when innovation takes quarters (or years).  Sisyphus.
3. A deluge of idealized productsphere posts and stories and books that describe how 2-3% of companies are succeeding (or claim to be succeeding).  Polished into beautiful tales of rational product-led decisions, by-the-book operating models, stakeholders who stay aligned. Universal “best practices” that are narrowly context-specific – or just slogans.  (What I read rarely looks like actual B2B/enterprise organizations.)

My observation is that most (B2B) CPOs are in messy, politically complex, sales-led, short-term-revenue-driven companies.  Yet they take that as personal failure.  Rampant impostor syndrome.  “We’re not worthy.”  If this is majority case, then you and your company aren't so unique.

What to do? 

No easy answers from me.  But a few thoughts:

• Recognize this as systemic.  Depersonalize it.  If so many CPOs are wrestling with the same issues, then it can’t just be your fault.  Illegitimi non carborundum.
• If the root issues are about people, then algorithms won’t solve them.  Try applying an anthropology filter (“Who makes decisions here?  How can I influence them?  What does this org see as convincing arguments?”) rather than a process filter (“If Sales would submit detailed specs well ahead of customer decision dates, we could…”)
• If you’re considering a different company, do lots of unofficial/informal culture checks.  Connect with someone who’s not an interviewer.  Ask a former employee what it was really like.  Assume that interviewers are “selling” their company to you as much as you are “selling” yourself to them.
• If the stress and sleepless nights are taking a toll on your health, talk with a trusted someone (spouse, mentor, peer…) about whether to sign up for another CPO role

Sound Byte

Some of this seems based on short term economics (slower VC funding, high interest rates) and some around cycles (product management comes in and out of favor).
But worth noting that this is the CPO job: very smart, very capable practitioners can find it stressful, taxing, a poor fit. We should be normalizing career breaks, shifting back into IC consulting roles (temporarily or permanently), and introspection about what fits each of us.

Hint: if we hate it, we call it politics. If we love it, then leadership or getting things done or organizational dynamics. Listen to how you describe what you do.