The Power of Leading with Humility: An Interview with Brian Bhuta, CPO of Signify Health
We’re tapping into our CPO Expert Network from our new CPO Accelerator Program and learning from the best product leaders out there.
Brian Bhuta, CPO at Signify Health, has a knack for getting the toughest critics on his side. We’ve watched firsthand as he’s joined organizations and come up against tons of intense resistance. Then, within a month, not only has he accomplished what he needed to get done, but he’s made friends along the way. He uses this superpower to transform teams into product management machines.
Brian talks to us about approaching conflict with humility, the importance of being aligned around a common mission, and the best way to gain your CEO’s trust.
Looking back at your career trajectory, what skills did you hone that you can now say directly contributed to your transition from PM to CPO?
The big one that comes to mind for me is the ability to influence.
I think about influence as a skill set; an advanced form of communication. Communication is, “Can I get you to understand this content?” Influence is, “Can I get you to the point where you are making a decision I need you to make or taking an action I need you to take?”
In product management, the ability to influence is honed in the context of specific prioritization. But in a Chief Product Officer role, you’re influencing in the context of the scope of a sale, or a marketing message, or an operational decision, etc.
You have a talent for gaining trust from your boss and peers when at first it seemed almost impossible to do so. How do you approach transforming resistance and distrust into collaboration and welcomed leadership at a new organization?
Listen and stay humble from the start. Ask questions. You need to approach everyone within your organization with the assumption that they ultimately want to do the right thing, and that’s where they’re coming from. Once you’re looking through that lens, even when face to face with resistance or skepticism, it becomes a lot easier to see that you aren’t actually fighting against each other. You share the same objective.
Then, it becomes about saying, “Okay wait, explain to me why you’re so passionate about this. And by the way, I’m trying to achieve the same thing you are- what am I missing? What might you be missing?” Disarm people with the admission that you’re not always right, and the understanding that you’re on the same team.
When a new CPO is faced with that early resistance, what signs or behaviors should they look for to signify that things will eventually work out, versus realizing that they may have landed in the wrong company?
I’ve certainly been in those roles where it felt like it really didn’t matter what I did, it just was not going to happen. And it was because I didn’t have the support of leadership. So when I talk to people about interviewing for CPO jobs, or even taking product promotions, I constantly encourage them to first figure out: Who is your boss? Who is the leadership of that company?
You might be being promoted into the VP of Product position and the CPO doesn’t think you should be doing what you're doing. Or maybe you’re a CPO whose CEO is essentially saying, “You're not a CPO, you’re the head of IT- just close out tickets.” That’s the big thing to look out for. Make sure that leadership, at whatever level you’re at, is aligned to what you ultimately want to achieve from a product management perspective- whether that be procedural, operational, or innovation-related.
The second thing I encourage them to identify is related to what I said before about approaching everyone as if you share the same goal. I made an assumption that the culture of the company I had joined was one that was mission driven, or at least aligned with the objective of the company, and I was able to move forward from there. But if you find a situation in which that is not the case, it’s going to be extremely hard to work through conflicts or roadblocks because you aren't aligned around a common purpose.
How can a new CPO work with their CEO to reassure them that their product strategy is in good hands?
This is where data and customer proof points are important. The thing that makes CEOs most uncomfortable with product strategy is when it defaults to, “I think.” That will always be a part of product strategy, but if that strategy is not rooted in some sort of data and customer/market validation? That’s where CEOs get really nervous.
Because yes, at the end of the day, it is a judgement call. If you can gather enough data and talk to enough people to the point where you’re 100% sure of your strategy, then you’re some sort of psychic. Go play the lottery. So at some point, it is a judgement call that you are ultimately asking your CEO and board to ratify, whether that be spending money for an inorganic acquisition, an investment pivot, messaging, whatever the implications of that may be. CEOs are constantly looking for information to absorb so they can get themselves comfortable with the decisions that they need to make.
There’s this book called High Output Management written by Andy Grove, the Founder and CEO of Intel, largely regarded as one of the best CEOs and one of the founders of Silicon Valley. What’s fascinating about that book is he lists out his schedule one day, and categorizes how much of his day as a CEO is spent decision making versus information finding. And the vast majority of his day is information finding. CEOs go from meeting to meeting, meeting with marketing, finance, just absorbing information- and that all has to culminate into a product strategy of what we actually go build and what we bring to the market. Without that, it becomes a, “he said, she said, I think, I think,” and that isn’t rooted in anything. That’s what makes CEOs nervous about product strategy.
How do you approach the process of leveling up teams at a large organization?
Measure. Assess and be honest. Admit when you have a talent problem. Figure out how far you are from where you want to be.
Understand where you want to go, and what you need to get there.
Make the hard decisions on talent. You only have so much effort and time, and it’s tempting to invest all of it in a low performer that has potential to become a medium performer, versus putting your efforts towards a medium performer who has the potential to be a rockstar but never gets that talent development. Remember that your job is to create a high performing team. So much of what we’re trained to do as product managers is find the problem and fix it, but this is one scenario where that’s actually not your job. Your job is to find the people who have the highest potential and manage them up, and to let everyone else fall behind.
Bring in a top performer, because it’s an immediate shock to the system. People will go, “Oh wow, that person is running laps around me, I gotta step up.” Bring in that fresh perspective that can immediately set the stage for the level of talent you need in your organization.
If you are a new or aspiring product executive interested in becoming a part of the CPO Accelerator Program and learning from CPOs like Brian, you can apply here.
Brian Bhuta currently serves as Chief Product Officer at Signify Health, the market leader in delivering value-based care enablement. With over 15 years of healthcare technology experience, Brian is passionate about building products and technology-enabled services to rapidly and incrementally deliver value and drive change management in the healthcare industry. Prior to joining Signify Health Brian was VP, Product Management at athenahealth where he was responsible for athenaCollector, a cloud-based medical billing and practice management product. Prior to athenahealth Brian held various executive and leadership roles at EMC (acq Dell 2016), NaviNet (acq Lumeris 2012) and Phoenix Data Systems (acq BioClinica 2008).