Be Kaler Pilgrim - Where Does Product Go Wrong in PE-Backed Firms?

On this episode, I speak to Be Kaler Pilgrim, founder of Smithfield Search and original founder of Futureheads Recruitment. Be has spent more than three decades helping organisations build technology and product teams, and recently conducted an in-depth study of senior product leaders operating in investor-backed businesses. We explore what effective product leadership really looks like in high-growth environments, why so many organisations still misunderstand the role of product, and how AI is forcing leaders to rethink organisational design, capability and value creation.

• Product is still too often treated as a delivery function - One of the strongest themes from the research is that organisations frequently position product management as an execution capability rather than a strategic commercial function, limiting both its influence and its ability to create value.

• Leadership roles fail when organisations cannot define the problem - Businesses often hire senior product leaders without first agreeing on what challenge they actually need solving (or whether there's even a challenge to solve), creating misalignment before the role even begins.

• Product leadership should be designed around organisational needs, not trends - Whether hiring a CPO, CPTO or another senior product role, organisations need to understand their specific context rather than simply adopting structures that appear fashionable.

• Feature factories remain one of the biggest barriers to growth - Teams can become highly efficient at shipping work without creating measurable business impact, leading to activity without meaningful outcomes and missed opportunities to execute the investors' value creation plan.

• The "Land of Lost Toys" affects more organisations than leaders realise - Many companies accumulate partially completed initiatives, abandoned priorities and unfinished experiments that reduce focus and create organisational drag.

• Technical debt is ultimately a business problem - Whilst often discussed as an engineering concern, accumulated technical debt reduces confidence, slows execution and directly impacts commercial performance over time.

• Commercial fluency is becoming a core product leadership capability - Product leaders increasingly need to understand business economics, value creation and financial performance, rather than focusing exclusively on product process and delivery. This enables them to have conversations that resonate with PE leaders.

• AI increases the importance of judgment rather than reducing it - Whilst AI can automate many activities, strategic decision-making, prioritisation and organisational leadership remain fundamentally human responsibilities and, thankfully, humans seem to be coming back into fashion!

• Product, sales and customer teams succeed or fail together - Sustainable growth requires strong alignment between teams responsible for building, selling and retaining customers, rather than treating commercial outcomes as somebody else's problem. Everyone should care about NRR.

• The biggest organisational problems are often hiding in plain sight - Many of the factors that ultimately constrain growth are visible long before they appear in financial performance. PE firms need to look beyond financial metrics and get product experts in early to catch and mitigate these issues earlier.

... and much more.

You can view the CPO Report and take the Smithfield CPO Readiness Index here: https://cpo.smithfieldsearch.com/

If you want to get in touch with Be, go here:

• Smithfield Search: https://www.smithfieldsearch.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bekalerpilgrimexecsearch/