Product-Led Starts at the Top: Why Leadership Needs a Customer Compass

You would not launch a new product without first understanding the user. So why build or sustain a leadership team without anchoring it around the customer?

In too many organisations, the executive team still debates internal capacity or delivery dates. The people who pay your bills exist only as abstract figures in presentations. That kind of disconnect costs more than time. It weakens outcomes and magnifies wasted investment.

Let's explore what a better approach looks like in practice.

What Product-Led Leadership Looks Like

Product-led leadership is a mindset rather than a specific role. Leaders who subscribe to it share working habits that consistently produce value.

Obsessive About Customer Problems

They speak with clarity about real customer pain points. Their language carries genuine customer context, including moments of friction and the hesitations before a purchase. Such clarity helps turn abstract KPIs into lived business realities.

Iterative in Decision-Making

These leaders prefer small experiments over large, monolithic plans. Their approach means shorter feedback loops and easier course correction. In practice, monthly or quarterly learning cycles often replace rigid annual plans.

Data-Informed but Insight-Led

Dashboards matter, but good leaders ask what the data does not show. They triangulate numbers with qualitative insight from user calls or employee feedback. Good leaders treat data as a spotlight instead of a cage.

When those habits sit at the top table, operations and product teams are no longer islands. They become part of a unified engine that moves with clear purpose.

The Big Disconnect: Why Most Leadership Teams Are Still Delivery-First

Many organisations remain optimised for delivery, not for discovery. This structural mismatch is a big reason why so many efforts fail to yield value.

Multiple studies over the last few years suggest that around 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail to meet their stated objectives. A separate BCG study of more than 850 companies found that only around 30–35% of transformations met their value targets.

Three root failures stand out:

• Silos over dialogue. Leadership focuses on internal readiness instead of customer readiness.

• Tool-first thinking. New platforms are deployed before the team embraces customer-centred thinking.

• Governance over discovery. Boards demand certainty, so proposals are framed for minimal risk. A culture of risk-aversion leaves little room for real experimentation.

Until leadership shifts its mental model, product teams often end up as translators. They must bridge the gap between business intentions and customer realities, a process that slows innovation and dilutes value.

Leadership Traits That Anchor Around the Customer

If you want your executive team to lead with a customer compass, certain traits matter more than credentials.

Curiosity

Curious leaders ask problems differently. They ask what customers are trying to do, not just what they are buying. An attitude of curiosity turns assumptions into questions and leads to genuine listening.

Humility

Humility strips away the ego from decision-making. It accepts the possibility that the business might be wrong. In a leadership context, humility means demanding early evidence and acknowledging failure.

Strategic Empathy

Strategic empathy means seeing business trade-offs from the customer’s point of view. Empathetic leaders ask what a change does for the user’s trust or ease. An empathetic approach frames decisions around what builds loyalty.

How Adastrum Builds Product-Led Executive Teams

Bringing product leadership into an organisation requires more than hiring a CPO. The challenge is aligning the entire C-suite around a customer-first compass.

Search That Prioritises Attitude

When hiring, we look beyond functional credentials. We prioritise demonstrated curiosity and evidence of customer-centred decision-making. A strong CV alone means little if those traits are missing.

Development Through Real Problems

We embed our diagnostic work around actual customer experiences. Our method clarifies blind spots in discovery and cross-functional collaboration.

C-Suite Alignment

We help CFOs and COOs speak the same language as product teams. This process synchronises incentives and reduces friction. A top team with a shared customer compass dramatically increases the odds of delivering sustained value.

What a Product-Led Executive Team Looks Like

When the customer compass is truly embedded, a product-led executive team behaves in consistent ways.

• Customer-centric language appears in boardroom discussions. Business cases reference user insights, not just financial modelling.

• Decisions are framed as hypotheses with clear learning signals. They are not treated as big bets subject only to quarterly review.

• Financial choices balance short-term return with long-term customer trust.

• Product and commercial teams speak a unified narrative. Innovation and delivery happen in step.

• Failures are reviewed for insight instead of blame. The team learns from mistakes and then moves on quickly.

That kind of leadership moves faster and earns deeper trust internally. It also drives more meaningful product adoption externally.

Before the Next Product Push, Check Your Leadership Compass

Before you green-light the next roadmap, test one question with your executive team.

Ask them: “If our customers used the product this week, what key assumption is most at risk of breaking?”. Then ask how you would test it before building anything.

If your CFO or COO cannot answer that comfortably, you might be product-lagged.

If you want a clearer, independent view of whether your leadership team is aligned around the customer, feel free to reach out to Adastrum. Our Leadership Development and Executive Search services can help embed a customer compass across the top table.