CPO
CONNECT
Connect, share and be inspired by a community of product leaders who understand exactly what you're dealing with.
CPO
CONNECT
Connect, share and be inspired by a community of product leaders who understand exactly what you're dealing with.
Being a Chief Product Officer () can sometimes feel like a lonely gig. In fact, in New Zealand you're one of only 213 people (PLA report)!
CPO Connect was created to bring New Zealand and Australian product leaders togther.
We'd love to get to know you.
Being a Chief Product Officer () can sometimes feel like a lonely gig. In fact, in New Zealand you're one of only 213 people (PLA report)!
CPO Connect was created to bring New Zealand and Australian product leaders togther.
We'd love to get to know you.
WHO IT'S FOR
WHO
IT'S FOR
CPO Connect is for senior product leaders who:
- work in New Zealand or Australia - even if the company is global
- are typically the most senior product leader in the company or business unit
- may be called Chief Product Officer (CPO) or Head of Product, VP Product...
- typically manage other dedicated product people
- are considered part of the exec or senior leadership team
HOW IT WORKS
HOW
IT WORKS
All CPO Connect members have access to;
- CPO Connect Slack — Our dedicated, safe Slack community to connect with others, share ideas and discover job opportunities
- Regular newsletter — Product news, new members, job opportunities and more
- Informal in-person meet ups — Regular informal coffees in Wellington and Auckland
Premium members also get,
- Online Drop-Ins — Invited to all fortnightly online Drop-Ins to discuss hot topics and hear from invited guests
- Recordings — Access to all Drop-In recordings, any time
- Member Directory — Access to our membership directory to discover new faces, find people in the same industry or region
- Coaching Discount — 10% discount on Andrew (Tokes) Tokeley's Executive Product Leadership Coaching
- Mentoring Chats — Free online chats with Andrew (Tokes) Tokeley about... well, anything you want!
DROP-IN
RECORDINGS
Premium members meet online every two weeks to listen to experiences, share their own and engage with guest speakers.
If you're interested in joining CPO Connect, you can apply here, or existing users can upgrade to premium.
Our most recent Drop-Ins:
1 Oct 2026: #61 Early Iterations of Product Organisations
How do you transition from a single team of engineers/designers to the utopia of dedicated, autonomous product teams of missionaries? In NZ, around 50% of all companies with a product leader have less than 50 staff - which means around 100 NZ product leaders are actively thinking about this very challenge!
17 Sept 2026: #60 How is Xero Doing Product?
We were lucky to have Ben Watts join us from NZ's biggest tech giant, Xero. Ben is currently Lead Product Manager at Xero, recently deciding to move back into an IC role after being Group PM for almost 10 years. He's seen many iterations of how Xero has evolved their product practice over that time and with the growing use of AI tooling, he's witnessing perhaps the biggest shift to our industry that we've seen. We cover a lot of ground including the impact of AI, the reasons behind recent layoffs, US performance culture, evolution of product roles and more. Super interesting stuff, thanks Ben!
3 Sept 2026: #59 Framing Strategic Bets
It's common for companies to express their Strategies as Goals + Actions, missing out the tricky middle bit of framing the bets/choices/hypotheses you're making that led to the actions that make sense. This is at the core of helping teams focus on what success looks, how they might measure that the actions their working on are making the right impact. This will be an open discussion, sharing how you're thinking about this.
20 Aug 2026: #58 How Do You Do Strategy?
Some companies do an offsite once a year and come up with a wish list. I'm hoping some of you have experienced some different approaches to building or iterating on your business/product strategies. How do you collaborate on it, does someone own it and consult with others, is there a poster on the wall, how often do you review it, how do you articulate it, how do you know it's at the right granularity, how many different strategies do you have...?
6 Aug 2026: #57 Lean Coffee
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We gathered and ended up having some super interesting conversations on; Fractional work To prototyping or not to prototype AI for insights Interview and being interviewed as a product leader