I want to ask you something. When was the last time you went to stand where your product actually lives — not to test it, not to fix it — just to watch?

Most of us never do. Because most product management thinking carries a hidden assumption so baked in that we never notice it's there: that our products live on screens. That consequences are digital. That if something goes wrong, we can roll it back.

"You cannot A/B test a boarding gate. You cannot roll back a gate call while hundreds of passengers are already moving."

I am a maverick. I have always been one. And being a maverick in product management means going to find the truth rather than waiting for the dashboard to deliver it.

The 2:30am Moment

One night I stood in an empty terminal at 2:30am, counting people by hand. Not because something had gone wrong. Because I needed to verify that our operational visibility tool was telling the truth before any airport manager would trust it.

No analytics dashboard. No event tracking. Just me, a clicker, and a system that had to be honest before it could be useful.

That night changed how I think about product management. Because it forced me to confront something most frameworks never ask: where does your product actually live?

Uber's Street Corner

Consider Uber. The product team could see everything from a dashboard in San Francisco. But the product didn't live there. It lived on a street corner at 11pm outside a bar where the signal was patchy and the pin had dropped half a street away.

The PMs who fixed the pin accuracy problem, the matching screen, the "I'm outside" notification — they were solving problems they saw with their own eyes, not found in a dashboard.

What to Do on Monday

Find the physical consequence hiding inside your digital product. Go there. Stand there. Watch what actually happens. That's where the real product thinking starts.

On my first week in my new role, I was handed a list. A long spreadsheet of digital solutions — platforms, tools, SaaS products. And at the bottom of the email, four words: build a roadmap from this.

I asked the question nobody had asked yet.

"But what problem does this solve?"

Silence. The kind that tells you the question has never been asked out loud, even though everyone has been quietly thinking it.

Why SaaS Feels Safe

Nobody gets blamed for buying software. Procurement feels like a decision. A contract feels like progress. But every time you let a vendor own the problem, you let them own the knowledge too.

The Small Tweak That Changed Everything

When I stopped working from the spreadsheet and looked for real problems, I found one hiding in plain sight. Gate calls were being made at third party convenience. Passengers were being pulled to gates too early, leaving retail and F&B behind.

The fix was a small automation. No vendor. No procurement. Internal intelligence only. It unlocked over a million pounds in ancillary revenue.

Start documenting the limitations now. Every time a vendor can't do something you need. You're not building a business case yet. You're building evidence. Be ready when the moment comes.

I have never been able to accept the way things are. At work. In the boardroom. In my own life. This is the third essay in that story. The most personal one. The one I almost didn't write.

My mother was a doctor. She worked for many years. She was brilliant. She was educated at a time and in a culture where that was not the expected path for a woman — and she walked it anyway.

And then, when my siblings and I reached high school age, she stopped working. And my grandfather — her father, the man who had paid for her education — said something that lodged itself in my chest and never left.

"I educated you. And now you're just sat at home."

I watched my mother receive those words. And I made myself a promise. I was going to choose a career where I could never end up sat at home. I was going to be the woman my mother had started to become before the world asked her to stop.

The Promise I Broke

I graduated from Imperial College London. I got a job at Merrill Lynch. I was on track. And then the recession hit. And the aunties started asking when I was getting married. And I was 24 and not as confident as I am today and I gave in to those pressures.

I had my son. I went on a career break that lasted three years. Sat at home. The same place my mother had been. Mine was not a privilege. It was lonely. No adult conversations. My marriage almost broke. What kept me going was my own resilience. And my son — the child I was determined to show a different story.

The Five Years

In 2018 I went back to work and settled for a small local job because I didn't believe I deserved anything better. I stayed for five years — being harassed, demoted, moved around, with the voice in my head saying: you're not good enough.

What changed was therapy. In a culture where mental health is not spoken about, I said out loud for the first time: I do not know what I am worth. And I have been letting other people decide that for me my entire life. Once you say it, you cannot unknow it.

Why I Am an Innovation Lead

People ask me why I became an Innovation Lead. The honest answer is that I have never been able to accept the way things are. At work. At home. In my own life. That is not a job. That is who I am. The same maverick who asked "what problem does this solve?" when handed a spreadsheet of solutions. The same maverick who stood in an empty terminal at 2:30am counting people by hand. The same maverick who quit a role that was erasing her and built something remarkable in its place.

The Daughters

After my son, I had two daughters. And they became fuel to the fire. I wanted them to know and live by the standards that their mother unlocked for them.

My mother opened a door. She just wasn't able to walk all the way through it. I built the floor on the other side so my daughters never have to fight for what should already be theirs.

In 2022 I quit. Eight months later I was promoted. The next day I stood on a national stage for the first time. And I felt like I was making waves.

My grandfather educated my mother.
My mother opened the door.
I built the floor.
My daughters will start there.

That is why I make waves.