The structure where a CPO also leads engineering is designed to support the CEO. It consolidates all execution under one leader—a "one throat to choke"—freeing the CEO to focus on GTM, marketing, and company-wide issues instead of mediating internal product and technical disputes.

To combat slow decision-making from having too many stakeholders, Robinhood reorganized from functional departments to business units led by General Managers. This structure puts product, engineering, compliance, and operations on the same team, streamlining ownership and accelerating progress.

Rippling structures teams into business units led by GMs who oversee product, sales, and implementation. This is driven by the belief that a unified team focused on a specific customer problem (e.g., IT) delivers a superior end-to-end experience compared to a traditional matrixed organization.

In a multi-product company, horizontal teams naturally prioritize mature, high-impact businesses. Structuring teams vertically with P&L ownership for each product, even nascent ones, ensures dedicated focus and accountability, preventing smaller initiatives from being starved of resources.

The key mindset shift for a CPO is moving from focusing on the product to focusing on the business. The product organization becomes the primary lever you pull to achieve business goals, but your lens changes from product outcomes to overall business health and performance.

The CPO's responsibilities have expanded from product roadmaps to key business decisions like go-to-market strategy, partnerships, and defining the company's core focus. This strategic voice is becoming central to the C-suite, sometimes even before a CTO or CMO is hired.

To ensure new products succeed, the CPO's scope should expand beyond product and engineering. By owning functions like product marketing and sales enablement, product leaders can ensure tight alignment on messaging, objection handling, and market launch strategy from day one.

Block restructured from divisional GMs to a functional organization (Engineering, Product, Design) across all brands. This creates a single shared roadmap and forces alignment, enabling cross-unit collaboration that was difficult when incentives were siloed in separate P&Ls.

The most common failure for a new CPO is remaining focused on their product, engineering, and design reports. The critical transition is making the executive team your "first team," ensuring product work is connected across the entire business, not just perfected within its silo.