From Product to CEO: Leading Beyond Execution

Excerpt: “Numbers up when you speak to the board, people down when you lead the team. That balance, of capital and care, is what unlocks trust at every level.” That is the mantra Rhiannon White shared at UXDX EMEA 2025.

When Rhiannon White stepped into the CEO role at Clue, she thought the transition from Chief Product Officer might be more about nuance than fundamental change. After all, it was just two letters in a title. But as she shared in her fireside conversation with UXDX founder Rory Madden, the reality was far from subtle.

In her words: “I used to think out loud with the team. Half-formed ideas would get batted around until they made sense. As CEO, I noticed something different. People smiled, nodded, and ran off to execute. Suddenly, my brainstorms weren’t debates. They were directives.”

That shift from collaborative product leader to authoritative figurehead, sparked a journey of unlearning, reframing, and building a new leadership playbook.

The surprise of authority

One of White’s first shocks was how quickly team dynamics changed. The same colleagues who once sparred with her over ideas began treating her musings as mandates. At first, she admits, it felt efficient.

“I suggested a partnership and a month later it was already in motion,” she recalled. “But then I saw the knock-on effect. Priorities clashed, people were overstretched, and it was my fault. Those offhand comments had landed like orders.”

Her lesson: leaders cannot think out loud in the same way they once did. Influence multiplies with title, and even casual suggestions carry weight. The challenge is to stay engaged without overwhelming the organisation with noise.

Rain or buses: when to intervene

White described her evolving leadership model with a metaphor every parent knows. Some lessons, like forgetting a jacket in the rain, can only be learned by experience. Others, like stepping into traffic, demand intervention.

The art of leadership, she argued, lies in knowing the difference.

At Clue, that means allowing teams to run experiments, even when she has her doubts. “If it’s an umbrella situation, we can live with being wrong for a month. If it’s a bus situation, I step in. The hard part is recognising which is which.”

This mindset not only protects the team’s autonomy but also reinforces accountability. White is still on the hook to the board for results, but she frames failed experiments as learning rather than loss.

Curiosity, unleashed

When asked how she balances her product roots with the demands of the CEO role, White pointed to curiosity as her compass.

“Product is about curiosity, about humans, their needs, their behaviours. As CEO, I get to unleash that curiosity across the entire business. One day I’m digging into cash flow with finance, the next I’m learning how our marketing team frames user benefits. It’s endlessly fascinating.”

But the transition also revealed an obvious contrast in pace. Product management is linear: ship, learn, adjust. CEO work is more like gardening. You plant bets, strategic hires, new markets, major initiatives and then wait, sometimes months, to see what grows. The gratification is slower, but the stakes are higher.

Numbers up, people down

If curiosity is what fuels White’s leadership, finance is what grounded her career progression.

She credits a simple mantra “numbers up, people down” with preparing her for executive leadership. Speaking upward, she leads with numbers: outcomes, capital, financial logic. Leading downward, she centres people: context, support, and collaboration.

“It sounds reductive,” she admitted, “but the board doesn’t care how well the team gets along. They care about capital. Learning to speak that language gave them confidence in me as a CEO candidate. But with the team, it’s all about people, because nothing happens without them.”

White encourages aspiring leaders to fall in love with the P&L. Not just as a financial report, but as a form of revealed strategy. Showing where the business truly creates value, beyond its stated ambitions.

The skills to keep and the ones to shed

Some habits have carried forward. White still conducts one long-form user interview every week. “I was shocked by how many people told me to stop. As if spending time with our users could ever be a waste. It keeps me grounded and gives me confidence when investors or partners push us in new directions.”

Other habits had to go. As Clue downsized in recent years, White had grown comfortable jumping into the work herself. As CEO, she realised that proximity was no longer helpful. Delegation and restraint became essential.

“You can’t blurt out half-baked ideas anymore,” she said. “People take them as gospel. Restraint is hard, but necessary.”

Unlearning self-censorship

One of the more personal reflections came when White admitted she had long held back her opinions. “For years I thought differently from everyone else. I don’t like founder mode. I think North Star metrics are nonsense. But I kept quiet. I didn’t think my opinion mattered or that people wanted to hear it.”

Now, she argues, opinion is the job. Leaders are literally paid to have one. Her advice: practice earlier, and don’t wait until you reach the C-suite to speak with conviction.

The future: AI cannot replace connections

Clue itself has weathered turbulence. The company is now cashflow-positive, no longer reliant on external investment, a milestone White takes pride in. “We pay our own bills. That freedom lets us flex our wings and choose the impact we want to have.”

Looking ahead, she sees AI as a powerful tool but not a replacement for human insight. “Generative AI cannot create from nothing. The spark comes from human connection, from the empathy and discovery that only people can provide.”

Her vision is a future where AI augments, but the enduring value lies in how humans connect, learn, and build together.

Conclusions from the Fireside

Rhiannon White’s conversation with Rory Madden was less about a neat career playbook and more about embracing the messy, very human reality of leadership. Stepping into the CEO role reshaped how her words carried weight, forcing her to recognise that even casual ideas could send teams sprinting. She’s learned to distinguish between the moments when teams need to get wet in the rain and learn for themselves, and the moments when she must step in to stop a collision.

Her curiosity, once focused on users, now stretches across the entire organisation. From finance to marketing to operations, while her growing fluency in finance has become the bridge to credibility at the executive level. Perhaps most importantly, she’s discovered that leadership requires speaking opinions out loud, earlier and with conviction, rather than holding back.

In the end, White’s lesson is that leadership is not about having all the answers. It’s about holding the tension between numbers and people, autonomy and accountability, curiosity and conviction. Or, in her own words:

“I don’t really know what CEO-ing is yet. Maybe none of us do. But it’s not lonely unless you make it lonely. And it’s endlessly fascinating if you stay curious.”

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