The Missing Discipline for Better Work | Chris Metcalfe

After years building software products, Chris Metcalfe crossed into People & Culture and noticed something surprising. Organizations invested enormous effort into understanding customers, testing ideas, and improving products, yet the work people did every day was rarely designed with the same discipline. That realization led him to ask a different question: what if work itself were managed like a product? In this episode, Dart and Chris discuss what happens when organizations move beyond HR as a service function, how product thinking changes the way work is designed, and why better work begins with solving the right problems.

Chris Metcalfe is a product leader and organizational strategist helping organizations apply product management to the design of work. After leading product teams at Workday, Docebo, and Primark, he now helps People teams build product capabilities through Red Oak and PX as a Product.

In this episode, Dart and Chris discuss:
- HR through a product lens
- Treating work like a product
- The customer inside your company
- Solving real work problems
- Outcomes over outputs
- The power of constraints
- Product thinking for HR
- Rethinking HR as product
- And other topics…

Chris Metcalfe is a product leader and organizational strategist who helps organizations apply product management to the design of work. He has held product leadership roles at Workday, Docebo, and Primark, where he led product teams spanning enterprise software and People & Culture. Today, he is the founder of Red Oak and PX as a Product, where he helps organizations build product-led People functions and apply product operating models to the design of work. He also writes The Operating Model, a newsletter on product leadership, organizational design, and the future of work.

Resources Mentioned:
Inspired, by Marty Cagan: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119387507
Transformed, by Marty Cagan: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119697336
SapienX: https://sapienx.co.uk/
Chris's newsletter, The Operating Model: https://metcalfec.substack.com/

Connect with Chris:
Red Oak: https://www.red-oak.agency/
PX as a Product: https://pxasaproduct.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-metcalfe-red-oak/ 

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.