Life at Lendi: How Michelle balances life and being Lendi's Head of Product

We recently sat down with Michelle Elliott, Head of Product at Lendi, who shared her success story on how to navigate and progress in the ultra competitive tech industry, all whilst managing the everyday challenges life brings such as a global pandemic and balancing motherhood.

“I am a Mum of a year 1 daughter so have spent the last few months working at home with an industrious, and sometimes distracting ‘colleague’.”

As the Head of Product, can you share some steps that paved your journey into this role?

When I first joined Lendi, the team was relatively small and I was one of the first Product Managers onboard. We had a very fast growing engineering team as well as a design team, the product team was only in its inception. Initially I was the Product Manager with the team working on gathering data on the home loan application.

Since then we have a team of 10 working across 7 engineering teams. The focus has shifted and we’ve moved to a new, more robust and reliable technology architecture which has dramatically improved the user experience for customers, streamlining the process. Now as Head of Product, the interface is unrecognisable from when I first joined the team.

Being being an integral player in such a giant leap in the tech space must have had its challenges, do you have any tips on how to excel?

There are two simple things which gave me the opportunities and led to my success at Lendi.

1. Never be afraid to ask a question or raise a concern: Often this uncovers something we should dig deeper into, or prompts a discussion to mitigate a potential problem sooner. Earlier in my career when there was something I had doubts about, I often would assume that those working on the details would already have thought of, and addressed all concerns. I soon came to learn that was not always the case! One of Lendi's core values is great minds don’t need to think alike. The risk for me to raise something is low, and the value is high if it means we can avoid surprises later.

2. Always communicate early: As Product Managers we are familiar with having to deal with product delivery going off track. We sometimes have to revise expectations on delivery based on unknowns that have popped up. While it can be an uncomfortable conversation and you can feel like you’re letting stakeholders down, being transparent and upfront early helps reset expectations and everyone is on the same page.

Now like most of us in Australia, you have been experiencing the latest lockdown. As Head Product has this brought any increasing challenges?

We have all had to make quick changes and decisions affecting our home and work life. Our Flex-First policy, (which allows Lendi Group staff to decide their preferred working location to suit lifestyle lockdown or not), really accommodates the team's diverse home lives, and allows us to be productive in a way that works for our lives and family, as well as Lendi.

It sounds like the team was already used to managing the work-life balance with our Flex-First policy and that created quite a smooth transition into the latest lockdown.

Yes, and I have noticed that Lendi has really stayed true to what was mentioned during my interview process, that Lendi really values outcomes as a measure of success. The trust in the team when the whole business moved to work from home overnight, has led to many positives in how Lendi’s evolved. Having a healthy working relationship, or any relationship, based on trust is ultimately going to drive for better outcomes.

Lendi is hiring!

We're always on the lookout for passionate, motivated individuals who are excited about innovation and ongoing learning. If you're looking for a new opportunity check out our open roles and company page to find out more.