Gourdanen · Simone Dive · Vancouver
Fractional product leadership that gets in the work
You need senior product leadership. You do not need another executive salary, a six month search, or an advisor who audits from the sidelines. I step into your business a few days a week and run product like it is mine.
Nearly twenty years of it, from building BCLC's first UX and innovation departments to VP Product at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. What I leave behind is the operating model: how decisions get made, how evidence gets gathered, how teams ship, written down so it survives me leaving.
Who this is for
- Founders whose product is stuck and whose team cannot say why
- Businesses that need product leadership now, not after a six month search
- Teams that have the people but not the operating model
- Companies that want strategy reviewed honestly, or built from scratch
Ways we can work together
Fractional leadership
A few days a week inside your business. I take the decisions, the priorities, the delivery and the hard conversations.
Product operating model
How decisions get made, how evidence gets gathered, how teams ship, how work gets funded. I install it, then train your people to run it.
Strategy reset
An honest read on where your strategy actually stands, or a new one from a blank page. Choices clear, future clear.
Team development
Building the team, assessing the one you have, and hiring the people you are missing. Competency frameworks make the gaps visible and the development fair, and I stay until the hire lands.
How it runs
I run product alongside your team, then leave the way of working behind when I go, with champions ready to run it.
The pattern I meet most is a team handed a list of features and a date. They ship all of it, on time, and the number it was meant to move stays flat. Give that same team the problem rather than the list, and the number starts moving. That is usually the first thing we change.
You should be able to trace what a team is doing this month back to a company goal. If that line breaks anywhere, you get busy people and a flat number.
I work with AI in hand throughout, so I can review more and go deeper than one product leader normally could, and your team picks it up while I am there.
“I’ve had the incredible privilege of working with Simone at two different companies, and I can honestly say she is one of the most extraordinary product leaders I’ve ever worked with.
Simone has that rare combination of exceptional product, design, and UX instincts and a genuine, almost infectious obsession with customers. But what makes her truly special is her energy. Give her a hard problem, an impossible challenge, or a blank sheet of paper, and she lights up. The bigger the challenge, the more excited she becomes.
She has an extraordinary ability to make the people around her believe in what’s possible and to see beyond today’s constraints and imagine something bigger, better, and more meaningful. She brings people together, creates momentum, and makes the work feel exhilarating.
I would follow Simone into the hardest, messiest, most ambitious challenge imaginable. She is that good and that rare.
Steve Howard · Senior VP Strategy · Product & Strategy
Fair questions
What does fractional actually mean?
A set number of days a week or month, embedded in your business with real accountability. You get the leadership without the payroll, the search or the golden handshake.
How is this different from a consultant?
Consultants hand you a deck. I run the roadmap, sit in the decisions, coach the team and ship alongside them. What you keep is a working product organisation.
How long does an engagement last?
A strategy reset can be weeks. An operating model install runs a few months. Fractional leadership lasts as long as it earns its keep, and my goal from day one is to make myself unnecessary.
Do you work in person or remotely?
Both. I am based in Vancouver, Canada and work on site with companies here. Remotely I work with companies anywhere, and I have led product across Australia, the UK and North America.
What does it cost?
It depends on the shape of the engagement, so I price after an intro call rather than from a rate card. The call is free, and you will leave with a clearer picture either way.
Featured free seed packets
Three worth starting with on this path. Take them whether we ever work together or not. See all of them.
Product management competency framework
Fourteen competencies scored on the same five-rung ladder, from customer and market through data, business acumen, technical aptitude, design partnership, agile delivery, leadership and developing others. Then it holds your scores against the real profile of eight roles, junior PM through Director.
Use it to see the gap between where you are and the role you want, and to walk into your next development conversation with something specific to talk about. Have your manager score you too and compare.
Start the check-inThe AI Business Diagnosis
A free review of your business, department by department. Workflows, whether AI is the default or an afterthought, capability, willingness to change. Invite others to score it too and merge the reviews into one bloom.
Use it before you spend a dollar on AI tools or consultants.
Start the diagnosisThe Business Map
The whole business on one page. Vision and purpose, who you serve and what you promise them, what you run on, what you are honestly weak at, the goals, the horizons, and the three things this quarter with a name against each. Built to print at A3 and hang where the team sees it.
Use it when everyone could tell you what they are doing this week and nobody could tell you why.
Build my Business MapTell me what you want to grow.
It starts with a conversation, not a contract. No pitch, no deck about decks.
Plant something with me