Hi There –

My company has a defined role of “Persona Owner” — but this is something I’ve never heard of before and can’t find evidence of it existing elsewhere. So I’m wondering what you’d call it.

The idea is simple — find a senior, experienced individual for each persona we’ve internally identified to come in and take ownership of all aspects of our products and services that are aimed at that particular persona.

For example, if we’re making a boat, we’d have a “Captain” persona owner to oversee all aspects of the boat to make sure that, at the end of the day, it’s a boat that does what they want it to do — something a Captain would buy. In this role, they’d oversee our team of boat makers (carpenters, electronic experts, mechanics, etc) to make sure the boat they make is best in class.

There are some obvious flaws in this example — is the Captain a commercial fisherman or a tour boat operator? Because that would affect the type of boat we build for that person. But assume for a moment that we have enough specificity for each role to get beyond this sort of thing.

I put together a job description, but it’s had limited success, which tells me I’ve described a position that isn’t common, or perhaps something that senior people would rather not be involved in. This role is highly technical, yet not a coding position, and skews towards product management, but is thought of as more of an engineer role. Confusing, I know.

And that’s what brought me here. Would love your feedback. Or if this is an invalid post (or if there’s a better thread please let me know).

Thank you in advance for your time.