Although disruption and bold reinvention often take centre stage in transformation, Stuff — New Zealand’s largest media company — has found a quieter, more introspective approach. 

During the INMA Asia/Pacific News Media Summit, Kyla Tawa, head of product, explored the powerful force of perspective. She views it “not as something as a nice to have, but as a practical tool for transformation — especially in a legacy publishing business.”

 Tawa outlined the importance of perspective through three lenses:

• Outsider vs. insider: “Seeing from both sides sharpens what you notice and also opens unexpected paths forward.”

• Historical vs. future: “Looking back shows what's worth taking forward and what has to change.”

• Individual vs. shared: “Perspective only becomes powerful when it is shared, and that’s what turns vision into action.”

Seeing what others miss

When Tawa entered the media industry two years ago, she didn’t carry the assumptions or shortcuts that seasoned insiders often rely on. That outsider lens, she explained, allowed her to notice things others might overlook: questions that hadn’t been asked in years, systems that no longer served their purpose, and definitions that had quietly drifted from relevance.

“Sometimes I felt like a persistent toddler,” she said. “Why do we do it this way? What’s the real goal here? What would happen if we didn’t?”

One such moment came during a coffee break at the INMA World Congress in New York, when she turned to Stuff CEO Sinead Boucher and asked, “What is news?”

Despite working in a newsroom for more than a year, “I realised it was a question I’d never asked out loud, nor had an answer for.” Attending a global media conference, Tawa realized she’d never heard a clear, shared definition. And that absence mattered.

She pointed to a recent Pew study, which found audiences now define news not just by timeliness and factuality, but by personal relevance and social importance.

“What qualifies as news for one person might not even register for another,” Tawa said. “People bring their own identities, interests, and needs to the way they decide what counts.”

If a newsroom’s internal definition doesn’t align with the audience’s lived experience, Tawa argued, then the organisation cannot truly serve its audience. Therefore, both an outsider and an insider’s perspective are needed: “The outsider lens helps you notice them, but insider knowledge helps you shape answers that actually work together.”

Balancing history with the future

Stuff’s print publications have been part of New Zealand’s daily life for over a century, shaping public discourse and connecting communities.

When Tawa joined Stuff, the company was just beginning to transition its most influential print titles into digital. That meant building strong Web sites, launching subscriptions, and giving editors more freedom through a flexible CMS. But before chasing new ambitions, the product team had to get the fundamentals right.

That meant stripping out friction — simplifying registration flows, integrating core systems, and adding direct-to-checkout paywalls. These weren’t glamorous projects, but they delivered consistent gains in conversion and retention. And it proved that small, focused changes can lead to big impact.

Still, Tawa kept returning to that foundational question: “What is news?” Because even as Stuff’s digital products improved, the ground beneath them was shifting and Tawan believed that if the audience’s definition of news had evolved, then perhaps Stuff’s role — and its business model — needed to evolve as well.

Understanding jobs to be done

“In product terms, it’s like the jobs to be done framework,” she said. “What jobs are people actually hiring us to do?”

If that job is “keep me up to date,” then speed is paramount — enter breaking news alerts, rapid production workflows, and headline-driven content. But if the job is “help me understand what this means for me,” then clarity and context become more important than speed.

This shift in perspective changes everything and led Tawa to revisit Stuff’s product platform. She learnt the platform was never meant to serve only the newsroom; it was designed to carry news, lifestyle, community events, service journalism, and even e-commerce — all within one ecosystem.

“When I realised that our product platform was designed for something more, it reshaped how I thought about product.”

And that historical lens gave Tawa a clearer picture of the future.

Individual vs. shared

But individual clarity alone isn’t enough, Tawa noted: “If people don’t see themselves in that future, it stays an idea instead of becoming reality.” Her role as head of product wasn’t to invent a new vision; it was to steward the one Stuff already had and make it usable, visible, and actionable.

To make the vision tangible, Tawa implemented three key strategies:

1. Meet people across the company. The product team touches every part of Stuff — editorial, marketing, advertising, customer support, and reader experience. Tawa prioritised connection, launching “brown bag” sessions where other departments shared their work, set up meet-and-greets to humanise Slack interactions, and began user journey mapping workshops to see the business through others’ eyes.

2. Foster a shared perspective of the future. “A vision only really matters if people see how it connects to their work,” Tawa said. A good road map shows the “why” alongside the “what,” helping teams understand how today’s tasks connect to tomorrow’s goals.

3. Create a culture of co-ownership. Vision only works if people know they can question, refine, and apply it in their daily work. The real signal of success, she said, is when someone says, “I don’t think that fits with what we know about our readers today.” That’s not pushback, she said; it’s ownership.

Transformation doesn’t begin with big, noisy moves, Tawa said. “It begins quietly, with a sharper question, a definition challenged, a team finally seeing the same horizon. These moments may not make headlines, but they create the conditions for everything that follows.”

And that, she said, is at the heart of product transformation in a legacy business. 

“It’s not just about new tools and new structures, it’s about shifting how we see — from outsider to insider, from history to future, and from individual to shared,” Tawa said. “Perspective is the lens that lets us reframe what feels fixed and see the possibilities that are already there.”

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