AMA: Realtor.com Sr. Director, Product Operations, Casey Flinn on Stakeholder Management

Lts flip this around - what are the questions our new partners are thinking of, but probably will not ask us? I can gaurantee there are at least four: * Will I like working with this person? * Can I trust this person? * What change is this person going to create? * Do we have the same expectations about how we work together? I am framing things this way for two reasons. First, the primary objective when meeting new partners is always to lay down a foundation of trust. A great way to start building that trust is to be genuinely curious about your partner's perspective and offer up answers vs. making them dig around. Second, it's far too common that we start with trying to understand that person's role ahead of understanding the person themselves. Remember, we work with people, not roles. There will be plenty of time to talk about the work in front of you, your roles and responsibilities, and OKRs. A few finer points: I encourage everyone to take on a mindset of having partners vs. stakeholders. Personally, having stakeholders feels adversarial to me. I know it's semantics, but consider if you would rather be considered a partner or stakeholder :) There are specific questions you should answer together in order to set healthy boundaries and clear expectations. All too often unclear boundaries and expectations are the fuel for discord and drama 1. Who is the decision maker for X, Y, and Z? 2. How do you like to receive feedback? 3. What does it look like for us to disagree and commit? 4. If we feel the need to escalate something where we are at an impasse, how do we do that together in a way that preserves our partnership?

If you believe that your partners are there to help you build the best experiences/products possible, then you should have continuous feedback loops with them not just at the start and finish. The most effective teams include their internal partners in their sprint cadences which look something like this: * You are involving them early in the discovery process to see the opportunities you are exploring and the outcomes you are trying to achieve. This is how you can make sure you are aligned from the beginning and get everyone committed to the path forward. * You have a continuous cadence and are inviting them to sprint reviews and/or making recordings available so you can prevent surprises about how the solution is evolving based on what you are learning. This process here is probably most critical because if your internal partners are there for the whole journey, then launching a product is that much easier as 1) they have context and details of what is being built and 2) they can start their work in parallel and iterate with you along the journey vs. making it a "handoff" to them at the end. * You are creating a culture of mutual accountability by creating space for them to share how their work is progressing alongside yours. The norm seems to be that the product team needs to be transparent and show their work and ask for feedback, but is this reciprocated by your internal partners? I don't think this all fits into a sprint demo, but I have used GTM demos as a place for partners like sales, operations, product marketing, etc. to show the progress they are making and for the product team to give feedback. Having these conversations and feedback loops is a way to ensure that the whole experience works well and has high quality. * Lastly, consider inviting your internal partners to your retrospectives or holding a separate one.

It's often overlooked, but I believe it all starts with being genuinely interested in other people's perspectives. 1. The more diversity you can include in your thought process the better the output will be. And in a culture where the "best idea wins," this sets you up for success because there is a lot of research that shows the best ideas start with the most diverse inputs. 2. People want to feel like their opinions matter and that they are being heard. Being genuinely interested is a way to demonstrate that you care about what people think. This doesn't mean you are always going to do what they want but, they were part of the conversation and consideration. Even if they see a sliver of their perspectives reflected in the position you are trying to drive, it shows that you did listen. 3. Influence is a give-and-take game. People often mistake "being influential" with "never being swayed but being genuinely interested in the perspectives of others means you just might have your own opinion swayed. Showing that you can adopt positions you didn't originally hold deposits "influence capital" into your relationships that will be there for you to withdraw someday. 4. Finding flaws in your own thinking. Face it, you aren't perfect nad you don't know everything. A way to lose credibility (and influence) is to come off as materially wrong. Not just you forgot a fact, but rather you are not in command of ALL the facts. The perspectives people have around you can fill in those gaps before you make a material mistake. 5. Understanding motivations. Genuine interest in people is also a way to understand their motivations, and understanding motivations is a fast path to being influential. People do stuff that benefits them - this is not a bad thing it's just a fact. If you understand what motivates a detractor, consider how you can reframe or adapt your point of view to better connect with their motivations. To be clear I'm not talking about quid pro quo and negotiation here. I'm talking about finding ways to demonstrate to your peers and partners that you understand them so that they see how your point of view helps them achieve their goals.

This sounds glib, but you have to fix the goals. You cant achieve win:win when the goals are misaligned. If you and your internal partner are empowered to change the goals then you need to do the work to pick a new shared team goal. Having misaligned goals is just brutal to people and teams. This is also a great exercise in thinking bigger and more about company/customer/business goals vs. team/individual goals. If this is out of your control, then escalate ASAP. Escalation is not a bad thing. Senior leadership is there for this reason, and great leaders would recognize this as their duty and responsibility to solve and will appreciate you raising this issue so they can unblock you.