Stakeholder Management

Influencing people across different functions and teams is very similar to what I outlined under the question "How do you manage peopel who don't necessarily report to you?" This includes things like:

Few tips here. First, build trust before you need it. It’s so important to build these relationships before you need to test them. Grab coffee, lunch, ask about people’s family life, etc. If you’re ab

It's often overlooked, but I believe it all starts with being genuinely interested in other people's perspectives. The more diversity you can include in your thought process the better the output wil

I love this question! It happens a lot and working through it is part of our role as PMs. There are a few layers to my approach here: First, start with building the relationship. (I hope this theme

This one is interesting.  If your goals are truly inversely correlated, I'd say there is something wrong with the top-line goals. That would suggest misalignment or lack of clarity higher in the org.

If you do feel that goals are inversely correlated, I believe it's important to outline the impact of a potential solution on the other person's goals and on your goals. There will be solutions where

First, if you truly have stakeholders whose goals are 180 degrees opposite from yours, that's an alignment problem in the organization's executive leadership team and you have to decide whether that's

1) See if its truly inversely correlated in all dimensions. It is likely there are some dimensions (e.g., customer hapiness) on which you have similar objectives. 2) See if you have common objective i

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 wo

That is a hard one to answer because there is no one-size-fits-all. There could be launches where the product rarely evolves and checking in with stakeholders once in a few months might suffice, at ot

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 mo

My objectives when meeting new stakeholders are centered around finding out more about them as a person and how they like to work, understanding their objectives, and getting feedback from them about

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 tru

Oh boy, this one is a doozy. Here's how I generally approach this situation - hoping it helps:  Make sure your manager is aware of the conflict and see how they might be able to support you. Dependin

There are two things I think about in cases like this: fears and steel-manning. I’ve found that one of the fastest ways to help get alignment amongst executives is to start by establishing their fears

Watch the video response on Loom, or read the transcript below: This question is a tough one. How do you ensure alignment when you have two executives, or sometimes even more than two, who disagree

Trying to understand views of both stakeholders and discussing Pros and Cons of points shared by both on given proposal would help in bringing more clarity about reasons for disagreement. And still di

'The stuck in the middle' is often a symptom of a larger problem which results from lack of operating principles for decision making. For example: we follow the DACI model for decision making where th

Carrying forward on the question above, it is imperative for you, as the mediator, to make the stakeholders seek common ground. Practically, this could involve a common session with. both of them exxp

Your primary role as a product manager is to ensure doing what is best for your products and customers. To manage conflict with stakeholders, try and listen to their point of view, what is important t

This is a really interesting question. I guess I’ve never really thought about being stuck in between two stakeholders before. Whether they agree with each other or not is actually mostly irrelevant –

To resolve this situation, you need to: Establish who is the decision maker (it can't be two people)  Summarize conflicting points of view and communicate the process of how you evaluate them (pros &

The following sources of feedback are very important to me and my team:  Customers our PM team is directly in contact with, as well as our direct digital feedback channels in the application Sales T

I know it sounds obvious, but it's important to have an open and early conversation about decision-making to avoid this becoming a blocker further down the line. You can use a RACI or DACI model to gu

Decision-making and roles and responsibilities around decision-making vary from team to team and company to company, and because of that, you are likely to run into this scenario at some point in your

Reality these days is that we mostly work in remote settings, and even when we do go to the office, some people will be dialing in. As a result, I believe 80% of the strategies have to do with focusi

I've tried to drive a writing culture in every team I've been on—with varying degrees of success. I don't think there's a more effective way to drive alignment, especially for remote teams. I'm a big

First, get good at written communications -- both as a writer and a reader. One of the most impactful lessons that I took away from the Amazon Working Backwards book by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar is ho

Team alignment is critical to maximizing impact within the organization, but there are so many barriers to alignment, even with in-person environments. These can often be compounded by remote teams, c

Product intuition is that elusive skill that we all look for and want to select, nurture, and encourage in our team members. If I had to break down product intuition, I’d break it down into the follow

Ultimately Product Management is about people. I do approach stakeholders differently, but it’s based on who they are, rather their role. Some stakeholders like to be consulted ahead of time, some p

Yes and no. I think of these relationships in terms layers of depth. Design and Engineering are, of course, your deepest stakeholder relationships. You're building a product together, so the dynamic

No, the foundations of stakeholder management are the same for me, irrespective of the discipline and expertise involved. Like I mentioned in one of my earlier answers: listening and developing empath

I do and it all starts with understanding their needs, what motivates them, and what demotivates them. Some teams like to be more involved and are motivated by being part of the process and others are

There are some commonalities and some differences. First and foremost, across all constituents, I always promise that product management will always listen to them, carefully consider their feedback a

It is important to align your requests to the goals of the team you are partnering with. From that perspective, you need to align your approach to stakeholder management. For example, your design lead

The answer is Yes. We do not expect every stakeholder will have same questions, similar stakes, similar mindset and same requirements hence management will be different when reaching out to various st