How do you ensure alignment when you have two senior executive stakeholders who disagree with each other on the proposed strategy and you are stuck in the middle?

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. Depending on the manager, they might just solve the issue for you. If not, then they may be able to back you up in other ways. 
• Get the executive stakeholders in a room together and clearly outline the conflict in strategy. I find it helps to have a short blurb or 1-pager clearly outlining: 
• This is my understanding of what we are trying to do (goal, problem to solve, opportunity)
• Outline the strategies that are currently up for debate, pros/cons, and other considerations for each approach
• Clarify what decision you need made to be able to move forward 
• Share the impact of delaying this decision
• Facilitate the conversation by asking each executive to share their thoughts on the strategies, if they have strong feelings about the path forward and why they feel strongly.  
• If the entire group is able to reach an agreement, document it. As you move forward in the strategy, be sure to update both of them on how things are going. 

A few phrases and questions that can help in these situations: 

• What can we move forward with that makes both parties comfortable?
• Can we validate either direction in a lightweight way or with data? A short analysis or talking to a few customers usually helps clear direction. 
• Is this a situation where we just need to disagree and commit? 

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 about a given strategy, plan, write-up, etc. Often disagreements in strategy come down to one person or team worrying about downstream consequences that can often be mitigated once they are out in the open.

The other useful tool in these situations is steel-manning. The idea is that often during disagreement and debate, you see people ‘straw-manning’ each others opinions. They construct a flimsy version of the other person’s opinion (the straw-man) and easily refute it. Steel-manning does the opposite. It forces both parties to clearly re-articulate the best version of the other person’s strategy proposal. I find that when two executives are disagreeing, forcing the group to steel-man both proposals enables them to be properly compared.

After using these two tools, I’d say the last piece is getting to the point where one person is able to mitigate their fears in the opposing strategy and effectively disagree and commit. Clearly stating both of these parts at the end of the process is essential. One effective way at achieving this is to frame problems and strategy decisions clearly in a writeup and have the team be transparent with their feedback and questions, through what I call two-way writeups.

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 with each other on something that's important to you?

Let me tell you what not to do. Don't get in the middle!

The middle is a very dangerous place for you to be. You don't have context for what is driving their disagreement and You don't have the authority or power or awareness to even be part of that conversation.

Don't try to solve it. It's just going to be problematic for you, and you're never going to solve the issue.

So what do you do? Well, you need to get your job done. So focus on what your job is. First, is there a way for you to narrow what you're proposing to find alignment? So constantly re-anchor the conversation on the question that you need answered the, agreement that you need to drive.

Oftentimes, the disagreements that happen among executive stakeholders are at least one degree away from what you actually need. Oftentimes several degrees away from what you actually need.

So bring it back. Re-anchor. What do you need explicitly? Ask for it. "This is what I need to move forward. Can you commit to this?"

Of course, let the conversation go a little bit, because again, you don't want to be getting in the middle and you don't want to be one of the people who are arguing here. You want to let a natural break happen and then say, "let's focus on this one thing."

And again, with all of these things, you always need to be clear. "This is the impact I need this today or in the next week or in the next two weeks in order to ensure XYZ, without that ABC will happen."

Really focus on the absolute minimal amount of oversight that you need agreement, that you need alignment, that you need to get your job done.

Now, in an ideal situation, you don't need to get approval from executives except in potentially problematic one way door decisions. And so I would also encourage you to ask yourself, are you at a place that prioritizes autonomy? And is this a one-time thing, the exception that proves the rule, or is this a frequent occurrence. Because your growth depends upon your autonomy. You need to be able to make decisions quickly, to take actions quickly in order to fail faster and learn more.

So yes, solve THIS problem. Everybody has to deal with it. We're all humans working in human organizations, people disagree. This is just how it works. The more responsibility that you have, the higher the complexity of the problems that you face. are the less that you have safety nets.

But if you're running into this problem all the time, there might be a delegation and autonomy problem at your organization. If you, you have a larger issue, and one which you need to address.

'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 the individuals might be participating in discussion but they would not be the driver or approver of the decision.

In this situation, I often ask the relevant leaders to write one pager memos explaining the issue in their words and their suggested recommendation. Once the problem is on paper and there is an open discussion, usually everyone understands what is the right decision to adhere to, in terms of company priorities over team priorities.

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 exxplaining the pros and cons of their polar opinions. As always, it is you 3 against the problem and not one against another. Can't stress this enough,Being a manager neccesitates being an empatethic individual

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 to each stakeholder and what they are trying to achieve. Understanding their goals will enable you to try and create a solution that becomes a win-win.

For example, your sales team wants to launch a beta product to maximize in-quarter revenue but your Finance & Operations team wants the backend accounting workflow to be completed before launch; and this work will take 3 months.

The question for you as the PM is to answer if the current product-readiness will win the customer and drive the business forward. If the answer is yes, then look at middle-ground solutions. For eg: in-quarter beta launch but sales can only sell to 'x' customers that Ops team will manually support before product builds the automation.

Start with aligning on what is the best experience for your customers and driving product outcomes, understand stakeholder goals and determine solutions that address these in phases.

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 – the real issue is that there isn’t agreement on the path forward yet and you need to build alignment.

And that’s totally fine. Lack of alignment is a normal part of the process and arguably a good thing – diversity of thought and opinion makes for better decisions.

So let’s talk more broadly about driving to consensus. Presumably you are bringing a well researched and reasoned proposal to the table. But despite your best efforts, almost certainly haven’t thought about everything and haven’t anticipated all of the complicating factors. Execs have a wealth of experience and pattern recognition they can share with you. Now it’s time to make the proposal stronger through the magic of discussion and debate. Here are a few tips to make that as productive as possible

1. Pre-flight the idea with the key players. See if you can get 1:1 time with as many of the stakeholders to review ahead of time. Understand their concerns, objections, etc. They are going to tell you things you didn’t think of and take your thought in better directions. It goes so much more smoothly if you learn those things ahead of time and strengthen the proposal with their feedback first
2. Learn the key players. Practice your customer research skills on your execs. What do they care about? What are their priorities? How are they measured? How will your proposal affect what they are trying to achieve?
3. Learn how to persuade. Data is your friend here, and it will trump intuition and gut all day every day. Some people respond better to quantitative stats (x% of customers use this feature), other to qualitative (Mary at customer X told me…). Have both and be prepared to shift based on to whom you’re speaking.
4. RESEARCH. Nothing important happens in the office. Speak with as many customers, users, partners, analysts as possible so you have ammo for (3) above

To resolve this situation, you need to:

1. Establish who is the decision maker (it can't be two people) 
2. Summarize conflicting points of view and communicate the process of how you evaluate them (pros & cons, etc.)
3. Provide a clear recommendation based on your evaluation and decision-making framework
4. Have the team commit (sometimes, "disagree and commit") to the plan. 

At Atlassian, product managers use the DACI framework to move forward on decisions that are complex and/or have multiple stakeholders with opposing views. It's just one framework you may want to use, there are others, of course. Look up "Atlassian DACI" as it's featured on our website.

When senior executives disagree, you can help getting the situation unstuck by bringing in additional context, information, or factors to consider to the discussion. A few of these could be:

1. Help structure the conversation by documenting arguments in favor and against the strategy. Document what are the arguments in favor and against the proposed strategy, try to do this in a way that's neutral and unbiased. Then focus the discussion on the merits of each of those arguments.

2. Outline a framework to evaluate the strategy. Looking at the arguments in favor and against, you can get a good sense of what are the underlying factors that matter to determining whether the strategy is worth pursuing. One executive may be focused on potential gains (e.g., more revenue) while another may be focused on containing risk (e.g., preserving current revenue). Try to break down the underlying factors that each argument is trying to support , so that it becomes clear what is being used to decide. Then use this to guide the discussion with a focus on the acceptable parameters for the various executives.

3. Look at what others have done. If the strategy has been used by other people, companies, products, do the research and share the examples and any data around whether they were successful and why. Be thoughtful in how you compile the information so that it helps further the discussion.

4. Bring in other leaders to the discussion. Two senior executives can have a lot of context, but there may be other executives or senior leaders (even below their level) that can provide more context or insights that can help move the situation forward. For example, when stuck on a disagreement between a sales leader (focused on revenue) and a product leader (looking to simplify systems) around a revenue initiative, consider involving a finance leader or a customer success leader to weigh in and provide their perspective.

In summary, I'd focus on ways to expand the conversation or reframe it by bringing in more context and data or bringing clarity by structuring the conversation into clear criteria that you can focus on.

It's a tough situation if you, as a product manager, find yourself stuck in the middle without alignment. There are certain steps you can follow if you're in such a situation:

1. Seek early feedback: Engage with stakeholders beforehand to gauge their support, concerns, or opposition to your proposed strategy. Understand their priorities and address their feedback where possible early on

2. Present data and insights: Support your strategy with objective information such as data, user research, and market insights. Use these insights to provide a foundation for decision-making and guide the discussion

3. Act as a neutral facilitator: If you find yourself in middle of a disagreement, assume the role of a facilitator focused on finding the best outcome for the product and the organization. Maintain neutrality and avoid alienating execs

4. Utilize decision-making frameworks: Leverage decision-making frameworks like RACI or RAPID to establish clarity on who holds the final decision-making authority

5. Establish evaluation criteria: Identify the underlying concerns or unique perspectives of stakeholders and translate them into specific evaluation criteria

6. Provide a recommendation: Based on the evaluation criteria, offer a clear recommendation that takes into account the input and concerns of all stakeholders involved

7. Escalate (if necessary): If progress remains elusive, consider escalating the issue to your management chain or a higher authority. Seek guidance and support to resolve the impasse and ensure the decision-making process moves forward

Reference:

https://www.bain.com/insights/rapid-tool-to-clarify-decision-accountability/

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/raci-chart/

At GitLab we have a DRI (directly responsible individual). The DRI is the one who's decision matters and even if there are senior leaders if they are not the DRI their opinion doesn't necessarily mean it be an outcome.

But let's say the company does not have this concept and as a PM you have to take both POVs into consideration. I would make sure to restate the company/business/division/product goals. I would then provide any evidence or data to suggest which direction is better. If there is no data, I would suggest conducting research for 3-4 weeks to better understand the problem space and market. Those are usually helpful strategies to iterate forward and disagree/commit/disagree.

Can relate to this question! I definitely struggled with similar situations earlier in my career. Interestingly I got the solution from the executives I was working with at the time. He suggested “get us together, tell us the team is struggling with completely different directions, and ask us ‘where should the team go’”. I think any seasoned executive, or team leader for that matter, knows they need to provide clear guidance to their teams. Sometimes the executives are just not aware their difference in opinions are causing confusion and blocking progress. This is not the only way to solve it, but I found just being transparent about the issue, and bringing your own opinions on the topic can help drive alignment.

I don't think there is a simple answer for this one, as each situation will be different.

But first I would say if you see misalignment between them then bring them together in a room, and have them acknowledge the misalignment. Making this visible will help you to move forward for escalation up to the person who can take a decision.

When you are stuck between the disagreement of 2 executives, there is no prescriptive playbook to help resolve this since the solution depends on the people involved, the phase of the company and the complexity of the problem. Some guiding principles to adopt to resolve the gridlock would be:

1. Take time to understand the “why” behind the respective leader's feedback. 

2. Add as much context and data on your preferred approach as you can and document everything in written format to drive discussion.

3. Avoid emails for discussion and use synchronous conversations to resolve.

4. If there are other people who can help with reaching an agreement, get their support/feedback.

5. Explore if there is a middle ground strategy that might drive alignment.

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 disagreed points can be opened for discussion with 3rd senior executive stakeholder, if available. Once inputs from all are received, you should see possibility for consideration or amendment in your proposed strategy, basis your own judgement and take final decision. There could be many reasons for 2 people disagreeing. Technnical disagreement can be resolved by involving more people or sharing data & past experiences but if reasons are personal you dont have authority to resolve and not your business to interfere, so keeping discussions strictly focussed on buying in closure of points of proposed strategy would help.