How do you manage multiple stakeholders and how do you prioritize them?

Stakeholder management is crucial in Product Management. Start by identifying your stakeholders and understanding their concerns, motivations, and what matters to them. Once you have a clear picture of your stakeholders, you can prioritize them based on your product's life cycle stage, the outcomes you're aiming for, and where you'll need support and alignment.

For instance, if launching a new product, focus more on Product Marketing and Customer Support teams. Their support will be essential in raising customer awareness and ensuring success. On the other hand, if you're looking to scale a product that has achieved product-market fit and requires additional resources or investment, you might spend more time with executive stakeholders, discussing the business impact and future effects on crucial business metrics.

First it's critical to identify clearly who are the stakeholders. Usually business, engineering and design are the 3 you should work with very closely. Then you need to create meaningful relationships with them, so that they can really do their job of stakeholders as well.

It's important to realize that being a stakeholder comes with a lot of responsibilities as well towards the team: stakeholders need to show up at the product discussions, provide feedback, etc.. Looking at who shows up or not is a good way to figure out which stakeholders are really playing their role and should be prioritized to have an impact on the product, or not.