How do you manage people who don't necessarily report to you? This could be while giving feedback on a piece of work? Or getting them to prioritize the project you're running.

Scroll down for answers to the specifics you called out, but I'll start with a more general framework first: 

I find that a lot of this starts with your own mindset and attitude towards the people you're working with. When you don't officially manage someone (and even if you do), I find that thinking of these relationships as partnerships is incredibly important. When you frame your working relationships as partnerships, you are more likely to approach the relationship with respect and trust. 

But what does that mean in practice? In no particular order, here are some of the things I try to keep in mind when working with others: 

Start by trying to understand the other person

I like to do an introductory meeting where I ask what the person's day-to-day looks like, what motivates them, what they're focused on in the next few months, and what success looks like for them. I will also ask what I can do to be a better partner to them and what they care about being involved in. Understanding that helps me have more empathy in my approach, helps the folks I work with feel heard, and also enables me to advocate for my work in terms they'll care about. 

Involve people early and often

Each person I work with brings a unique and important perspective to what I'm building in Product. I believe you're able to create better products when you take a collaborative approach in your work. Involving people in the "I'm in discovery mode" or "let's brainstorm product ideas!" phase and beyond makes it much easier for people to be aligned with what you're doing and to be able to support you if you're involving them from the beginning.

From there, the work doesn't stop. I try to periodically follow-up at various phases to continue getting feedback and sharing out. Roadmap planning, research learnings, product spec documents, early designs, QA and post-launch learnings are all opportunities to involve your team and take them along for the ride. 

Be respectful of other people's time

Even if someone is meant to be a "support" function for your role, that person likely has a million things on their plate, of which you are only one piece. With that, I try to make sure when I ask someone of their time, I give them as much notice as possible, and I am coming to the table with the details that will give them context on what I'm working on and what I might need to ask of them. 

Nothing is more frustrating than being asked for something at the last minute or having a meeting thrown on your calendar the same day with zero context, right? Don't do that to others. 

Be flexible and creative on how you work with someone

By and large, people want to be helpful, and sometimes, it just takes a bit of creativity and flexibility to get support. Some ways I've worked this out with others:

• If they can only help me with one thing, what would that one thing be? Can I reduce my ask to the core thing I need to move foward at this stage? 
• Is there any flexibility on when something I need is done? Maybe I can wait a month or a quarter, as long as there's commitment to working on the thing down the line. 
• Can the person I'm working with enable me to do the work on my own? This often comes into play when recruiting for research or conducting studies, as an example. 
• Could I "borrow" help from another team or from an agency that my partner works with? 

Provide context

People are more likely to listen to you or do what you ask when you can provide context on why. Examples of context:

• "We are working on this because 70% of customers have asked for this"
• "If we don't do this, we may put morale at risk, which will result in people leaving the comapny"
• "Leadership sees this as a top priority" 
• "If we don't invest in this now, here are 2-3 things that we could lose out on"

Be explicit about agreements and expectations

Oftentimes, when partnerships have gone south, a lot of that stress has been around both sides not being on the same page around what each person's role is, what the expected output or outcome is, or the timing by which something is done. In my introductory call, I like to probe on this by asking "what do you see your role as?" and as we work on projects together, I will often say things like "Would it be reasonable for you to do X by Y date and time?" 

The added bonus of being this clear is that if someone doesn't deliver on something they've promised, you have more permission to hold them accountable to what they committed. "Hey, you mentioned you'd be able to do X by Y - how're things going? I noticed the deadline's passed." 

Clarifying priorities - aka escalation - is okay.

Early in my career, I thought of "escalation" as a dirty word - one that people used to be political or to throw someone under the bus. It is still a loaded word (so use the word "escalation" sparingly), but I've learned that the concept of escalation doesn't have to be scary.

If you have tried all of the above and you're still not getting what you need from others, it's time to ask yourself and your partner two questions: (1) is my work not as high priority as I feel it is? (2) is my partner not prioritizing my work when they need to? 

If your manager or your leadership team agrees that other projects are just more important than yours, the conversation then starts to shift towards what timelines are reasonable for your projects given that your projects are lower priority or what are other projects you should be working on in the mean time. 

If in fact your partner should be prioritizing your work, the conversation may shift towards "how can I better support you in getting my work prioritized?" Sometimes, partners need others to surface up to their leadership that they are underresourced or need that clarity for themselves.

WHEW! Okay, that's all off the top of my head.

For the specific scenarios you outlined... 

On giving feedback on a piece of work

• Ask questions to understand why someone has made the choices they did. You may learn something that you weren't considering previously. People will often hear me say things like "Can you walk me through why X is this way? I'm curious to learn more." or "Have you considered Z facet about this flow or user?" 
• Bring up specific reasons if you don't agree with something, grounded in something that is not just your opinion. Common phrases might be... "Have you considered this fact about our users...?" "I believe this should be shorter b/c the audience receiving this skims" "We did a previous test or study that shows this way of doing something may not be as effective" 
• Focus on what you want to see more of, not "don't do that". It's not helpful to someone if you say "I don't like this" or "This is not helpful". It's helpful to hear "I'd love if this item could focus more on this" or "I really like this portion of what you've done - how might we get more of that?" 
• Focus on the intended outcome, not how your partner achieves that outcome. If you get too far in the weeds of how your partners do work - it's a recipe for being a micro-manager and prevents you from scaling your impact over time because you're constantly in the details. If you don't agree on something, check yourself on - are you being prescriptive about how they do their job? Or is it that you're concerned the desired outcome won't be reached? If the former, then maybe it's not feedback worth giving or do so with a lot of caveats "I know this is totally personal preference, so feel free to ignore this, but I think this would be better if you did X" or if the latter, be clear on the desired outcome. 

On getting people to prioritize your work

Use the tips above! In summary... 

• Make the ask, and be sure to provide the context and details your partner needs to determine when and how they can support you 
• Be flexible and willing to get creative on how your partner supports you
• Re-examine priorities if you're hitting a wall, and make sure everyone gets on the same page of what the likely outcomes will be as a result if you can't get the help you need

Watch my answer on Loom, or read the transcript below!

There is a lot in this question, and I think it's necessary to unpack it a bit in order to respond to all of the threads.

So really let's dive into this question of managing people that don't report to you. I think there's a lot in that word "manage", and we see a few of those connotations in the sub questions here around giving feedback on a piece of work or getting them to prioritize the product or project you're running.

So in this first area, "feedback" - presumably this is constructive feedback. Possibly also constructive feedback around the fact that they're not prioritizing what you want them to prioritize. But it may just be an influence area of they're juggling multiple things. You want them to juggle your thing more than other things.

Really, the heart of this to me is communication and being very clear about what you need from the person, when you need it, why you need it, and what the interface is between you and that person.

So I'm going to work under the assumption here that this could be someone who's a cross-functional peer, or even more likely given the context here someone lower on the reporting hierarchy than you. So you could theoretically be their manager if you were in their function, but you're not in their function.

Distilling this question, it's something like: I need to give manager style feedback, but I'm not their manager. What do I do?

And what you do is: you communicate with them as if you were their manager. And when I say that, I'm coming from a position where as a manager, you should not be bossing them and saying: "do this".

You should be giving them clear expectations of what you need, why you need it, when you need it by, and also seeking to understand what's on their plate. What are they prioritizing? Why are they prioritizing it? You know, in a lot of these situations, you may find out that the reason why someone isn't actually doing what you want them to do, or they're not delivering work in the way you want them to deliver, is because they have other obligations that you don't know about. And in some cases, those obligations might actually be contra-purpose with what you are aiming for.

And by asking these questions, you're going to find out about something that you really should be aware of. And then maybe you can then address a root cause somewhere else in the organization that is causing this kind of downstream effect, that's hindering your work.

So getting back to the core question here, how do you manage people who don't necessarily report to you? You speak to them, candidly, you seek to understand what their priorities are and you clarify what you need when you need it, and why you need it.

Providing feedback or managing the work of someone that doesn't report to you can be challenging, but ultimately doing that well is very similar to managing a direct report. You should:

1. Build rapport: the person should trust that you are competent, that you understand what is important and why, and you'd only ask them to do things that are worth doing. You should care about them and not just come to them simply to "get things done for you." Ask them about their other projects and goals and share your insights on how your ask helps with their goals.

2. Align on goals: nothing will go smoothly unless the two of you have a shared goal. Before asking for something, explain why it is important and how it contributes to the greater team's success, including how it helps their priorities. Help them see how achieving this goal will help them and their teams.

3. Set expectations: be clear on what is needed and by when. Make sure to explain the why behind these expectations - if there's a looming due date, why is it important that the due date is met? If you ask for a specific level of quality, what is the work going to be used for that requires that level of quality?

4. Identify conflicts and help resolve them: the most common conflict will be the time to prioritize the work. See if the person is being asked to work on too many things and, if so, help them prioritize the right work (ideally the one that you're asking for) by working with them and/or their managers to clarify the importance of the competing priorities and align on why this is the most important thing to do now.

5. Recognize great work: make sure that you give credit to others for the work that they do, don't try to take any credit. They earned the recognition for their great work.

Vision -> Ownership -> Clear expectations -> Progress -> Feedback 

It is very common for PM’s to lead initiatives where the members in the working group don’t report to them. My approach towards managing team members who do not directly report to me while ensuring that the initiatives stays on track and folks are motivated involves following steps:

1. Compelling vision - Get the team excited by painting a compelling picture of the desired outcome and impact for the team members, users and the broader organization 

2. Ownership - Foster an environment where team members feel like they can openly communicate and participate in decision-making. Encourage them to provide inputs and share accountability for the success of the initiative

3. Clear expectations and goals - Define objectives, timelines, and deliverables around shared goals. Ensure team members understand their specific roles and responsibilities

4. Track progress and provide feedback - Monitor progress through regular check-ins and hold team members accountable for their commitments. Provide timely feedback to  identify corrective actions, and realign the team if needed

As a PM, you are always “influencing without authority”. The main factor that helps with influencing is identifying shared goals. Once you have shared goals, the discussion is on even ground. The shared goals could be KPIs around a project or around completion of a job. If there are no obvious shared goals, then make time to understand create one. Ability to connect the impact of the feedback to these goals creates quick action.