Stakeholder Administration for Product Managers
7 min read
Greater than 20 years in the past, tech entrepreneur and enterprise capitalist Ben Horowitz wrote {that a} good product supervisor is the CEO of the product. Many product managers disagree with this analogy, however it has some fact.
Senior product managers typically type robust relationships with the C-suite as they navigate transitional states, undefined targets, and competing stakeholders. A product supervisor’s knack for readability is pivotal in occasions of change when CEOs are more vulnerable. In these moments, strain from boards and pushback from staff can thwart strategic transformation, risking income and careers. By contracting a generalist product supervisor to handle relationships with stakeholders, CEOs can achieve operational insights and buy-in for merchandise and initiatives in any respect ranges of a company.
Why Product Managers Make Nice Deputies
Everybody likes a product supervisor. Or, at the least, nobody is threatened by them. That’s as a result of product managers don’t have any authority outdoors of the product staff. Their purpose is to make sure the product roadmap solves compelling issues and addresses person priorities. To do this, they need to examine the ins and outs of every enterprise unit, constructing rapport alongside the best way.
Consequently, stakeholders really feel secure answering questions that would expose vulnerabilities or trigger misunderstandings. For example, certainly one of my purchasers, a for-profit college group, was acquired in a leveraged buyout, and the brand new board ordered staff to digitize decades-old processes. However the board’s steering was imprecise and didn’t make sense in each state of affairs, main some stakeholders to disregard directives or quietly improvise their very own workflows. Had this been found, management would have penalized these stakeholders for going off-script. However their habits was a realistic response to systemic issues they’d no authority to eradicate. I documented these top-down issues, not the stakeholder workarounds, as critical ache factors we wanted to resolve.
A product supervisor makes use of cultural info to map the corporate’s de facto processes, then shares problem-solving suggestions with the C-suite. Right here’s how they go about it.
How Product Managers Method Key Stakeholders
An skilled product supervisor will construct rapport with stakeholders to determine issues at first of a venture, negotiate options to these issues, and be certain that the options are viable. This course of requires a collection of steps that leverage the product supervisor’s comfortable abilities and a broad array of onerous abilities.
Listening
Initially of a venture, the product supervisor will maintain one-on-one conferences to permit stakeholders to talk freely about their ache factors with out the chance of retaliation. If there isn’t time to fulfill with each stakeholder, the product supervisor will goal a subset with essentially the most affect. These stakeholders are sometimes long-tenured managers or contributors who perceive the group’s structural points and function mentors to their colleagues.
Subsequent, the product supervisor will divide groups into small dialogue teams to learn the way they perform. Maintaining these conferences small ensures that people really feel comfy airing grievances, strategies, or anxieties. By the top of the listening section, the product supervisor could have captured essential particulars about every stakeholder’s workflow and constraints.
Mapping
The product supervisor will then use a software like Miro or diagrams.net to map relational workflows, knowledge constructions, and organizational dependencies to launch additional dialogue with stakeholders. This map introduces management to on-the-ground realities and exhibits employees that different colleagues share their roadblocks and targets. The map additionally facilitates the roadmapping course of afterward, serving to to determine identified and unknown dangers to the group, from counterproductive workflows to looming disruptions that would have an effect on wholesome enterprise items.
At this level, some contract product managers will ship a tidy abstract and a few handsome slides earlier than signing off for good. This isn’t who you need to rent. An excellent generalist product supervisor will stick round to collaborate on stakeholder-led options that work and hand off day-to-day troubleshooting to an in-house product supervisor as soon as the venture is operating easily.
Participating
After drawing the map, the product supervisor will begin problem-solving, beginning with every stakeholder’s most simple ache factors. This train ought to yield speedy advantages for the group at giant. Nevertheless, keep in mind that the product supervisor mustn’t get too embedded inside a specific enterprise perform, or they threat turning into a part of the dysfunction they’re attempting to resolve.
As an alternative, the product supervisor ought to arrange bigger, cross-functional tasks and implement information-sharing processes to preempt siloing and friction. The product supervisor might choose representatives from every related enterprise unit (typically gifted however underutilized staff members) to collaborate on the venture.
Suppose gross sales and advertising want higher alignment. On this case, the product supervisor would possibly maintain a weekly working group with one marketer and one gross sales consultant to prepare their groups’ targets and processes and consider new buyer relationship administration (CRM) techniques. These representatives would then report their findings to their respective groups.
Mediating
Mediating amongst stakeholders is essentially the most delicate however rewarding stage for product managers. Methods might fluctuate, however my strategy to mediation is easy:
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Set up a gathering and embody all stakeholders who will use or be affected by the product. The invite record ought to embody the capabilities that different stakeholders are likely to overlook when planning main adjustments. These capabilities fluctuate between organizations however typically embody customer support, human assets, or finance. Extending invites to as many stakeholders as potential ensures that nobody derails the product out of self-interest, or fails to undertake the answer in favor of again channels.
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Based mostly on the assembly notes, draw a tough map of the capabilities’ overlapping and competing pursuits and priorities to seek out factors of commonality and battle.
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Foyer every staff by figuring out the way it will profit from an initiative. If a staff sees no upside to tasks that inconvenience it, it would choose out or resist. Say the CRM working group decides the engineers should replace the present platform to include new lead technology instruments for the gross sales staff. The ensuing disruption may final for months and closely influence advertising’s efficiency. To get advertising’s buy-in, the product supervisor should clarify the long-term benefits to the advertising staff, similar to improved automation options.
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Reconvene the stakeholders and supply one or two inventive options to the primary proposal in case it fails to achieve consensus. If stakeholders can’t agree on an answer, the product supervisor ought to choose one and clarify why it’s the most suitable choice.
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Repeat conferences with particular person stakeholders to solicit suggestions and clarify the plan’s influence on them and their groups. The objective is to have blunt discussions that the product supervisor can use to craft a compromise.
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Define an motion plan and guarantee stakeholders perceive that their ideas and time are very important and can generate worth for the group.
On the finish of this course of, stakeholders will view the product supervisor as a pleasant mediator and begin involving them in common info exchanges. Product managers capable of work throughout capabilities and with many stakeholders may help eradicate inefficiencies and silos all through the corporate.
How CEOs Get Misplaced within the Company Fog
The “fog of battle” is a time period derived from the treatise On Conflict by Prussian navy strategist Carl von Clausewitz. It refers back to the necessity of constructing operational choices with incomplete info. This fog additionally develops in altering organizations, similar to early-stage startups or extra established firms within the throes of a scale-up or digital transformation. Activist boards demand quick results, whereas anxious staff resist change, struggle over assets, or withhold info from management and each other. In the meantime, new purposeful overlaps and unexpected dependencies add complexity, deepening the chaos.
Within the case of the college group consumer I discussed earlier, educators, directors, and workers had been gradual to implement new processes as a result of the processes had been complicated or ill-suited for a particular context. When the board’s new imaginative and prescient did not manifest rapidly, it fired the CEO. By the point I arrived, the board had changed the complete C-suite twice in a single 12 months, to little impact.
Executives are sometimes too busy managing direct experiences and board expectations to watch operational trivialities. When efficiency lags, they could exert broad strain, worsening fissures and dysfunction inside the firm. An skilled product supervisor can break this vicious cycle by exploring all ranges of the group, gathering info, and organizing initiatives.
Product Managers Are Allies, Not Opponents
After the CEO, the senior product supervisor has essentially the most important transverse function inside an organization, developing webs of relationships and influencing tradition and strategic course. This affect can appear threatening to CEOs, notably if the product supervisor strays out of their lane. For instance, an overenthusiastic product supervisor would possibly counsel altering the corporate’s technique or suggest initiatives outdoors the scope of their project. The stress of heading off a rogue product supervisor can lead CEOs to micromanage, slowing decision-making and lowering autonomy all through the group.
CEOs and different C-suiters ought to keep in mind that it’s unlikely a wayward product supervisor has ulterior motives. Whereas the job does have some comfortable talent overlap with the CEO and even the COO, it lacks lots of the calls for of these roles. Product managers don’t take care of traders or the press like a CEO, or payroll and hiring like a COO, and that’s a part of the function’s attraction. However, finally, belief will rely upon the distinctive relationship between the CEO and product supervisor, notably in smaller firms. Expertise and expertise are necessary when evaluating a product supervisor, however belief will make the distinction between a counterproductive energy battle and a transformative collaboration.
