Stakeholder Alignment: The Underrated Skill Every Product Manager Needs
There is much buzz about whether AI could replace human product managers. I am not very concerned. Much of my work involves dealing with stakeholders at different levels and pursuing various objectives. AI will find it challenging to substitute that side of people interaction. I mean politics in a sense of power dynamics among multiple groups of stakeholders.
We don't like politics in the workplace, but it is inevitable when there are more than a dozen people.
Dealing with internal or external stakeholders always involves politics and personal-professional relationships. The larger the organization, the more complex the political landscape and the bigger the stakes.
The power dynamics impact everyone in the organization, including individual contributors. When an individual contributor (IC) transitions to a manager role, they become a part of the game without any choice.
I believe that business analysts, particularly those from outsourcing and consultants, are better than the rest of us in that field. Even as individual contributors, they are exposed to various stakeholders and learn to operate in different environments.
So when people from such roles transition to product management in enterprises, they are more effective in dealing with them than their colleagues with a purely engineering background.
You can't learn that solely from books. That comes with experience and some "political sense."
Such a sense helps to navigate flaws, leverage successes (even the smallest ones), and establish and maintain the right relationships. It also includes maintaining subordination and not messing with anyone's ego.
Whether you have a political sense or not, you can develop by paying attention to your relationships with and around others, how they evolve, and their outcomes. This can all be summarized as "social intellect," i.e., the ability to understand social dynamics, navigate interactions effectively, and adapt to different social contexts to build meaningful and influential connections.
Of course, you can also read management books, as many contribute to that topic.
As a product manager, you might be in a peculiar situation because you have a lot of responsibility but not enough power to execute it. You need to drive alignment across various parties, strive for resources, and seek attention.
I differentiate several types of the "alignment" stakeholders:
- Alignment on requirements
- Alignment on a solution
- Alignment on resources
Alignment of requirements implies requirements elicitation and further validation. The main and most challenging aspect is prioritizing those requirements and their sources. Every Subject Matter Expert (SME) wants that their needs and opinions would be treated at most. You, as a PM, also would like to treat your stakeholders equally well.
But that's not going to happen.
Early in my career, I learned that if you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.
Stakeholders have different "weights" based on their position in the organization, experience, and general reputation in an industry. Your responsibility is to identify the "whales" and lesser "fish."
The enterprise hierarchy should be helpful but may not represent the internal power dynamics. A seasoned IC's opinion may have more weight than that of a line manager on the level above.
That can happen for various reasons. The most common is when a manager is new and/or less experienced in the field compared to others. Such an IC serves longer and has more connections and recognition. That person could be a manager themselves, but they either don't want to or are not trusted enough. Or, they could be a lower-level manager working in the field with better awareness of the details and recognition.
Your job is to identify that imbalance and get the right direction. Sometimes, you are redirected to a heavy-weight SME from the start. Sometimes, it is like, "Oh, I forgot to mention you need to talk to that guy before I can approve the requirements." After those words, you usually start requirements elicitation from scratch.
There is always one missed stakeholder with whom you haven't engaged in the requirements process. I heard that phrase in a podcast and couldn't recall the source. But that has proved to be true so many times. You need to make sure you don't miss legal folks, security, and such whales.
Each SME has a professional role and an ego-driven personality. We say that no one should take work matters personally. But it isn't easy to let go when your feedback on certain questions is undervalued. We've all been there. Some people can handle that better than others, and some don't.
While prioritizing requirements, you don't want to mess with someone's ego. Sometimes, for the lower priorities, it is still worth spending time on communication and establishing the relationship. Setting the right expectations is tricky: "I appreciate your input, but in the current circumstance, I can't say when or even if it would be done." Be politically correct and empathetic because you don't know whether that stakeholder will become a critical one on the next initiative.
Having many stakeholders for many product initiatives, I tend to group them by area and further deal with them by those groups. That might be a natural step to save effort in the horrendous time product people spend on communication. I invited SMEs to a meeting, not considering their hierarchy (senior managers are another case, though): a manager and their most experienced subordinate. Everything worked fine for some time until the manager could not join one day.
I realized that the subordinate is a limitless source of very useful information. That didn't appear earlier, as the manager pulled a blanket on their side and basically silenced the guy.
Since that time, I have had separate conversations on different hierarchical layers. The drawback is that I need to re-iterate with the managers and conversations I had with their subordinates. Not saving much time, but I developed an efficient three-touch point strategy:
- Hey, I need to talk to some of your folks about…
- Talk to a subordinate
- Hey, I spoke with the guy, and that was said...
If a manager wants to be the center of every communication, that can become problematic, but I don't suggest acting behind the back anyway. Some people feel that they need to sign off on what their people say. That could be beneficial in some ways and totally frustrating in others.
Collaboration with stakeholders and aligning their sometimes conflicting priorities is a puzzling topic that deserves a broader highlight.
Please let me know if you are interested, and I will publish some insights on the topic.