Stakeholder Alignment Presented by Robyn Brooks Director of Product Management, NAVEX Global

Who Am I? (And why should you care?) Started out as a high school Drama/English teacher, ended up teaching online for about three years Moved into LMS Administrator role, and after company acquisition, transitioned to Business Analyst, and then Product Manager Went to Product Manager School (Pragmatic Marketing), and developed a deep passion for the craft Discovered my ”super power” is diplomacy

What Is Your Super Power? Everyone has a core strength or “super power” in their role. What’s yours? (Superhero by Moriah Rich from the Noun Project) What Is Your Super Power?

“Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way” “Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way” - David Frost

Outcomes What paint points and goals do our customers have? What solutions can we build, market, sell, deliver and support? When you anticipate push-back from stakeholders, start with your own “pie in the sky” type of desired outcome What would absolute perfection look like? Then, come back to reality! Consider options that would move your product or feature forward, even if you don’t get everything you want Think about the desired vs acceptable outcomes of the stakeholders you will need to persuade Identify options that will be the most viable to the broadest audience of stakeholders, and resolve the most pain

Product Manager = Problem Seeker We naturally seek out problems to solve for our customers. Talk to your internal customers. Ask questions. Probe for pain points. Listen. Don’t jump immediately to solutions – just listen. Ask about their “one thing”. Product Manager = Problem Seeker As product-oriented professionals, we naturally seek out problems to solve for our customers. Doing so internally is not that different. Talk to people! Ask questions, and probe for pain points. Listen, and let them tell their stories. Don’t jump immediately to solutions – just listen. Ask about their “one thing” – what is the one thing Product could do for them that would make their lives better? (Hint: the answer I’ve heard most often to the “one thing” question is better communication. Blast emails and release notes don’t get read, and everyone tunes out during meetings. Just talk to people! Your communication plan should include two-way conversations with small audiences, not just block text and mass meetings.)

Finding the Solution Uncover pain points across organization Re-examine opportunities Incorporate small wins for stakeholders Once you’ve uncovered the pain, then go back to the lab, and work on possible solutions It helps to build an opportunity solution tree (Teresa Torres has a great post about it over on Product Talk) https://www.producttalk.org/2016/08/opportunity-solution-tree/ There’s usually more than one way to incorporate small wins for various stakeholder groups into your product roadmap

HOW? WHY? Objections When you encounter objections from stakeholders, pay attention to the source of the objection Don’t understand or agree with HOW to achieve the goal Don’t understand or agree with WHY we need to achieve the goal Telling anyone HOW to do something, when they don’t understand WHY (or vice versa), will only end in frustration!

Discussion

Thanks! Robyn Brooks, Director of Product Management https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynmbrooks/ rbrooks@navexglobal.com