Product Management: Stakeholder Management
Understanding user needs, gathering internal resources, persuading the world, and surviving cross-fires, friendly and deadly fires. It is not easy to be a product manager. We will talk about actionable things you can do to improve your stakeholder management skills, stay clear of controversy and politics, or win at office politics if you must pick a battle.
You are expected to know a bit and often times considerably more, than almost anybody else in the organization about a lot of topics. Often you have both the depth and the breadth about product and the organization. However, ….
What we often ignore and what is of immense consequences is the human side of working in teams and organizations. The vast exposure, organizationally, of product managers can bring some challenges — office politics is the colloquial word we are talking about.
Many hardworking, sincere and productive product managers have lost their jobs, and their careers have nose-dived in front of my eyes in the last few years because they have not been able to manage their stakeholders well. And, once you cannot do that or there is a perception that you cannot, you are out of the game. Product management, after all, is a very collaborative work stream.
I have listed some general tips for young professionals to navigate stakeholder management. I hope it helps.
Focus on the Goal (Your North Star): Get things done, then do whatever else you must do — impress people, build relationships, dinner, games, volunteering. Everything adds up on top of the foundation, and your goal is your foundation.
Build Strong Relationships: Build genuine and strong relationships across the board. Two things should help you — quality of work and keeping your word.
Transparency and Communication: Over-communicate, and do that transparently as much as your can. Sometimes you can sense negativity around, and you might have to change your strategy a bit, but in most situations, transparently communicating with all stakeholders works well.
Perception of Objectivity (& 99% Reality): Any feedback, criticism, assertive communication or clashes should have objectivity. If you are considered objective and fair, even if your decision negatively impacts people, they will not hold a grudge or not for long. You must be consistent and build a persona of yourself.
Listen: You must listen and learn consistently. Just listening to someone who is pointing out your mistakes, listening to someone who is irritated by the performance of your product by your team and behaving patiently will allow you to diffuse situations and move forward.
Give people the dignity they deserve; just by listening to them and acting just and fair, you can avoid 95% of the so-called fights.
Understand the Landscape: You must take cover when a storm is coming. When it rains, you must take out an umbrella. When it is too hot, you should not go out. Look around at various stakeholders, their behaviours and motivations, and understand what they want and why they like what they want. If the poor performance of your product impacts someone’s sales bonus, it would be a very different reaction. Are bugs and fixes in your product destroying the KPIs of customer service agents? If your SVP product strongly feels about something, do not antagonize him. Often, we need time to understand why leaders think what they think. It is not necessary to follow up on orders from up the chain. Still, often, there is information asymmetry between you and people higher up the chain, so if you feel like writing a strong email, double-check if you have all the details and context.
Pick your Battles: Generally, fights are unproductive; sometimes they are necessary, and often they are inconsequential, but once in a while, they change the course of a career. Always be prepared for a fight, but avoid it as much as possible. Still, if you must, you should fight to win under any circumstances within the boundaries of professional ethics.
I have seen battles because senior leadership are in two camps and they are fighting, drawing everyone under their leadership into a hostile situation.
I have seen super-ambitious individuals who would use their relationships and goodwill you expand their territory and wage battle to get hold of more products under them.
I have seen people getting into fight due to personal difference, egos and other stupid stuffs.
Finding mentors: Mentors can accelerate your learning, open lots of networking doors, save you from committing non-trivial mistakes, and save you from organizational fights. Learning is important, but others also contribute to your growth. Mentors help your stakeholder management decide which battles are worth fighting, conflict resolution, understand the landscape, and help you rise by giving visibility.
Conflict Resolution Mechanism: What is your go-to conflict resolution mechanism in your personal life? You can use some version of the same in professional life as well.
Meritocracy: Believe in it, promote and vouch for it. You will find support from strong individuals who also believe in this philosophy and get opposition from many groups of mediocre folks. But people at the top often believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that they have benefited from a meritocratic system, so they will continually support you. It is human nature to think that one deserves everything that one gets rather than they are lucky. But, people often turn cynic that their surrounding does not promote meritocracy, do not do that. Things change; if not, you can bring change.
A bit about the adverse effects of what we generally call ‘office’ politics and some steps to deal with them.
Broadly, we can say — “Office politics” refers to the informal strategies, behaviours, and interactions that individuals within an organization use to influence decision-making, gain power, advance their interests, and navigate complex social dynamics. It involves how individuals and groups manage workplace relationships, conflicts, and power struggles to achieve their goals.
