Negotiating with stakeholders: the best advice for product managers
There are many interpretations of a “product manager’s” skills: “foresight,” “leadership,” “decision-making,” and much more. But what about negotiating? For example, negotiating with stakeholders. Can a product manager also be a good “negotiator”?
Among a product manager’s skills, the ability to negotiate is rarely mentioned. In reality, though, a product manager needs good political insight, and product management is the result of setting and managing expectations in a business. Here I share a few of the things I enjoy using when negotiating with stakeholders, so you can try them right away.
First, strengthen your position
In Julius Caesar’s commentary on the Gallic War, one of the most successful warriors and politicians of ancient Rome, it is said that one of the most important strategies he used was to strengthen his personal position before anything else. In the end, if you have not prepared your battlefield properly, you will be in a weak position and therefore will not be able to get what you are fighting for. This also applies to product managers. In fact, we product managers ignore these simple points.
The points I consider before walking into a negotiating meeting with stakeholders:
To negotiate with stakeholders, know them and know who you are talking to!
The first step in negotiation is to be precise about who your stakeholders really are. Some of the most complex products I have worked on have only a small number of stakeholders — perhaps three or five. There are people who have opinions, want to be involved, or only accept their own view! — but those things do not make someone a stakeholder.
In my view, a stakeholder is someone who has added value, a benefit, or a responsibility in developing the product. For example an investor, or people who are responsible for the product’s output, such as the finance, marketing, or technical lead.
The important point in negotiations is that you have to be ruthless: push aside people who are not responsible and who distract, and identify those who are committed to the work and their responsibility. There are always fewer of these people than you think.
Vision as a tool in negotiating with stakeholders
If you do not know where you are going, you will never reach the destination. A good vision should at least specify these three things: the problem you are going to solve, who you are solving the problem for, and what outcome you are after. (You should check the outcome with solid, meaningful KPIs.) Do not start negotiating with stakeholders at all without knowing the vision.
You cannot begin a negotiation without a solid position, because you will have no mechanism for pushing back undesirable views from the other side — views that are not aligned with your goal. That is why it is said that keeping balance is very important.
In negotiating with stakeholders**, keeping balance is very important**
When you start, keep the end and the goal of the negotiation in mind. As a product manager, you are a storyteller [don’t forget: the best storyteller wins — translator].
You need to be able to get from a number of parameters to an outcome. A large part of this process is mapping those parameters to specific results and then summarizing them. Results and outputs should match the vision we described above. The important point now is to throw away anything that does not match the outcomes. “This idea is really good, but it doesn’t match this product’s outcomes, so it doesn’t go into the plan right now.”
Justify your position
Just feeling that an idea is good or bad is not good enough. Don’t let something go onto the to-do list because you cannot unwind your efforts, while you know the work is wrong. You need to know why you are stopping a piece of work or setting it aside. That can be about justification for the work, return on investment, cost of delay, or anything else — but have reasons that are justified by data.
A product manager should not behave like a dictator. To be accountable, you need to know why you start developing anything. Research, make sure you know your users, negotiate with shareholders and stakeholders, and advise your team. Don’t be rebellious and uncontrollable either!
All right — now that we have prepared the necessary foundation, let’s get to the point!
In negotiating with stakeholders, don’t play games — get involved!
People who work on teams with an agile development mindset are familiar with concepts such as self-management within the team, continuous improvement, and failure tests. For many people running a business — those responsible for the commercial side of an organization — these things have a lot of effect but are generally implemented very weakly, which leads to an undeserved reputation for the methodology. The ultimate goal of a business is not “better or more agility,” but getting work done using improved delivery capabilities.
Less delay, more product — that is a product manager’s role. So let’s look at examples by examining the nature and speed of interaction:
Ask open questions
In negotiating with stakeholders, take control of the situation by inviting the other side into the conversation. Start first, and start fast. I have found a very good way to do this so you can take the initiative in the negotiation. Below I write some common questions for negotiation:
1- What are you thinking about?
2- How can I help?
3- Where do you want to start?
4- How do we do this?
…then continue the conversation
1- Have you said the whole thing?
2- Is there anything else?
3- What is the biggest challenge you have here?
4- What is the goal of this discussion? Where are we supposed to get to?
Create focus
Meetings should not be time-based; they should be output-based. People only make meetings time-based because Outlook only lets them schedule meetings by time. Don’t attend meetings when you are not ready, because you should see yourself as the chair of the meeting and create the meeting’s output in your mind, share it, know where you want to go, and keep an eye on the process.
Listen well and understand the problem before diagnosing it
As we saw above, starting a meeting by listening to others is the best way to begin meetings. After you have listened well and everyone has spoken, use these three principles and continue the meeting:
1- Acknowledge: Face what they said and respond. For example: “I can see you have a real problem here and I understand why it matters. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
2- Bridge: Connect the topic to the meeting’s agenda. For example: “I think the real question is…,” “Who else have you asked? I think they may have said…,” “What do you mean by …? I think you mean…”
3- Transfer: Take the topic in the direction you expect from the meeting’s output. “What I want to do is…,” “My recommendation is…,” “Let me explain where we want to go…”
In addition, just to wrap up: learn to say no. From childhood we have learned always to say “please,” but we are no longer children, and product management is not child’s work. Saying no is the simplest way to set an expectation with the other side, and sometimes the best thing is to reject a request.
Yes, they will be upset with you, but management is not a popularity contest. No one said that being a product manager makes you everyone’s best friend. Your prize and your popularity come when you bring a great product to market.
This is what you build
All product requests and features have relative value. Everything can be split, traded, and stopped. Remember that every decision is emotional — even though you need to prepare a lot of data to support the decision — and that is the nature of being human. Asking questions such as: “If I do this for you, which of my own tasks should I stop?” and “Which part of this work is more important to you?” helps you get past the mindset that you are there to take orders.
Deferred responsibility is, in effect, when people want to extract unproductive work from you. Only let that happen if you really want it. Remember that for all the tools, techniques, experience, and technology you have, product management at an international level is ultimately about how you interact with others — so to deliver amazing products, with high development risk and that look impossible, that your users will love, stand by your word and do not let yourself be pushed to the margins.
Summary of negotiating with stakeholders
First, strengthen your position:
1- Know who the product’s stakeholders are.
2- Use vision as a tool to prevent unjustified work.
3- Aligning others with the vision is very important and must be continuous.
4- You should always be able to justify your position around a topic.
Don’t treat the work as a game; get involved in it:
5- Ask open questions and own the situation.
6- Stay focused and don’t let your thoughts scatter.
7- Before diagnosing the problem, listen to it and understand it.
8- These are the same things you use to develop a good product, so stand on your own feet and do what is right in negotiating with stakeholders.
Author: Edward Schaecher
Source: the MindTheProduct website