3 Thoughts On: Stakeholder Management for Product People

Managing your stakeholders properly is essential to create an efficient and collaborative product development environment. In this article, I don’t want to tell you the things you might already know about how stakeholder management could be done properly, but during the last weeks and with the books I read, I want to share some thoughts that can improve your way to manage your stakeholders.

1. Identify the relevant stakeholders

To manage your stakeholders, it is crucial to understand first who they are and how to deal with them. In the so-called Stakeholder Map shown below, you can cluster your relevant parties based on their influence and interest in your product or project.

That means how much power does a specific person have to influence your product or project and are they highly interested or not. Typically you would start with a brainstorming session to identify potential stakeholders you have in your current setup. But to keep it simple, let’s picture one very obvious stakeholder:

Mrs. Smith: CEO

Undisputed, Mrs. Smith as CEO has a lot of power to highly influence your product and/or project. By changing the overall company strategy or vision, it might directly affect you and your work.

In that imaginary scenario you know the CEO is highly interested in the product as well because it was her idea and she wants to see the progress of her “baby”.

Therefore Mrs. Smith should be managed with the highest priority and most thoroughly. This could be achieved by involving her in regular (but only relevant) meetings or even better by having four-eye sessions to keep her informed and involved.

2. Practice your empathy

But what does empathy or being empathic actually mean? The official definition you can find in a one-minute-Google-search:

“Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.”

It seems to be pretty simple, if you are in your personal environment, for example: A friend is coming along and tells you that something bad happened, they become sad and you’re feeling sad as well. But it gets harder thinking of a business context. Therefore I want to emphasize that empathy is no superpower to have or not to have. How often did you hear in the past about people judging if someone is empathic or not? For me, it happens quite too regularly and it’s not surprising that I don’t like the concept of being empathic as a black-or-white ability.

As always, the source of progress: repetition, repetition, repetition.

Especially when it comes to difficult conversations, it is very beneficial to have an empathic mindset. To prepare yourself and get in the right mood of objectivity, picture yourself outside of the window. Try to be a ghost, who flies out of the window and have a look at the current situation. Starting from an objective point of view helps to understand the other person’s situation even better. Once you set yourself into the position of objectivity, you can use six simple questions, explained by Michelle Stowe, in a discussion to practice your empathy even more. But to get started I want to highlight the three most powerful for me:

1. What do you think happened?

2. How could it be done differently in your opinion?

3. What do you think needs to be done next?

In general, those are very simple questions with one common goal: discover the context of the specific situation. By understanding the context and listen to the thoughts of your peers, you will enable yourself to think about the whole situation rather than just your own perception. If you want one thing to take away from this: start raising questions in order to explore the context. You can use the questions above or find the ones that fit best for you.

Coming to an end

By identifying who your stakeholders are, understanding the context of the situation and trying to negotiate with them based on interest will enrich all the things you already know about proper Stakeholder Management. If you liked what you read or even better you’re now inspired and want to know more, check out my book recommendations below:

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an agreement without giving in

Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

Convinced!: How to Prove Your Competence & Win People Over