Stakeholder Management for PMs

As you move from smaller to larger or midsized companies, you will (as a PM), need to manage multiple stakeholders and their expectations of the product.

This is especially true at mid-sized companies where there isn’t enough organizational maturity to have fixed processes and authority but the organization is not small enough where the CTO, CEO and CPO (can be the same person) get along and can decide on which direction to move.

As such, at companies of this size and scale, it is necessary to manage the expectations of various team members who are all vying for influence in an organization that is scaling but does not yet have bulletproof processes in place.

There is a risk of “meeting-paralysis” at such organizations where there is a lot of talk about how one should move forward but little that is actually put into action. This is due to the fact that it is easy to talk and try a shot at influencing than walking the walk. This is just human nature. Most people who have the gift of gab are really shitty at walking the walk.

One recipe I’ve found useful for meeting paralysis is good meeting notes with explicit follow-ups with deadlines shared on a team calendar.

When it comes to managing stakeholder expectations in such an environment, it usually helps to align with folks who are senior, and more importantly, know what they are talking about. It is imperative to be able to cut through the noise and get alignment with “experts” in their respective fields. A good barometer for gauging whether someone is an expert is to see if you can come up with their solution for their domain from first principles and if what they bring to the table is both TRUE AND COUNTERINTUITIVE. If it were intuitive and anyone could come up with it from first principles, are they truly experts? Think about that one..

The second, and most important, part of stakeholder management is learning to deal with stakeholder dis-satisfaction. It is more important to keep your key stakeholders happy than trying to appease the whole organization. This is because your key stakeholders (experts) can both help you in your personal career, but also provide maximum leverage in moving the organization forward (due to their expertise and know-how (gained from years of experience in their fields)). I have found it valuable to randomly rotate dis-satisfaction amongst stakeholders very effective.

That’s it. It’s only two steps. Many things in life are binary or just 2 steps :)