5 Steps to Product Strategy Powered by Stakeholders

 

As product management evolves into a critical strategic function in organisations, its effectiveness in driving both customer and business value will increasingly depend on
– and be influenced by – people outside the product team.

No wonder the bar keeps getting higher and higher for product managers to be brilliant at cross-functional collaboration!

However, most organisations focus purely on the day-to-day delivery aspect of product management as the key area for cross-functional collaboration.

Don’t get me wrong, working effectively across teams is essential at all levels, but if done only at the delivery level (no matter how effective an individual product manager is), misalignment with and poor collaboration from other teams will continue to be a recurring issue.

Like any problem, this must be fixed right at the source.

For product teams to continually focus on the most pressing customer problems, the entire organisation must understand and support them.

This is where a well-defined product strategy comes in handy.

But having a product strategy is only half the battle. Ensuring key senior stakeholders support the strategy is the other half.

This is important at two levels. The first is that senior stakeholder support streamlines funding, capacity, and prioritisation. The second is that it ensures product managers spend most of their time identifying, validating, and solving customer problems. Without such support, product managers typically spend their time fighting prioritisation battles – which they often lose!

Bringing stakeholders along on the product strategy journey is a crucial responsibility of product leaders. Achieving strategic alignment and buy-in from stakeholders eliminates several downstream challenges experienced by product teams.

This may seem easy, but most product leaders find it hard to do – especially in large complex organisations. But with an ongoing structured approach, it becomes much easier to achieve.

Here are five steps that product leaders can take to get strategic alignment from senior stakeholders:

1. Build Trusted Relationships with Individual Stakeholders

Product leaders must invest time and effort in building trusting relationships with key stakeholders individually. Not many do.

When it comes to planning or alignment, stakeholders are usually managed as a group, which leaves gaps. Product leaders must know what drives each senior stakeholder and should have clarity about their expectations from the product team.

A significant part of a product leader’s time should be spent with key stakeholders discussing, reviewing, and analysing the business, market and competitive insights and ensuring a collective understanding of product performance.

Product leaders can build robust relationships by doing the following:

• Create a stakeholder map and identify the role you expect them to play
• Be crystal clear about ‘what’s in it for them’
• Set up regular 1-to-1 time with each key stakeholder
• Ensure alignment before key operational and planning meetings

2. Share Context Early & Frequently

Most non-product leaders – whether engineering, sales or marketing – find it hard to understand product and customer context. This primarily happens because they are drip-fed information, resulting in them not getting the full context.

Product leaders must regularly share information and insights that help build a common understanding of customer problems. This includes product performance metrics, competitive analysis, and market and UX research insights.

Stakeholders should never hear about a problem or an area of opportunity for the first time in a planning meeting. The product leader’s job is to ensure key stakeholders are primed with context continuously and that it is not a one-off exercise.

Some steps product leaders can take to build customer context with stakeholders are:

• Invite stakeholders to research meetings (customer interviews, usability sessions, metric analysis, etc.)
• Provide access for stakeholders to performance dashboards and research reports
• Present insights and findings from research to stakeholders and their teams
• Publish insight reports for the entire organisation to read

3. Co-Create Strategy

One of the most effective ways to get alignment on product strategy is to involve key stakeholders in strategy formation. When stakeholders can contribute to the direction, they will naturally be more supportive of it.

An added benefit to this approach is that your product strategy will be more holistic, giving due consideration to inputs from different parts of the organisation.

A product strategy considering input from engineering, marketing, sales and customer support will deliver better customer and business outcomes.

A few things product leaders can do to co-create product strategy include:

• Create and socialise a structured planning process
• Align your planning and strategy cadence to that of your stakeholders – organising your planning meetings and sessions at the same time as the rest of the business
• Invite key stakeholders to planning sessions and make them an integral part of strategy creation with a clearly defined role and expectation
• Play back your strategy to close the loop with agreement from the stakeholder

4. Align Goals and Outcomes

Your product strategy will find support and be successful only if it is aligned with the business strategy.

Product leaders must know & understand what is important to the broader business. Business strategy and goals are critical inputs for product strategy.

Without a business strategy, the product team will only be making up a wish list of things to do rather than defining a strategic direction for the product.

To align your goals and outcomes, try to:

• Get clarity on business priorities and goals, and why they are in place
• Share with your team and make sure they understand
• Know exactly which business priorities and goals product will influence
• Ensure business priorities and goals cascade down to the team

5. Position as Shared Strategy

Once your product strategy is ready, make sure you take the time to share it with the rest of the organisation. And although it is a product strategy, make sure to position it as a collective strategy that represents thinking from different teams.

When a strategy is viewed as a collective effort, people will be more likely to buy into it than if it were presented as something created in isolation.

Some steps product leaders can take to position product strategy as a shared direction between key stakeholders includes:

• Organise a strategy roadshow and ensure key stakeholders present relevant parts of the strategy (primarily alignment with business strategy).
• Create strategy on a page artefact and ensure it is displayed across team locations
• Prep and empower stakeholders to represent product thinking and respond to questions from the rest of the organisation

Using the five steps above, product leaders can create a holistic product strategy and ensure the entire organisation backs it, resulting in successful execution. A strategy supported by key stakeholders will empower product managers to focus on solving real-world customer problems with the backing of the entire organisation.

Now, who wouldn’t like to work in such a team?

By SANDEEP GONDEKAR

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Communication strategy for stakeholder engagement

 

Stakeholder consultation and engagement typically follows a recognized three-step process: notification, consultation, and participation.

The public has the right to be concerned about your project, to ask questions about it, and even to oppose it. But every person should have the correct information to form her or his opinion.

Meaningful consultation that involves ongoing two-way communication with a project representative increases understanding, clarifies the community’s preferences and values, and allows the proponent to understand how the public’s views can and should lead policy decisions. However, organizations often struggle with communication with their stakeholder groups.

Factors that negatively influence communication include:

• Not understanding how to set up a stakeholder engagement project so it effectively communicates the organization’s intentions
• Suffering from a lack of focus when engaging stakeholders – and failing to define the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, and why)
• Having the wrong person representing the organization. This can be someone who is inexperienced or whose strengths lay outside the field of communication
• Company and stakeholder groups involving multiple representatives that change over time. Relationships get lost and communication history, or commitments that were made can be forgotten.

5 tips for an effective communication strategy for stakeholder engagement

1. Make sure all information regarding your project is presented in a transparent way. The more you share in an honest, factual and easy to comprehend format, the more likely it is that stakeholders will take the time to comprehend your intentions, what their role is, and how it may affect them.

2. Communicate with stakeholders in the manner that works best for them. Recognize that each person or community is different and select the most suitable communication channel – email, online platforms, social media, phone, or in-person group meetings . People should be offered a variety of options to communicate with you and provide their input.

3. Do not judge what your stakeholders value, instead seek to understand why. Keeping an open and curious attitude will help your team understand the history and concerns of your stakeholders. This open, curious attitude will help both sides reach creative solutions to overcome roadblocks, aligning values and interests in the process.

4. Provide feedback to stakeholders on how their interests and issues are addressed and resolved. Track commitments made to them and ensure project team members coordinate consultation events, share information, and assign tasks and follow-up actions.

5. Keep a careful record of all aspects of stakeholder communications that occur over time. This includes meetings, phone calls, emails, and commitments made. Misunderstandings and delays can be prevented if you can easily demonstrate the history of all aspects of communication with your stakeholders – which is especially challenging with multi-year projects that where representatives change over time. A tool like StakeTracker helps organizations stay on top of their projects by centrally managing all communications regarding the potential impacts of initiatives on the communities in which they operate.

The value of information, and how it’s tracked and reported, is of paramount importance during the consultation process. Missteps with respect to stakeholder information management can put the success of your project in jeopardy.

Detailed consultation will identify a community’s views on your project and how this perception changes over time. It will allow you to anticipate issues and develop ways of addressing them. Ultimately, it will help develop trust and generate solutions with your stakeholders and rights-holders.

Image: Pranav under Creative Commons 2.0

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How To Communicate Effectively With Your Stakeholders

BY HANNAH STACEY

Learn how to properly communicate with all of your stakeholders enmasse and individually

Let’s face it – marketing can seem like a bit of a minefield when you’re a busy entrepreneur. When you’re occupied with new business meetings, dealing with suppliers and the other hundred and one things on your to-do list, embarking on a marketing campaign can seem like opening Pandora’s Box.

But getting your offering in front of the right people is integral to its success, and a cleverly-crafted marketing campaign can help you achieve just that. Strapped for time? Here’s a cheat sheet to creating a good marketing strategy.

What Are Your Marketing Aims?

Before you start thinking about who you want to get in front of, you must seriously consider what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts. This can be more than one thing, but remember to be reasonable with your expectations. For example, you might be:

Trying to get your product or service in front of potential customers

• Trying to get your product or service in front of potential customers

• Wanting to generate interest in your business amongst potential investors

• Get potential business partners involved

Figure Out Who You Need To Get In Front Of To Fulfil Your Aims

The scattergun approach to writing a press release, paying a questionable newswire service to post it on a few websites that nobody reads, and then sitting back and hoping for the best will not cut the mustard if you’re serious about getting in front of the right people.

If you’ve created a sound business plan, you’ll know who your various stakeholders are. Let’s use an example. I’ve just set up a great new education tech company that teaches Swedish to secondary school children using a revolutionary method (over-dubbed One Direction songs) outside of class. I’m also looking for more investment. I’ve got loads of different stakeholders, and the message that I want to relay to each of them is slightly different. These stakeholders could be:

• Secondary school pupils themselves
• The parents of secondary school pupils
• Decision-makers in schools
• Potential investors

Once you’ve come up with an exhaustive list of stakeholders, make sure you’ve recorded them in a spreadsheet to keep track of your activity.

Think About What You Want To Say And What They Want To Hear

If you get into the mindset of your potential stakeholders and what drives them, you’ll be able to craft messages that appeal to them more. Create personas by asking yourself the following questions:

• What demographics do they fall into? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their income?
• What is their part in the buying process?
• What does a day in their life look like?
• What are their pain points? What issues in their job or day-to-day life bother them?
• How can your product/service help them address these problems?

Let’s take the parents of our secondary school pupils in my example. They’re likely to be between the ages of 35 and 50 and will be the ones buying the product for their beloved children. They probably don’t speak Swedish personally but are keen to see their child progress in their Swedish lessons at school, however, they are having problems convincing their troublesome teenager to do their homework (because they would rather swoon over Harry Styles on Twitter).

How does my product help address their pain points? It makes their life easier and helps them feel like good parents when their kids ace all of their Swedish exams at school. In this case, my marketing message might be: “My product makes learning fun, so your kids succeed without you having to moan at them.”

Track Down Where They Hang Out

You may have your marketing messages sorted, but if they’re not reaching the ears of your target audience, you’ve wasted your time. It’s important to think carefully about the types of places that each of your stakeholder groups goes to for information. Here are some of the biggies and how you might use them in your marketing efforts:

• National newspapers and their websites – creating newsworthy PR stories and targeting them at relevant journalists in the national press.
• Trade press – tracking down any trade press and placing articles (interviews or opinion pieces, for example) in them.
• TV and Radio – again, using PR to generate newsworthy angles that get covered in the broadcast press (easier said than done, though!)
• Social media – using marketing techniques like social media advertising (on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example) to target your chosen demographic. Many social networks have advanced targeting options for advertisers so you can get the message across.
• Google – optimising your website for certain search terms to rank higher.
• Blogs – contacting bloggers and trying to persuade them to write about your product or service.
• Outdoor advertising

So if I’m trying to get in front of parents, the best course of actions is probably a PR campaign that gets attention from the national and broadcast press (unless they’re incredibly keen, parents are unlikely to reach any education trade press.) I would also make sure that I had ads on social networks targeting my chosen demographic with my key messages, and also make sure that my website was keyword optimised so that for any parent searching ‘how to get my child to do their Swedish homework’, my product would be the first thing that pops up in Google.

This process should be repeated for each of my target stakeholders. It may seem like a complex process, but refining your messaging to the key needs of stakeholders means that your precious time is not wasted in the long run.

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The Importance of Communicating With Your Stakeholders

Introduction

Understanding your stakeholders is vital in modern-day business. This includes listening to the views and beliefs of stakeholders as well as seeking their feedback. After all, these are the people who will shape and influence future successes (or failures).

A stakeholder is anyone with an interest in the business, either having an effect on the business or being affected by it. Typically, stakeholders can be categorized into two groups; internal and external stakeholders. Examples of internal stakeholders are employees, managers and directors. External stakeholders include customers, suppliers, shareholders and funders. Keeping every stakeholder on-side can be difficult, but can be hugely beneficial.

What is it?

The key to keeping stakeholders on-side is consultation. This involves the development of constructive and productive long-term relationships. Stakeholder consultation aims to build relationships based on mutual trust and benefits. Listening to and understanding the views and feedback from stakeholders can help shape and improve the overall operations of a business.

Stakeholder consultation can be project-based or on-going. Specific project-based consultation is generally used for the development of new products and services. For example, a company may consult with customers to establish specific needs of the target market. On-going consultation, however, is generally used to track the progress of a company in regards to stakeholder expectations and to maximize buy-in. For example, a company may consult with stakeholders regarding changes to the company’s direction or its branding.

What are the benefits?

The benefits of stakeholder consultation are clear, with some of the most significant reasons listed below:

• Enable more informed decision making
• Lead to greater stakeholder satisfaction
• Improves chances of project/initiative success
• Promote open, two-way communication

The 4-step process

The stakeholder consultation process is an opportunity for key groups to be kept informed, and for their views and feedback to be heard. It is important that any consultation is thoroughly planned with clear objectives set at the beginning.

Regardless of the aims and objectives of the stakeholder consultation, the process typically consists of four steps: Planning, Process, Presentation and Promise (the 4Ps).

Planning

The “planning” stage is where the aims and objectives of the stakeholder consultation are discussed and agreed upon. After the aims and objectives have been determined, the “planning” stage is used to discuss how the process will be carried out. Process owners allocate resources and select an appropriate consultation method. Several questions need to be asked at this stage to ensure every facet of the process is considered.

• Why do we need to consult?
• Who are we consulting?
• What resources do we have?
• How are we going to do it?
• What materials will be needed?

Process

The “process” stage is where the stakeholder consultation is actually carried out. It is important at this stage to develop effective two-way communication with the stakeholders in order to promote open and honest sharing of views and beliefs. The process and data will then need to be accurately recorded for the final stages.

Presentation

The “presentation” stage is where the data gathered is analyzed and reported on. The aims of this stage are to ensure the data is an accurate representation of the stakeholder views, and to prepare the report ready for presentation. The report is typically presented to the process owners, such as the company itself or policy makers. However, feedback will also be provided to those who took part in the process.

Promise

Lastly, the “promise” stage is where actions are put in place in response to the information gathered. The ‘promise’ of action on the back of the stakeholder consultation process helps drive the development of a long-term relationship based on transparency and collaboration.

How is it done?

Methods of stakeholder consultation are largely the same as those used for market research. The key question is whether the consultation requires depth of knowledge or breadth of knowledge. The answer generally determines which method will be chosen.

If depth of knowledge is required, a qualitative study is usually appropriate. These are studies which encourage open styles of discussion and debate. The most common methods used to gather depth of information are focus groups, individual depth interviews and observation (or ethnography). If breadth of knowledge is required, a more quantitative study is usually appropriate. These are studies which encompass large number of respondents but are restricted to closed style questions, aimed at providing generalist viewpoints. The most common methods used to gather breadth of information are online surveys, telephone surveys, and short street interviews.

Concluding thoughts

As understanding stakeholders becomes more and more important for businesses, stakeholder consultation will become a vital process to maximize success. Stakeholder consultation can be used to evaluate reactions and to track the perceptions of a company’s activities, and ensure collaboration and partnership with all stakeholders. The long-term effectiveness of an organization can depend on its relationships with stakeholders, ensuring commitment and buy-in to any future strategies and challenges. This makes for a more informed organization that is responsive to the needs of all its users and stakeholders.

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