 Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining today and a huge thank you to product school for having me run this webinar. We're here to talk about one of actually my favorite things as a product manager, which is stakeholder alignment. I'm really excited to dive in today. We'll cover a whole bunch of stuff that'll hopefully be really useful to you as you think about what you need to achieve with your goals with your stakeholders goals and really deliver results for you in your business. So we'll dive right in. First, I want to share a little bit about me. I'm Caitlin. I'm a group product manager at Zipcar, where I've been for a little over three years now. I manage a team of four product managers and a product co-op, and we cover sort of everything when you're not driving as a Zipcar member. So that is a joint experience. It's searching for and booking vehicles, purchasing insurance products, billing and payment processing. It's kind of our platform stability. I've been in tech for the last eight plus years, ranging from ad tech to mar tech to travel and transportation and companies that have been as small as, you know, two or three people all the way up to something as big as Zipcar. So I've kind of seen it all and I'm really excited to share more with you all about, you know, how we can really have constructive stakeholder relationships and just dive in and make things happen in an area that can sometimes be frustrating. So let's get right to it. Today we're going to cover keys to building strong stakeholder relationships. How can you develop those relationships that really help get things done and don't become blockers to achieving what you want to achieve. We'll also be talking about how to run constructive stakeholder meetings. I think we've probably all been in those meetings where you feel like you're spinning your wheels and you're just not making that much progress on what you really need to discuss. So we'll talk about how to avoid that and how to make sure things get done and we have accountability. And lastly, we'll cover how to celebrate wins with stakeholders. It's really important right to kind of get outside of just the day today and take that step back. And it's especially important to remember to include your stakeholders when they've been part of a huge product or feature launch. So I think this is the understatement of the century for product managers, right? We've probably all felt like this poor little guy here just wishing that everyone would do what we say and we didn't have to, you know, manage so many differing opinions and wrangle data and work with everyone across every team from finance to marketing to operations to engineering to design and so on and so forth. Right. I'm sure we've all had that thought of I just wish we could do it, you know how I want to do it without having to think about anything else or anyone else. But that's obviously unrealistic right and I think we would all be exhausted if we had to do everything by ourselves at all times always. So we'll talk a little bit about how to make it less frustrating and how to not be like you want to just cry in the corner in a chair and instead think about how you can build relationships that not only help you release things that matter, achieve your goals, hit, you know, key product results for the year, but also, you know, grow in your career and develop lasting relationships that will help you outside of where you are now and will stay with you as you progress. So the first thing we'll dive into right is building that relationship. How do we build strong stakeholder relationships and how do we do it in a way that is sustainable and beneficial to everyone. So the number one thing I can say is communication is critically important right. I think this is something we often feel we can you know skimp on or we don't need to think about as much or yeah everybody communicates. That's it that's the end right but there are ways that we can do this really really well and do it in a way that makes you know these relationships work for us and help us achieve our goals. So the first thing I want to talk about here is figure out who your top stakeholders are you probably already know right it might be someone in member marketing or it might be someone in finance figure out who they are and hold one on one meetings regularly. I think a lot of people view one on ones as this unnecessary overhead and it's another recurring meeting and it's slowing me down. But in reality if you take that step back and you think about how can I understand my stakeholders understand their goals and needs understand how they can help me achieve my goals and needs and my team's needs. We'll get to a great place right that's the goal so figure out who your top stakeholders are and set up those meetings they don't have to be weekly they don't even have to be bi-weekly right. I run a once a month one on one with our VP of marketing at Zipcar and that meeting is just invaluable you know we can exchange ideas we can stay up to date on what our teams are doing. We can talk about trade off discussions of hey why are we prioritizing this over that. And we can do it in a way that takes some of the pressure off right because we've taken that time to build a relationship meet regularly kind of stay accountable to each other and talk about what we're trying to achieve. So really figure out who do I need to meet with regularly who are the stakeholders who are really going to help move the needle for me and my team and who's buying do I need to release this product or release this feature. Then figure out what your cadence is right again it could be weekly could be bi-weekly could be monthly could be quarterly but my guess is you'll want it a little bit more frequent than that. Next. The broader meetings right it's important to include more people, you know who your go-tos are, but you also need to keep everyone on their teams, you know, aware of what's going on or you might have people on other teams who are not maybe your core set but we still need to understand what's happening. So in this case you want to find the right balance for how to keep them in the loop, how to give them you know that visibility and that excitement about what you're working on and choosing the right cadence. So weekly meetings right might be your engineering leads it's going to be people you work with the most every single day every single week. Monthly, it might be you know senior stakeholders or people who are very related to your team but you don't necessarily get in the weeds with every single day. A great example on my team's end is we meet monthly with our member services team. That really helps us get kind of closer to the customer and get that feedback from them on hey here's what we're hearing when people call in for support with their zip car membership. And it also lets us you know make sure we're proactively telling them here are some demos of what we're releasing here's what's coming up next and here's you know what we're seeing in our product analytics and data. Quarterly meetings might be for teams that are you know one or two steps removed from your day today. But are still very important so again another example fraud, that's a team that my team works pretty closely with right we want to prevent fraud as new people are joining zip car. But we don't need to meet you know very very frequently. So we do a quarterly review where we take a step back, we look at the data regarding fraud and all that good stuff. We keep each other up to date on both what they're working on, but then also what we're working on, and it just helps kind of keep that forcing function of let's stay in touch with each other and let's know what's going on. So again, you know look at your various stakeholder groups, figure out who you need to meet with the most frequently figure out what cadence makes sense for other groups, and really hold yourselves to those meetings. Last thing on communication is written communication matters to right I think sometimes we joke about paper trails but it's actually really important right you need to be able to refer back to what was discussed. You know what decisions were made and who was consulted on a given feature, for example, and it's also important to explain hey here's all the amazing things we just did in our last sprint. So, you know, on the billing team, we do a blog for every sprint. Hey, here's what we've released here's why it matters, and all that good stuff. So think about something similar, you know another team that I managed does just a bi weekly slack post. We use emojis we kind of keep it light and keep it energetic just to explain. Here's what we did in the sprint. Here's what's coming up next. And oh by the way, here's where you can see all of our priorities at any time you want. This is really important to think about is what are those kind of recurring things how are you reporting out on the sprint level. But it's also important to think about then what are the broader things that you can do through written communication. We started compiling one pagers to highlight some successes that, you know, maybe merit a little bit more meat than a simple slack post, but don't necessarily need a whole 45 minute meeting to go over. So how can you kind of take what you've done, write it up really clearly succinctly. Here's what we did. Here's what we got out of it and here's why we chose to do it. Maybe here's some future innovation we're looking at in the space, and that will really help you with your stakeholders because they'll feel confident that you're delivering things with value to them with value to the business and with value to their customers right. The number two thing right for building stakeholder relationships, transparency. It's so so critical to not just keep everything a secret how you prioritize what your inputs are for prioritization how you make decisions how you manage your roadmap. Right to just remove variables and do all of this in isolation, but it's not helpful. And it's not, you know, the best way to build relationships and to build trust. So it's critically important to make your priorities public. I know this is scary right because you're putting something out there for everyone to see and everyone to think about and question and and react to. But if people can see what you're working on, they're less likely to start making assumptions in their mind of oh okay well Caitlin and her team. I don't know what they're working on but I have this really important thing that I really think should be done so I think they're working on things that aren't valuable right. You don't want to create space for that kind of concern and that kind of worry with your stakeholders, because it's just going to come around and bite you in the butt anyway. So when we think about how can you make your priorities, your roadmap public, and how can you do it in easily digestible way. My team manages a simple confluence page with, you know what the project is the details about it, the metric we're trying to move or the target that we're trying to hit, and then some key information on, you know the impact the effort the cost of delay, and then the kind of stage it's at right now right is it groomed is it in progress is it done. This really helps your stakeholders understand. They're actually working on really important stuff. So I don't need to sit here worrying and I don't need to sit here thinking about, you know what they're actually spending their time doing critically important as well is helping them understand your inputs for prioritization. If you're just constantly saying here's our priorities list. That's it that's the decision that's what we've done. It's not going to build that again trust to have people understand. Okay, you know the team is working on things that are really going to move the needle for us. So think about socializing things like user research, the data you're using the reports you're pulling and use that to, you know, socialize it more broadly with your stakeholders, so they can understand. Hey, and user research, we're seeing these three really important trends that we're not addressing as a business, or hey with this data, we've noticed that there's this massive friction point right before people are about to check out, and we're not solving for it. So that's why you know we've taken this piece of you know checkout optimization and pulled it the highest in our priorities list. When they understand all of the different things that you are taking into consideration as you prioritize, there's less tension and there's less fear that you're perhaps prioritizing things in a vacuum. It also helps to get insights from your stakeholders as an input to prioritization. So an example might be, talk to your paid media team, figure out what creative is resonating out in the marketplace for new joiners, you know, you can learn from for Zipcar, for example, do people care more about convenience so they care more about gas included did they care more about location. That really helps, you know, give you some valuable feedback to think about how to do product messaging how to prioritize things, in addition to that user research and that data that you're already looking at. The last thing is, you know, really demystify things for your stakeholders, they shouldn't have to understand your rationale behind your prioritization. And just guess, you know, what are we talking about I don't get what they're using I'm confused about what this means. For our team, we really look at three things right what's the impact of the work. This should be 99% of the time quantitative right. What's the metric that we're moving what's the revenue that we're driving what's the you know pain that we're solving for the customer. The effort, which is really your t shirt sizing right how hard is this how long is it going to take us to do as a product and engineering team. And then the cost of delay, which is really what are we losing each month that we don't have this feature. So my team uses that to then say this is why we've prioritized, you know, these 10 things for q three. And that really helps our stakeholders understand, okay, you know, they're really looking at stuff that's valuable that's going to move the needle. And that's delivering, you know, towards our key results for the year. So really try to make sure that that's not this mysterious, you know, product only thing. It should be something that everyone is allowed to see and that everyone is allowed to understand and to learn about. And the last thing on building these stakeholder relationships is flexibility. This might be, you know, one of my more controversial opinions, but it is okay to do small things just because right it is okay to take quick wins and just do it right because you're going to help somebody out because you're going to build that relationship. So as you're prioritizing right think about things that might make your stakeholders lives easier. Yes, you know, maybe implementing this one thing for marketing isn't going to deliver a million dollars in revenue, but it's going to save them 20 hours a week of manual work, and it's only going to take your engineering team two days. That's a great opportunity to kind of throw them a bone, you know, be that supportive person and say you know what I see what you're struggling with and I'm willing to help you out here. Keep an eye out for the opportunities that don't take too long. Right. Again, there should be some quick wins. You know, just in a meeting today I had an engineer say hey, I realize that I could do this programmatic update in 30 minutes, instead of having a couple of our fleet team members spend a day working on this manually. I think that's fantastic and I think that's what we should be doing right. We should be thinking about what's that trade off is 30 minutes of engineering worth saving two people a day's worth of work. Absolutely right so again, keep an eye out for those you know 30 minute to one to two day items that you can squeeze into a sprint and really help your stakeholders with. And lastly, this should really be showing your blindness to be a team player right if you're always saying I'm inflexible I'm only prioritizing these things I'm only using these inputs, and I don't care how hard this thing is for you. I'm not going to do anything right that's not going to build a relationship in fact you're going to be seen as hard to work with you're going to be seen as rigid and inflexible. And yeah, in reality, maybe you're being the best prioritizer ever. But are you helping out your stakeholders, are you building those relationships, are you investing in things that are going to really benefit you down the line and help you get buy in for more and more strategic and thorny work. But you don't want to just be so black and white. It's really important to show your willingness to be a team player to be okay with going a little bit out of your way as long as it's not going to be a massive time stuff for you and your engineers. So that's everything I want to share on building the relationships. Let's really dive into how to run constructive meetings. I think a lot of us can sometimes get a little anxious when we have to have stakeholder meetings because we're worried about hearing. Why are you prioritizing this I have questions on that. I don't get why this thing matters, why did you do this instead of that right. It's all of these kind of slightly scary questions that are a little uncomfortable to answer. But if you can get ahead of that right by, you know, leveraging all the communication skills that we just talked about, and then really think about how to run the meeting in a way that you're all going to get the most out of it. And all of a sudden these meetings become less scary. And for me, some of them have turned into the meetings that I love every week or every other week or every month. So, how do we get more out of our stakeholder meetings. One of the most important things you can do is set boundaries. Right. If you just have an agenda list open ended meeting, you are going to get stakeholders coming in with dozens of requests of features that they want or solutions that they would like you to deliver bugs that they want you to fix right. So you need to think about what are the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved, and how do you want everyone to contribute. So this could be looking at specific roles. You know, maybe it's your engineers in charge of the how you are in charge of the why, but marketing is helping you inform the business case and so you need them to provide you with some member data. Make that really clear to them, you know, don't just let them come in blind don't don't not give them a chance to prepare. Right. You really want them to understand this is the meeting and this is why I'm here. And it could be, you know, the same for another meeting maybe with finance right, but they're obviously not going to be, you know, making all the product decisions all of the time, but they do really understand the value of accounting reporting and they can walk you through why it's important to develop things in a certain way so it shows up correctly in accounting reporting so maybe you give them that specific topic for the agenda. So be really, really clear about the people in the meeting you know what you're looking for from them, and don't be afraid to be explicit right it's okay to be very explicit about this is what I want from you, this is what I want from you and so on and so forth. It's also important to take notes, right, you want to make sure that everything was documented in the meeting, because you will need them, you will need to send them out to your stakeholders you will need them for your manager so they understand what you're working on, you will need them perhaps for your engineers so they get more insight into what stakeholders are thinking about. So it is critically important to take notes and not just kind of sit back and just chat for the whole meeting. So when you think about what what note format you like maybe you're a notebook person maybe you're a notes app person. Maybe you like recording the meetings and then coming back to it, maybe you and your team have a rotating note taker system, whatever it is, find what works for you and use it, because notes turn into action items, right, you need to be comfortable assigning action items, not just to your direct reports or to your teammates, but also to your team, right. There might be a big launch coming up where you need product marketing to write email copy by a certain date, and you need to be unafraid of telling them that. So if you're taking notes in the meeting, it's really easy to then assign that and say, OK, you know, Caitlin's doing this so and so is doing that so and so is doing this other task, and then set the deadlines right because if you just leave it open ended, we all have our normal jobs right we all have the things in our day to day that are going to take more precedence than another person on another team asking you to do something. So it's really important to understand timelines and to be explicit with the timelines, as you're setting up these action items and sharing them with everyone more broadly. And the reason why I say that is because you have to send that clear follow up. The meetings that are the least productive are the ones where no one's taking notes, no one's assigning action items and no one's, you know, documenting things and leaving a paper trail. I've spoken to product managers who were so frustrated because they had a stakeholder come in at the 11th hour and say, we can't do this. I hate the solution. It's not going to work for me and my team. And I asked them, hey, did you take notes and did you send follow up emails and did you assign action items and, you know, maybe you did invite them to a bunch of meetings and they never showed up. But did they have anything that they could refer back to if they didn't make it? And that product manager was kind of like, hmm, I didn't do that. Right. So that's a great, you know, moment to take a step back and think, okay, maybe I could have avoided all of the stress and all the pain coming from the stakeholder coming in at the last minute. Because yeah, maybe she didn't come to every meeting ever. But I've had clear notes. I've had clear action items. And now at this point, there's no excuse for not understanding what's going on. So again, don't forget the follow up email. It's so so important. And some people are just busy and they're not going to be able to make every meeting, but they are going to be able to take five minutes to read your recap and read your action items. So yes, I know it's not fun to write more emails, but it's so so important to do. And the last thing I'll leave you with is celebrating wins together. We are always everywhere forever so caught up and all right what's the next to do what's the next thing what's the next thing what's the next thing. It's so important to take that moment take a step back and say, Wow, look at what we just did. Right. You deserve the props your engineers deserve the props your data analysts deserve props. But so many times people forget, Hey, actually, my stakeholders did a lot of work. Maybe they had to do some really manual setup or maybe they had to update the marketing website or send a bunch of member emails or, or other sorts of communications. Don't forget them, you know, they had to take time to work on this release to I think it's only natural that we think of our engineers versus product managers. That's amazing and we should. But don't forget to kind of broaden that circle of kudos and praise to think about who else really made it possible for us to do that. So again, celebrate, give that acknowledge give credit where credit is due, and take that step back with your stakeholders to say this is amazing. This is what we did. Because what that's going to do is again foster this, you know, cycle of collaboration of communication to say, Okay, you know, Caitlin's willing to go out of her way to give me and my team praise for doing this pretty thankless task to prep for a future release. That's great and I trust her and I'm excited to work with her again. You want people to think in that way right you want people to want to work with you you want people to understand that you respect them you want them to respect you and celebrating wins and giving people the credit and praise that they deserve is one great way to do that. So, I hope you all enjoyed this. Again, as you can probably tell, I absolutely love talking about stakeholder management. I think it's just one of the most important parts of product management, I think we overlooked the soft skills involved in it so much as product managers. I'm really hoping that, you know, talking about how to build these relationships with communication transparency flexibility, how to run these stakeholder meetings by being clear about boundaries clear about note taking action items and follow ups. And then again, taking that step back to celebrate wins should really help you grow in your career and should really help you foster these stakeholder relationships. So again, thank you all for the time. I appreciate you taking some time out of your busy work day. I appreciate product school for having me here. And I appreciate everyone who's kind of helped mentor and coach me in my career and and help me dive into this subject of stakeholder management. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you have further questions or just want to chat I love talking about this. And again, thank you everyone for joining. Have a great rest of the day.