 Hey everybody, my name is Mark Kirtle. I'm a senior PM at Indiegogo and today thanks to product school I'll be going through a PM's guide to managing So starting off why is stakeholder management important? Well product managers manage more than just a product. We just we manage The relationships that we have with everyone who's involved with the product So that doesn't just involve the product lifecycle But it also involves everything that goes in between managing Projects by project so all of the key stakeholders all the different teams within the company that are involved with what your product may touch Those relationships are something that you manage as well So making sure that you have a good grasp on how you work with your stakeholders particularly internally Is going to be really valuable for your time at wherever you work While managing stakeholders, you'll find that you can find a lot of valuable insight in all areas throughout the company So if you have a great relationship with the folks that you're working with you'll be more able to sort of take advantage of You know the knowledge that you're able to find so individuals on the sales team may be able to make it really They may be able to provide a lot of great insight into what are things that new clients are looking for that other competitors may do better If you're working with someone on the marketing team They may be able to provide you some insight on what are some really exciting things that you could provide that would make it easier to market a product To market a new feature that's being released So if you have a great relationship with your stakeholders and you really managed That collaboration well You'll be able to really utilize the insights and the knowledge that they have And ensuring that you're building a great product and that you're building and releasing features that your users will find valuable I'm kind of leading it to my next point great stakeholder management can lead to a smoother product life cycle as a product manager, it's your responsibility to Not just bring ideas to the table, but bring those ideas to life And in doing so you're going to be working with a lot of different people Throughout that process depending on how small or large that project is If you have a great relationship with the stakeholders that you're working with it'll help make that life cycle a lot smoother So even starting with the brainstorming phase all the way through the actual release and maintenance aspects of development As long as you're continuing to work with these individuals Well, you're having a constant check-in status updates getting insights and learning how to iterate on your projects while you're within development That'll help make you have a much smoother product life cycle It really sucks to be halfway through a project and then get some insight from Team member that you wish you had at the very beginning that you didn't Receive because you didn't really manage that relationship and you didn't communicate with them earlier on in the process So being able to you know, keep that in mind and really work through that Will make things a lot smoother for you and it'll make your life a lot easier So kind of sounds a little selfish, but if you manage a great relationship with your stakeholders Ultimately, it should make your life as a PM a lot easier wherever you are So throughout this presentation, I'll give three key points for how to manage Your stakeholders again depending on the type of relationship That you have and what your responsibilities are as a PM Some of these things may not apply as strongly Depending on where you are, but I think overall the general theme of these three concepts should Provide some value to you regardless of where you are So number one learn who you're working with So when you are managing stakeholders and when you're working with others It's good to have an idea of who your closest collaborators are going to be So one of the first things that I like to do when I start at a new company Or I'm working with a different team that I'm not used to working with Is learn who the internal team leads are so who is the person on the sales team that I need to make sure that I am Reaching out to and working with Depending on the size of your company. You might have people who are dedicated to these particular groups So the company I've worked with in the past We had a dedicated marketing person who worked with us. We had a dedicated data analytic analytics person who worked with us And depending on the size of your company that may differ But regardless get acquainted with the internal team leads get acquainted with the folks who you're going to be expected to work with on a Consistent basis Because it'll allow you to one know who you need to reach out to whenever you have questions or things that you're trying to work through And it leads to my second point where you can learn their work style Paying attention to specific work styles. I find really important and it's been really valuable for me You're gonna be working with a lot of different people as we know people have different personalities others work in different forms and fashions You may have someone on the marketing team who prefers being Communicated with via email And you may have someone on a customer support team who prefers to be communicated with via slack or some sort of DM And these things may seem small But at the end of the day, you're working through, you know a product you're working through a lot of different projects You're trying to get responses You're trying to collaborate you try to move things as efficiently as possible and knowing the type of work styles But the people you work with have and prefer Can help you get through those more efficiently if I know that someone Likely is able to respond to something in slack within 24 hours But sending it via email is going to take them a week because their emails are always bogged down Then I'm not going to send them something via email unless I need it to be seen by a ton of different people I'm going to take advantage of the opportunities that I see within the types of work styles of the people that I work with To make sure that I can get the answers that I need and that I can move forward My projects as quickly as possible because at the end of the day If you're not able to move forward with something if they're not responding to you It's not going to be on them It's going to be on you for not finding a more effective way of getting the response that you needed So paying attention to the work styles of the people that you work with Is really important because you can better understand how To collaborate with them and that doesn't just go towards how you reach out to them But it also goes to communication. How do you communicate with certain people? Others like To have constant communication. They want to know everything. They want to be informed every step of the way Others just want to know the big picture. They just want to know the key points Maybe they don't want to have a check-in, you know, every so often So better understanding those types of quirks and personality traits Of the people that you work with is extremely helpful because you're making sure that you're maintaining a positive relationship Sometimes you might be found annoying because as a p.m. We got a check-in and we got to get information when we can But you want people To be easier to work with personally. I want people To like working with me. I find that it makes my life and my job a lot easier Your mileage may vary but Making sure that you at least understand the work styles that individuals have and how they Prefer to be collaborating with can help you As you continue to collaborate with them moving forward And then finally, I would say understand team priorities So working with these team leads the representatives from every aspect that you collaborate with They're kind of your gateway into learning what the what the priorities of these different teams are So it's helpful for me to know what are the priorities of the sales team? What are the priorities of our customer support our account management team? What are the things that they're looking for from product? Because when I'm trying to plan out a product roadmap, if I have particular goals that align with their goals Working with them and learning their priorities and learning the things that they feel like they Need us to work on Is really helpful for me with prioritizing. Okay, so what are the things that my team should be working on if we Have a focus on improving our trust in our relationship with users It's important for me to know what are the priorities of the trust and legal team What do I need to build or what do I need to propose? Building that will help move their initiatives forward because that's a key part of what You know this area of my roadmap looks like so Learning who you're working with learning your team leads learning their work styles Will help you understand the priorities for those teams And it'll help you be a better collaborator with them moving forward and overall just a better colleague within the business My second point is communicate early and often So as a product manager a key aspect of your role is communication You're not just working with engineers and designers. You user experience specialists To build products and release them You're working with again key stakeholders throughout the entire company And they're not going to be as in tune with how things are going because they're not going to be the ones who are actively developing things You know, they're not designing the features that you're working on. They're not investigating any bugs that come up They're not building the new features that you're talking about so They need to be Involved in the process by way of just understanding what's going on and being able to provide feedback along the way So your role as the pm is to communicate those updates is to communicate the status of the projects Communicate what you're planning on doing what you're actively doing Some of the roadblocks that you're that you're getting along the way and working with them To kind of get over that hump and get through that line and make sure that you're able to Deliver on the things that you've you know committed to delivering Um, so one of the key things you can do here is identify those key participants You know, they might be the team leads. They might be somebody else Uh, but identify the key participants and establish a cadence for updates Um, so how quickly are you going to or how frequently? Um, are you going to meet with these individuals? Uh, how often are they going to expect updates from you? Um, you can kind of control this you can as the pm you you have the ability to kind of Control how often you're going to provide these status updates if you're working on a project that's going to take three four months It might not make sense for you to provide weekly updates and you can communicate that you can let them know Hey, you know, I'll provide, you know updates every two weeks on the status Until we reach, you know, x point in which case we may want to increase the cadence We may want to decrease it but as the pm it's your responsibility to establish the communication channel between you and the other stakeholders And by getting that out of the way early you can kind of control How how often you need to do this and kind of plan your time accordingly To make sure that you're able to actually stay committed to the cadence that you agree to The next is tailoring your message to your audience So again, you're working with a lot of different people with a lot of different personalities and traits The way you deliver a message to one person may be different the way that you deliver to another So if the key participant If one of the key participants that you're working with is the director of sales versus a Data analyst the way that you present an update to someone At a director level may be different that you Maybe a different way in which you provide that message to someone at a more sort of analytic or maybe a junior level So what you want to make sure that you're doing is that your message is being received properly by the recipient And that involves tailoring your message to your audience. How do you explain things to them at what level of depth? Do you provide it to them? What channel do you provide it to them again? Is it an email? Is it a slack message? Is it a google doc? Making sure that your message is being presented in a way that your audience can resonate with it and understand it Will help you because you don't want to run into a situation later on Where you're providing information and someone says they didn't receive it or it didn't make sense to them and they didn't understand it And granted yes, if someone doesn't understand something you would have the expectation that they Would reach out and ask more questions, but that isn't always the case So it's doing your best to just make sure that you're trying to provide it in as clear a way as possible And following up with them. So if you feel like it's possible that they may not have understood the message Take it upon yourself to make sure that you follow up. This goes into communicating often Following up with people making sure that they understood the message make sure that if there are action items provided to them That they understand what you're asking for This leads to my next point Stakeholders are a resource You're not just providing updates to these individuals You're also working with them to move the product forward and ensure that it's being moved in the right direction So if the initial intent is to build x While you're building that you want to check in and make sure that it's continuing to look The way that they was, you know, would have envisioned it looking or the way that you at least agreed upon it looking And if you have to make any changes along the way, I think you do bandwidth You realize that the initial thing that you were trying to build doesn't seem as effective anymore And you decided to you know change course and go in a different direction You need to communicate that and you want to make sure that that still fits the initial need That spurred your decision to take on this project in the first place So using those stakeholders as a resource to continue to confirm that you're moving down the right path Is going to be extremely beneficial because again, you don't want to get halfway through a project And realize that something wasn't communicated to someone and then they're telling you that this isn't going to work Or this isn't going to fit your needs In which case you kind of you know wasted all of that time and now you need to go back to the drawing board And in using your stakeholders as a resource you want to make sure you clarify your needs as well So again, it isn't always just communicating things to them. Sometimes you need things from them as well If i'm working with marketing on getting ready to prepare a rollout for a project I want to make sure that If I have specific things that i'm expecting them To uh communicate in that in that rollout that they're aware of that so Working with them on the you know go to market plan Having them provide, you know a document or an early draft of what the communication is going to look like So you have the opportunity to review it and see what changes you may suggest or see what changes your team may suggest Is really helpful and you need to clarify that It might not be clear that you know marketing is is Is uh needed to provide a draft for you to review It depends on what company you work in and sort of what the team dynamics are So you want to make sure that you understand those things early And just make sure that you communicate whatever specific needs you have for your team or for that project So that your stakeholders are aware and that they can be a better collaborator for you as well Communication is a two-way street. So it's not always you just providing information and providing feedback and updates You need those from them as well. So you need to make sure that you're communicating that And having that be a clear kind of component of your working relationship And my last point is be careful about oversharing There's a lot of detail that can be given There's a lot of technical detail that can be given while you're working with engineering on the status of of how A product or a product is being developed So if you have a stakeholder asking for an update or they want to learn more about something Make sure that you're providing them with the information that they actually need to know They may not need to know the nitty-gritty of every single thing that engineering is encountering If you realize that something Went wrong or something became more complicated than you expected You can let them know that you can let the stakeholder know that you know We ran into such and such issue and it's going to cause the project to take, you know x amount of time But you may not need to go into the nitty-gritty of what exactly that issue is how we found it What's going wrong what we're doing yada yada? So be careful about oversharing Information overload is is a real thing So you don't want to overwhelm your stakeholders with lots of information You might have the person who just wants to get the key point and be able to move on So take take note of that and provide the the level of information That seems necessary for those users Exercise your best judgment based on what you've learned From building that relationship and learning who your stakeholders are And share the you know appropriate level of information that you are at least able to identify to make sure that everyone's informed And you're able to move the project forward And my last note is don't be afraid to say no Nicely of course So ideally we do all the things a lot of people have a lot of different ideas They have a lot of different perspectives on what we could do as pms to move a product forward and to improve our business The reality is we can't do everything Resources may be a constraint time may be a constraint And it just may not make sense Not every idea is the most effective one So it's okay to say no As a p.m. It's actually your job in many cases to say no because we can't do everything so Um, make sure that you know, you kind of build the the comfortability To do so and by having a great relationship with your stakeholders It'll help you feel more comfortable doing that because they understand you they understand your perspective if they understand How you operate and what your team is trying to achieve and if they have faith in you as a p.m And they have faith in you as a colleague Then that will make it more comfortable for you to be able to say no There are a lot of times where we're looking into Various different things that we want to do. We want to improve our user experience We want to you know, release new features that may add more revenue And a lot of ideas can come from a lot of different places. It's very common for me To brainstorm with a lot of different individuals. I like to hear ideas from everywhere not just within product But within these different teams and I can't deliver on every single idea So I have to make the decision with my team with my manager in some cases To decide what are the ideas that we think are best and which ones do we want to move forward with What are the ones that we wanted to fur things that we might want to address later? And what are the things that we think, you know, we this doesn't sound like it's really going to work for us I don't think that this is a great idea for us right now Um, and you want to back those decisions up with research and data You don't want to just say no to something because you don't like the sound of it Because that's not going to resonate as well that might be offensive to others that might be off putting to others That you're kind of just dismissing their ideas without any sort of justification for why other than you just don't like it So do some research look up research out there for Um, you know similar things that have been done in the past other companies See if it's something your competitors have done in the past It's possible that you've done it as a company historically, but it was you know years and years ago Gain some insights on the things that people are suggesting or others members of your team are suggesting Utilize your data analysts and your business intelligence teams To gather data to help back up The decisions that you're making because that'll help build confidence in your stakeholders that you are stepping in the right direction. You're not just Choosing to to not do things based on personal opinion But you're looking at data and metrics to help validate why you're making those decisions Because at the end of the day, it's hard to dispute data. Obviously, you can manipulate data to look in certain ways that you want it to look but As long as you're pulling the numbers and you're telling the story In a sensible and logical way Use that to help back up the decisions that you're making And don't be afraid to say no To things that just don't look like you're going to be a good fit for your team or your company Based on where it is currently And the last thing is compromise You don't want to always just say no, you're not going to do something For some time you might be able to say no But after a while if you're known as someone who just says no to stuff consistently It might make it difficult for people to want to work with you They might not have trust in your ability as a collaborator or as a as a pm because you're Just not really collaborating and working with them properly. So when had a compromise Someone may suggest a solution to a problem that you're facing And the solution that they provided doesn't sound like it'll work But the concept and the theme behind that solution seems to make sense So maybe find alternate possibilities of ways to resolve that problem Based on the theme or the idea that they presented but not the actual Solution that they said themselves. That's a form of compromising. Hey, uh, you presented this really great idea We don't think this is going to be the best solution But in a similar vein we think that you know, why is going to be a better path for us to pursue That can go over really well Because that way that person feels like they contributed. They don't feel like they're completely dismissed They understand through the research and the data that you provided that what they Thought of as a solution isn't going to be the best fit But you at least considered their idea and found an alternate path that kind of speaks To the direction that they were thinking of but it's going to be a more effective method Of achieving the results that you're looking for As a pm. I feel like compromising is one of the things that I do extremely frequently Because again, not every idea is the most effective one. We can't do everything individuals ask for So learning how to compromise and find other paths to move forward While taking into consideration the ideas they have and you know being respectful and working with them through those ideas Is going to be extremely helpful for you as a pm because Again, you want to maintain a good working relationship that will make your life easier It can be a lot of work Depending on the size of the of the company the number of individuals that you're working with It can be a lot of work to to learn who all of these different leads are And collaborate with all of them kind of take into account their different work styles And you may not be able to do it all the time, but it's something to keep in mind And it's something to strive to be able to do consistently because building these better working relationships As a project manager as a product manager as someone who is Going to be focused on maintaining a great relationship because that's Necessary in order for you to do your job properly It's in your best interest to to make sure that you're compromising and you're doing these things well So that is it for my presentation, thanks for attending You can find me on linkedin. My name is again is mark hurtle. Um, and appreciate your time