If you've been following along on our yellow brick roadmap 🟨🧱, you'll know we've already covered backlogs, user stories, and the art of breaking down work. Today we're venturing somewhere altogether more treacherous.
Stakeholder management.
Now, I want to be clear: stakeholders are not the enemy. They are not, despite what you might mutter under your breath after a particularly spirited "this should take five minutes" conversation, flying monkeys sent to destroy your sprint 🐒.
They are people. With opinions, pressures, deadlines, and — here's the important part — information you often need. The trick is learning how to work with that energy rather than getting swept off to a castle in the sky.
🧙 First: Know Your Cast of Characters
Not all stakeholders are the same. In my experience, you'll meet a few recurring characters on this particular yellow brick road:
The Wizard — senior, influential, occasionally behind a curtain. Doesn't always engage directly but their opinion carries enormous weight. Ignore them at your peril; over-involve them and they'll micromanage everything. Find the rhythm.
The Tin Man — wants to help but often doesn't know how. Full of good intentions, sometimes lacks the context to make them land. Give them structure and they'll be one of your greatest allies.
The Scarecrow — full of ideas. Wonderful, chaotic, sometimes brilliant ideas. Needs gentle focus and a clear "yes, and here's where that fits" or "not right now, and here's why."
The Lion — has the authority but not always the confidence to use it. Needs to be brought along on the journey, not presented with a fait accompli at the end.
You will have all of these in your organisation, probably in the same room, possibly in the same meeting. Good luck 🧡.
🗺️ The Map Matters More Than the Territory
The single most important thing I have learned about stakeholder management is this: people behave badly when they feel out of the loop.
Not because they're difficult (well, sometimes). But because uncertainty makes people anxious, and anxious people fill the gaps with assumptions. Usually wrong ones. Usually ones that create more work for you.
The antidote is communication. Not constant communication — that's its own problem — but consistent, predictable communication. A regular update. A clear signal when priorities shift. A heads-up before a decision lands, not after.
You don't need to consult everyone on everything. But you do need everyone to trust that they'll know what they need to know, when they need to know it. That trust is the road. Without it, the flying monkeys win.
🎯 Influence Without Authority (Or: You Are Not The Boss of Anyone)
Here's a truth they don't put in the job description: as a Product Manager, you have enormous responsibility and very little formal authority. You don't manage the developers. You don't manage the designers. You certainly don't manage the CFO who just had "a quick idea" that would "only take a week."
What you have instead is influence. And influence is built on three things:
Credibility — do you know what you're talking about? Have you done your homework? Do you explain your reasoning, or just assert your conclusions? Credibility is earned slowly and lost quickly.
Relationships — do people feel heard when they talk to you? Do you follow up? Do you give credit where it's due? This is the stuff that makes the difference between someone who fights your decisions and someone who supports them even when they disagree.
Transparency — do people know where things stand? Is your reasoning visible? Transparency doesn't mean sharing everything; it means not surprising people with things that affect them.
Get these three right and most stakeholder management problems quietly solve themselves.
💬 On the Difficult Conversations
They will happen. Someone will want something you can't deliver. Someone will disagree with a decision. Someone will send an email at 4pm on a Friday that begins "just a quick thought..."
A few things that have helped me:
Go to the conversation early, not late. The longer you wait, the bigger the gap between what someone expects and what's actually happening.
Separate the person from the position. They want what they want for a reason. Sometimes the reason is political. Sometimes it's personal. Sometimes it's actually very valid and you've missed something. Find out which before you decide how to respond.
Don't have the difficult conversation over email. Just don't.
And finally — be willing to be wrong. Some of the best product decisions I've been involved in started with a stakeholder pushing back on something I thought was settled. They were right. I updated my thinking. The product was better for it.
🌻 The Monster's Verdict
Stakeholder management is not a dark art. It is not manipulation. It is not politics (well, not only politics).
It is, at its core, the practice of building enough trust with enough people that when you do need to make a difficult call, you have the relationships to support it.
Find your allies. Respect your sceptics — they often have the sharpest questions. Keep the Wizard informed. Give the Tin Man structure. Channel the Scarecrow's ideas. Back the Lion.
And when the flying monkeys come — and they will — remember: even they were just following orders 🐒.
Until next time, my product fiends 💀.
