You Are Tested Every Day - follow up story

Turning a Test into a Collaboration

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for premium subscribers to Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about staying productive while handling stakeholder questions:

Turning a Test into a Collaboration

What Prompted this Article?

I had a pretty tough week with my stakeholders leading up to this article. I define stakeholders as:

• my boss and his boss

• the financial controller for my business unit

• sales leaders

• program leaders

• tax and accounting leaders

This group of stakeholders had a lot of questions in separate meetings. Some of the questions were:

• How are you going to increase margin while keeping a competitive price?

• Does sales agree with the forecast?

• How does your sales forecast relate to the business unit forecast?

• Why are the engineering costs so high?

• Why is the forecast growth rate so low?

Each of these questions felt like a test of my knowledge and ability to respond with a simple answer.

Instead of plowing through a lot of data and creating my version of a simple answer, I decided to work with the different stakeholders and respond in their context.

What Happened After this Article?

The first problem with the strategy of collaborating with the various stakeholders is the amount of time needed. Just scheduling collaboration meetings with the right people is time-consuming.