Stakeholder management — Techniques

“Don’t shave that yak” is a statement my previous manager introduced to me that resonated well as a coder.

What is Yak Shaving? A real-world example from Joi’s diary

You start out deciding to tidy your room and you realize that in order to do that you’ll need some more trash bags, so you need to go to the shops, which will involve you getting out of the car, but the car needs gas, so you’ll need to go to the gas station first, which means you should probably find your gas discount card, which involves finding your keys, which are in the room somewhere…

If you were a software engineer, you’ve experienced it in your VS Code or IntelliJ editor.

However, I’ve experienced it during a stakeholder engagement. Though the conversation was initiated to discuss the problem, the real focus shifted to the solution, someone was ensuring that the solution works by pouring all of the thinking into the solution. I could clearly see it being a “Shaving yak” activity that ended in a rabbit hole as the conversation was shifting different direction in pursuing stakeholder individual goals. While retrospecting, I realized the focus was on the solution instead of the problem or outcome.

When this happens, do you call it out?

Absolutely! While in stakeholder meetings you’ve to be clear and set boundaries, say no, and call out in a constructive way. In this case, I’ve learned to call out “I feel like shaving the yak for the past 30 minutes” in a funny tone.

Ok, Who is a stakeholder?

A stakeholder can be a person, group of people who:

• Have an interest in the product and its success
• Can influence product decisions
• Are impacted (directly or indirectly) by the product

examples: customers, sales team, product team, legal, etc.

Stakeholder management is not easy — Why?

Stakeholder management is not easy as it involves different people with different behaviors, expectations, and different information needs. Other areas that make stakeholder management difficult are

• Self-serving behaviors — In short form politics
• Conflicting objectives/priorities
• Unshared vision
• Communication gap

Stakeholder management routines

1. Identify the stakeholders: Jot down your stakeholders with a pen and paper or google for templates, plot them by influence and interest. Ensure you have clear reasons on why there is influence and interest?
2. Establish trust: Trust is such a key thing while working with stakeholders, it does take time to build trust.
3. Engage: Engage with stakeholders continuously at a cadence.
4. Adapt: Adapt your speech based on the stakeholder.
5. Understand: Listen and understand the considerations and challenges of your stakeholders.
6. Share: Share the learnings with your stakeholders, and ask for feedback.

Techniques

• Build trust: If a stakeholder does not have trust that you are going to solve their concerns, they either escalate or try to control. Also, trust goes both ways.
• Focus on knowledge: Stakeholders are inclined to listen to you when you have deep knowledge of the product, metrics, etc
• Build a relationship with stakeholders: Ensure that we provide product updates, ask for feedback, understand what is working and what is not
• Tailor our approach: Stakeholders may speak a different language, ex: an engineer may speak an engineering language. Focus on how features will help, and outcomes, keep telling stories around the product.
• Set boundaries: Say no to stakeholders sometimes if applicable, when you say no make sure you are ack the request and provide a reason why we cannot accomplish the request.
• Favor short, frequent updates over long infrequent updates: Stakeholders have their job to do, get them excited about updates
• Be visual: Pictures speak louder than words
• Integrate the feedback we get: If you ask for feedback and ignore it then we are wasting time and losing trust, always iterate in the next conversation.
• Get feedback one on one: In a group setting one person can derail the conversation, and meet with stakeholders one at a time, it will help in the long run, It is worth the time spent.