Stakeholders are at odds over a product's direction. How will you align conflicting visions for success?

Really understand what drives each stakeholder. Ask lots of questions, and listen carefully to their answers. This helps build trust and shows you care about their goals. A deep understanding of their needs is the foundation for finding a solution that works for everyone.

Start with one to ones but don’t just listen.. ask tons of questions. Really dig into their views. It’s important to make them feel heard. Then bring everyone together. It’ll help everyone understand each other’s views and often leads to better solutions. Make it very clear in every conversation that product direction is aligned with overall business goals, vision, and objectives that maximizes customer values. Ultimately, the common benefit for every stakeholder would be to provide value to customers by solving their pain points through product.

The guiding factors for setting the product's direction should be: 1. Corporate strategy & objectives 2. Product (/product-line) strategy & objectives 3. Customer value 4. Rough ROI (total value (customer & organization's)/investment The key question is: What are the potential directions projected to do FOR THE CUSTOMER? Creating customer value by creating a sustainable value over other alternatives is the path to creating successful products and company growth!

Once you've gathered insights, it's time to articulate a clear, compelling product vision that integrates the various stakeholder interests. Craft this vision statement to reflect shared objectives and communicate it effectively to all parties involved. This acts as a north star, guiding decisions and reminding everyone of the ultimate goal. A well-communicated vision fosters alignment, as stakeholders can see how their individual aspirations fit within the broader picture.

It is necessary to promote dialogue, but you will not always be able to be as neutral as you would like, after all, you will already have your biases at this point. In my experience, what works best is to create asynchronous moments for disagreement to ensure that all parties are having a voice. If you start this by using some type of Doc or collaborative board, you will already ensure that all the important points for everyone there are discussed. Dialogue is the beginning of an attempt to reach consensus, so it is important that it continues, including with actions and exercises even after some type of synchronous meeting. Creating to-do lists, determining who is responsible and establishing deadlines always helps progress.

The best thing we can do to build consensus is to use assertive data and numbers that clearly point in a direction. The numbers are not always available and in many situations they are not as clear as we would like, but rest assured that this is the best starting point you can have. So here is my best advice: "Have the numbers in your hat" Once you have the best possible information for the discussion, you need to build the scenarios in a well-illustrated way and with well-established trade-offs.