Maneuvering with Data: How Product Leaders can channelize multi-stakeholder discussions towards consensus.

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Product leaders need to influence strategic decisions that involve multiple stakeholders.? The stakeholders bring in different points of view and, as the name says, have different things at stake.? When you have C-Suite, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Operations, Finance, Customer representatives involved in a strategy discussion, reaching consensus can be challenging.? In my 20+ years of working with different stakeholders, I have seen many discussions not reaching consensus on time.? This resulted in delayed or wrong decisions and many missed opportunities.? Most of the time it could be attributed to the data… or the lack of it.? I would like to share with you 3 common mistakes in multi-stakeholder discussion and tips to avoid them.

1.Mistake #1: Not understanding the stakeholders, their thought processes and their biases/traps in decision making:

Each person thinks differently.? Some attach emotions or are subjective.? Some need hard metrics.? Some look at only parts of the picture and see if it makes business sense.? But, most importantly, many fall into traps.? In the HBR article “The hidden traps of decision making” [1], the authors explain the: Sunk-cost fallacy, Status-quo bias, Confirming bias, estimating/forecasting traps, Anchoring/Reference-point traps.? One needs to understand the thought process of each stakeholder. Being aware of the biases/traps and taking actions to neutralize them helps significantly.

1. Uncover errors in thinking before they become errors in Judgement [1]. Identify the biases in decision making exhibited by stakeholders and proactively help them realize that with data.??
2. Understand the decision making style of each stakeholder and work with it… not against it.? Remember: A man/woman convinced against his/her will is of the same opinion still.

The product leader needs to facilitate such a culture while retaining a neutral stance.

Tip #1: Maintain a neutral stance, uncover the biases of the stakeholders, and be the facilitator for reaching consensus in a decision process.?

2. Mistake #2 Lacking clarity and not proactively gathering the necessary data

Two decades ago, when I was working for a Japanese router manufacturer, a customer rep came up with a requirement from the field for stack-able routers similar to the leading competitor.? But the proposal was not backed by data!? The Marketing & sales heads needed to see how it can differentiate our product from competition and bring in more revenue.? Engineering needed to see how it would affect the existing feature functionality.? The program manager needed to see that it complements the features on the roadmap.? Needless to say the decision was deferred to a later time as there was not enough data to justify the new product.? The C-Suite was not willing to fund the R&D.??

That incident was an eye opener for the team as we lost time in designing a new product.? Most of the time, the onus is on the product leader to encourage the stakeholders to gather data to facilitate the discussion.? Here are a few things that will help:

1. Set the objective for the discussion and the decision to be taken.? Work backwards and be proactive in collecting the data that may be needed for the stakeholder discussion.? It reduces a lot of frustration and wasted time.? This is something one gets better with time.
2. Have an open mind and understand the requests for data by the stakeholders and the reasoning behind it.? Encourage divergent thinking.
3. Understand that the product leader need not be the only person gathering data.? Gathering data is a team effort.?

Tip #2: Set the objectives, identify the decision(s) to be taken, and have a data-driven discussion.

3. Mistake #3 Not reducing the discussion to fewer options to reach a “Yes” or “No” decision at the end

In his book The Paradox of Choice[2], Barry Schwartz explains that: “Having to choose just one option from a large selection of desirable options often leads us to feel unsatisfied and hung up on those other possibilities we missed out on. It can even lead to suspended action, where we are so overwhelmed by the choice on offer that we fail to make a decision at all.”

Sounds obvious… but this is an often repeated mistake.? Once I saw a software team propose 3 different routing products and put the onus on the Management team to select one of them.? Not wanting to make a mistake with product positioning, we had multiple rounds of stakeholder discussions to evaluate them for almost 3 months.? Needless to say, it left everyone completely drained.? We didn’t want to go through something like that again and laid some ground rules for future discussions.

1. If stakeholders are asked to choose, the proposing team needs to provide the data upfront with all the prep work done before the stakeholder meeting.??
2. If the proposing team can reduce the options, they must do it and notify the stakeholders along with their reasoning.
3. And most importantly, simplify the stakeholder discussion and virtually make it a no brainer decision (pardon the pun).

Tip#3: Whenever possible, reduce the options and facilitate a binary decision

In Conclusion:

One needs to understand that the human brain is excellent at taking the right decision when it has pertinent data from reliable sources.? But it will falter in decision making and err towards a safer decision or maintain the status quo in the absence of it. ? So the single most important factor in influencing stakeholders would be to aid their collective thinking with the right data. ? If the product leaders channelize the stakeholder discussion with data, they can reach consensus faster. It not only reduces frustration, it will significantly expedite the decision making process.

Bibliography:

[1] The Hidden traps in decision making: https://hbr.org/1998/09/the-hidden-traps-in-decision-making-2

[2] The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice