Product development is all about finding the right problem and the adequate solution to that problem. As you can imagine, it starts with the right problem. It’s of utmost importance to identify what you are trying to find a solution for. It’s a complex and collaborative process that demands the best from all stakeholders involved.
As a Product Manager, you have to collaborate with stakeholders, regardless if you like it or not, and you do not choose how the stakeholder should behave like. Some of them are very pleasant to work with, while some are simply a nuisance. That’s just the way it is with people.
In order to find the right problem and develop the right solution, normally you’d talk to your stakeholders early and often. This helps to find out their goals, challenges, needs, feelings, etc. that does impact the usage of the product you develop. Creating a prototype, doing research, identifying the state of the art solution, they’re easy to work on. Persuading stakeholders to buy-in your product or following a user-centered design approach are the difficult parts.
If people are easy-going and are willing to support this user-centric development, lucky you are. Sometimes there are toxic stakeholders who make the process unnecessarily difficult to steer. They try to push their agenda, set unrealistic expectations, disrespect the process definition. This usually reflects into a detrimental team morale and motivation, the negativity towards implementation, lack of cooperation, etc.
There are 2 ways of dealing with these people. The easiest option is to ignore them and find other customers or stakeholders you can cooperate with to add value. I do respect and appreciate when people are clear enough in their choice of leaving the crap out and moving on with their work in different directions.
The second way is to deal with the toxic stakeholder properly. That means finding the right path to integrate that person into the product development process, even if they do not want to. To do it, one can set clear expectations and boundries to the communication. Transparency about the product’s goals, timelines, risks and so on should be enough to do it. Do not push too much to have a communication, but make sure the transparency of the status of the product is there to showcase.
Mostly those toxic stakeholders are providing non-sense input. Nonetheless, there are some valuable input that can make the product add real value. So, it is very important to put a keen focus on interests, not positions, namely to aim to address the underlying needs rather than the specific demands.
The actions and behaviors of senior leaders play a pivotal role in shaping the culture of a company. Not only do they play a direct example, but they also influence indirectly on the organizational culture by their choices regarding which leaders to recruit, keep, and advance within the company. Middle management and supervisory roles across all levels within the organization have the capacity to craft unique subcultues, despite operatring under the same company-wide policies, remuneration structures, and standardized practices.
A toxic behavior reflects itself as a negativity in the surrounding impact area of the stakeholder, and if the organisation as a whole is not living with toxicity overall, this individuals and their traits will be extracted from the organisation at a point in time. Learn from it.