Daniel zacarias - Productized Masterclasses

Building a Common
Yearning for the Vast
and Endless Sea
Drive stakeholder alignment and buy-in
Daniel Zacarias
May 28th, 2021

About Daniel
• Based in Lisbon, Portugal
• Product management consultant and trainer
• Clients in Spain, Portugal, UK and US
• Implemented product management and
development best practices across a wide
range of companies, from startup to
enterprise
• Led multiple product teams working on
mobile, API and IoT solutions, handling millions
of transactions per day
• Blogs at career.pm (formerly Folding Burritos) Daniel Zacarias
Founder at
Substantive and career.pm
© 2021 career.pm 2

Stakeholders…
© 2021 career.pm 3

Stakeholders are key
• Internal stakeholders are critical for the product, and us as
PMs, to succeed, they:
• Take the product to customers’ hands (Marketing, Sales)
• Help customers succeed and stay/grow with the product
(Support)
• Invest in the product’s future (Executives)
• Yet many PMs struggle to build consensus, or prevent
stakeholders from derailing current plans
© 2021 career.pm 4

The problems PMs face
• Constantly changing priorities
• Pulled in different directions
• Difficulty getting others to understand plans and rationale
• Interruptions and requests for updates
• Ad-hoc feature requests
• Progress = Shipping
© 2021 career.pm 5

Reasons for stakeholder friction
• They don’t understand (or know about) the business motivation (strategy)
• Weren’t involved or actively engaged in the decision-making process, and thus
aren’t committed to it
• ”Attention asymmetry”
• They have other things on their plates, and don’t think about the product as much
as we do — we don’t communicate effectively
• They don’t (necessarily) think like Product Managers
• PMs are problem-driven, instead of solution-driven (unlike many roles), and that
culture clash creates issues
• They have their own motivation that hasn’t been aligned
© 2021 career.pm 6

The root causes
• Strategy not articulated clearly (or at all)
• No prior agreement on goals and strategy
• Objectives for different functions not aligned (e.g., marketing
and PM)
• Poor communication style
• No internal communications plan
• Not addressing a solution-first culture
• Sharing product updates without impact or learnings info
© 2021 career.pm 7

“If you want to build a
ship, don’t drum up the
men to gather wood,
divide the work, and give
orders. Instead, teach
them to yearn for the
vast and endless sea.”
© 2021 career.pm 8
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

What we need:
1. Strategic alignment
2.Communication
3.Culture
© 2021 career.pm 9

We’ll learn how to…
• Clearly articulate the product strategy
• Align around different aspects of the roadmap
• Drive consensus around key issues
• Be proactive (and strategic) communicators
• Be effective communicators
• Share impact and learnings
• Address a solution-first culture
© 2021 career.pm 10

Strategic
alignment
Communication Culture
• Clearly articulating the
product strategy
• Driving consensus
around key issues
• Becoming proactive (and
strategic) communicators
• Becoming effective
communicators
• Sharing impact and
learnings
• Addressing a solution-
first culture

Clearly articulating the
product strategy
How to explain (and agree on) where we’re going (and why)

What is a strategy?
“… a framework for making decisions
about how you will play the game of
business.” Forbes
“… generally involves, setting goals and priorities,
determining actions to achieve the goals, and
mobilizing resources to execute the actions.”
Wikipedia
“the intelligent allocation of resources through a
unique system of activities to achieve a goal.”
Strategic Thinking Institute

Our Definition
• A strategy is a course of action that takes an entity toward
success
• The “entity” can be a company, a department, a product or
offering, a person
• Strategy is about doing/executing (action)
• Success must be defined before a meaningful strategy can
be defined

How can we define
success so that we can
formulate a strategy?

Goals
• Goals are general things that represent success
• Increase revenue
• Decrease churn
• Be seen as a thought leader
• Expand global Business
• Anatomy of a goal
• Vector: direction and magnitude, e.g., increase, decrease,
eliminate
• Metric: unit of measure

Metric Categories
• Financial
• Revenue
• Profitability
• Investment Metrics
• Customer
• Active users
• Adoption
• Net Promoter Score
• Lifetime Value
• Retention/Churn
• Customer Satisfaction
• Funnel
• Conversion
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Sales
• New vs. Existing
• Velocity
• Win/Loss Ratio
• Cost of Sales
• Pipeline Health
• Behavior
• Session time
• Bounce rate

• Increase revenue
• Decrease churn
• Be seen as a thought leader
• Expand global Business
Are goals enough to define
meaningful success?
Are we done?

Anatomy of an Objective
Objectives are time-bound and measurable and demonstrate progress toward a goal.
Increase Net Promoter Score to +40 by end of fiscal year.
Increase average margin to 60% by end of 2025.
Decrease churn by 15% by July 2022.
Anatomy of an objective:
• Vector: Direction relative to target
• Metric: Unit of measure
• Target: Expected value of metric
• Time limit: time by which metric should reach target

Goals and Objectives
1. Achieve negative revenue churn
1. Increase add-on subscriptions by 20% by Q2
2. Increase cross-sells by 10% by Q3
2. Decrease Customer Acquisition Costs
1. Reduce affiliate activation lead-time to 24h by Q2
2. Achieve a 1:1 referral ratio by Q4
General
Time-bound
and
measurable

Hierarchy of Concepts
Defining
Success
Goal 1
Objective 1.1
Objective 1.2
Goal 2
Objective 2.1
Objective 2.2

Validating Our Definition of Success
• The definition of success should be
validated to ensure alignment before
defining strategy
• Prioritize stakeholders
• Present a “draft” and ask for feedback
• Ask management/leadership for ends to
align to

Strategy (rewind)
• A strategy is a course of action that
takes an entity toward success
• Strategy is about doing!
• Contributes to attainment of
success (goals/objectives)
Success
You are here

The Strategy Elevator Pitch
• 3-4 sentences
• Should include reference to ends (vision, goals, objectives)
• About doing!

Product Strategy Elevator Pitch
Examples
Elevator Pitch
We will become the default project
management SaaS for SMB in the
construction industry by providing an
easy-to-use and cost-effective service.
Our ability to do that will hinge on a self-
serve product and lowering our cost of
revenue. We will leverage our installed
base and community to bring in more
users and expand to adjacent market
needs like budgeting, purchasing and
accounting.
Pillars
• Self-serve, easy-to-use product with
high NPS
• Cost-effective solution for a price
sensitive market
• Capitalize on high NPS to drive user-
driven acquisition
• New product development for our
installed base (cross-sells and add-
ons)

Tactic
• “Part” of a strategy
• Simple decomposition
• Strategy: Cost-effective solution for a price sensitive
market. Capitalize on high NPS to drive user-driven
acquisition.
• Tactic: Launch affiliate marketing program
• Tactic: Create referral rewards for users

Achieving
Success
Strategy
Tactic 1
Tactic 2

Success
Define
Success
Goal 1
Objective 1.1
Objective 1.2
Goal 2
Objective 2.1
Objective 2.2
Achieve
Success
Strategy
Tactic 1
Tactic 2

Business
Motivation
Ends
Vision
Goal 1
Objective 1.1
Objective 1.2
Goal 2
Objective 2.1
Objective 2.2
Means
Mission
Strategy
Tactic 1
Tactic 2
Object Management Group
Business Motivation Model

Hierarchy of Business Motivation
→ Enterprise (company)
→ Business Unit
→ Solution
→ Product
→ Individual!

Motivation
ManageBuild Pro
Become the default project management SaaS for
SMB in the construction industry
Achieve negative revenue
churn
Increase add-on
subscriptions by 20% by
Q2
Increase cross-sells by
10% by Q3
Decrease CAC
Reduce CAC to 30% of
CLTV by Q3
Achieve a 0.5 referral
ratio by Q4
Provide the easiest-to-use, predictive project
management tool for builders
Launch new (adjacent) products and
add-ons, and implement organic
acquisition channels
Product development for our
installed base
Create more feature
add-ons
ManageBudget Pro
MVP
Capitalize on our high NPS to drive
user-driven acquisition
Self-serve affiliate
program
Enable referral
rewards for users

Strategy and the Roadmap
• The roadmap is an expression of strategy
• Release investments are prioritized based on business
motivation
• The roadmap must support the product’s objectives
• Both business motivation (strategy) and the roadmap are
the accountability of product managers

Roadmap inputs & outputs
Goals & Objectives (OKRs)
Vision
Strategy
Key timeframes
Feature specs, ideas, opportunities
Effort estimations
Point-in-time picture of a
specific combination of
inputs
Investments

Roadmapping problems
• Deliverable gets outdated fast (project plan)
• Generate discussion around outputs, not outcomes:
• Progress velocity (timing, effort, investment)
• Choice of features (“priorities”)
• Design of features
• Doesn’t really achieve commonly stated goals:
• how do you understand overall strategy and direction from a
roadmap diagram?

Compartmentalize discussion and change
Motivation
Investment
Sequencing
Delivery
Change
impact
Alignment importance

Motivation
ManageBuild Pro
Become the default project management SaaS for
SMB in the construction industry
Achieve negative revenue
churn
Increase add-on
subscriptions by 20% by
Q2
Increase cross-sells by
10% by Q3
Decrease CAC
Reduce CAC to 30% of
CLTV by Q3
Achieve a 0.5 referral
ratio by Q4
Provide the easiest-to-use, predictive project
management tool for builders
Launch new (adjacent) products and
add-ons, and implement organic
acquisition channels
Product development for our
installed base
Create more feature
add-ons
ManageBudget Pro
MVP
Capitalize on our high NPS to drive
user-driven acquisition
program
Enable referral
rewards for users

Motivation
Investment
Sequencing
Delivery
Change
impact

Investment
• Often, “priority” discussions are
about investment (allocation)
• If you think of all lines of work in this
way, you can negotiate with
different stakeholders how much to
invest over time
• Then, discussions are about “how
much we do” and not “do we do X
vs Y?”
50%
60%
50%
70%
10%
10%
5%
10%
20%
10%
5%
15%
20%
30%
40%
5%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Strategic Features Bugs Minor Enhancements Tech Debt

Motivation
Investment
Sequencing
Delivery
Change
impact

Sequencing
Now Next Later
Feature A
Create more feature
add-ons
ManageBudget Pro
MVP
program
Enable referral rewards
for users
Feature B
Experiment C
Feature D
Experiment E
Feature X
Feature C
Project B
Feature E
Idea X
Opportunity Y
Idea Z
Progressively vaguer
Connect items to
motivation: theme
(tactic) & objective

Motivation
Investment
Sequencing
Delivery
Change
impact

Delivery (very short term)

Driving consensus around
key issues
Involving key people early on is extremely important (and helpful)

KJ-method: a tool to involve and build
consensus
• Group prioritization technique devised by Jiro Kawakita
• Group answers a focus question without discussions and
distractions
• Focus question addresses alignment on challenges,
opportunities, features etc.
• Creates convergence by reviewing each other’s inputs

KJ: Brainstorming & grouping

KJ: Group naming

KJ: Voting

KJ: Collective review

Takeaways
• The best way to drive consensus is to involve stakeholders
• Working “together but alone” helps remove some biases
• Anonymous, multi-voting is an effective way to assess relative
value
• A wealth of tools allows us to do this exercise efficiently online
• You can use The KJ Technique for all kinds of prioritization
• There are more techniques than this one (see Innovation Games
and Liberating Structures)

Strategic
alignment
product strategy
around key issues
communicators
learnings
first culture

Becoming proactive (and
Take control of your internal communications (and your time)

Most days you get questions like these…
How is that feature coming along?
What’s going to be on our next release?
Why are we working on this?
Why is that taking so long?
Is that thing fixed already?
How long will we be down for?
Did you know there's a bug
when people try to do “so
and so”?
How’s that KPI doing?

We try to…
• Answer as we go along, but…
get asked the same thing multiple times
people don’t remember
• Send out emails, but…
people complain about having too much information
“didn’t read it yet”
• Share over chat apps, but…
there’s too much going on there, must have missed it
• Setup meetings to update people, but…
they don’t always show up
they talk about other concerns

Unless we’re strategic and proactive in
how we communicate with internal
stakeholders…
We’ll end up in (mostly)
the same place

PMs are the decision and information hub
for the product
Execs
Marketing
Support
Customers &
Prospects
Sales
Design
Engineering
PM

We need to know:
Who cares about what, when, how and
why the care about it
Who’s talking to customers and
prospects, what are they saying and
what are they hearing
Whose input should we seek for our
decisions
}
}
Outbound
communications
Inbound
communications

We can use a simple framework
• What: list the most common things you get asked about
and that you need to ask about
• Who: identify the MVA (Minimum Viable Audiences) for
each question
• How: what’s the most effective format for each audience?
• When: how often should we send updates or reach out?

What should we ask or share?
Outbound:
• What are we learning?
• What will be working on next (and why)?
• How are we doing with regards to our
goals?
• Which important milestones are coming up?
Inbound:
• What are customers/prospects telling us?
• What’s working well and what isn’t?
• What should our next goals and priorities
be?
Outbound:
• What are we working on?
• When is it going to be available?
• How will it look like?
• What have we shipped recently?
Discovery Delivery

Who should be informed or involved?
• Who’s asked you about each of your questions/topics
recently?
• Who should know about each topic?
• From whom you want / need input for a given topic?
• First identify teams
• Then, identify key people within them

How should the communication occur?
• Think about your organization's culture
• Think about each person's habits and what works for them
• Use multiple formats for different audiences on the same
topic, if necessary
• Think about each communication’s intent and value
• Intent: are you informing or deciding?
• Value: is your communication low or high value?

How: communication Intent vs Value
Presentation
Wiki / Shared doc
Meeting
Conversation
Email
Chat
Wiki / Shared doc
Email-threads
Chat
Information-passing Decision-making
High
Low

• Think in terms of how often things change:
• Development cycles
• Releases
• Planning
• Strategy / Goals
• Research insights
• Balance how often you’re sending / asking information to /
from each audience
• Prioritize high-value information
When should you communicate?

What Who How When
OKR status Everyone Email Every 2 weeks
Upcoming releases Marketing, Support Wiki + Email Weekly
Top customer
issues
Support Meeting Monthly
Strategy +
Roadmap review
Everyone Presentation Quarterly
… … … …

Example tool: “Business Review” meeting
• Driven by product management
• Brings “on the shelf” and “off the shelf” professional
together
• Focused on top-quadrants (high-value information sharing
and decision making)
• Done regularly, e.g., quarterly
• Minutes messaged upward in organization

Business Review: Example Agenda

Becoming effective
communicators
Clarity in how we communicate is key — no matter how good our data
or rationale is

Clarity
the quality of being
coherent and intelligible
Language
Structure +

Language
• Keep it simple
• Use terms you know your audience understands
• (Don’t assume people know something)
• Force yourself to use less words
• Use tools if necessary (e.g., hemingwayapp.com)

Structure
Top-down communication: make your point as quickly as
possible, then dive into details
1. Provide the minimum necessary context
2. State your conclusion
3. Support your argument

The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking, & Problem Solving, by Barbara Minto
Answer
Argument 1
Sub 1.1 Sub 1.2 Sub 1.3
Argument 2
Sub 2.1 Sub 2.2 Sub 2.3
Argument 3
Sub 3.1 Sub 3.2 Sub 3.3
Situation
Complication
Question
Read top-down, left-to-right.
Only as “deep” as audience needs
Arguments should be MECE:
Mutually Exclusive and Completely Exhaustive

Example
• Situation: We want to grow in the medium-business market
• Complication: Customer acquisition costs are too high
• Question: Which tactics should we pursue?
• Answer: We’ll introduce a referral program for this segment
• Arguments:
• This segment is somewhat price sensitive and responds to discount
incentives
• Our customer satisfaction is high in this segment, encouraging referrals
• Referred customer acquisition costs are 50% lower than other channels

Similar: Asana’s Pyramid of Clarity
Credit: Dustin Moskovitz
& Jennifer Nan

Similar: Business Motivation Model
Business
Motivation
Ends
Vision
Goal 1
Objective 1.1
Objective 1.2
Goal 2
Objective 2.1
Objective 2.2
Means
Mission
Strategy
Tactic 1
Tactic 2
Object Management Group
Business Motivation Model

Strategic
alignment
product strategy
around key issues
communicators
learnings
first culture

Sharing impact and
learnings
You are what you talk about

Tell me what you share, and I’ll tell you
how you’re perceived
• If all your internal updates are about new releases, features
and delivery roadmaps, your role and team will be
perceived as being about ”shipping”
• Products are supposed to be about impact and learning
• So, let’s make sure that we talk about that as well
• And tie it back to the actual features and releases shipped

Example: Work + OKR update
Credit: Rian Van Der Merwe
(adapted from Christina Wodtke’s
book Radical Focus)
“Work” Impact

Example: Release post-mortem
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
W1 W2 W3 W4
Growth
Expectation Reality
What happened?
We were expecting to have a 2x impact on
our growth rate with release X, however, it
mostly flat-lined
We assumed that feature A would drive a
lot more conversion, but didn’t
What did we learn?
Our experiment wasn’t well designed. We
didn’t expose it to the right user
segments, which misled our conclusions.
What happens next?
We’ll retire the feature in a future release
and move to the next opportunity, with
correct segmentation in mind
Release

When they come with solutions, drive towards the problem
Addressing a solution-first
culture

If people keep coming to you
with ideas, features and all
sorts of solutions
You need to move them away
from solution-thinking and
into problem-thinking

The problems with solutions
Solutions lead to feature-focused culture and product
Solutions and ideas are often half-baked
Solutions are harder to break down
Solutions get outdated
Solutions don’t empower the team

It’s not about saying no.
It’s about the strategy
• Common advice is that PMs should be great at
saying ”No”.
• That’s a recipe for failure (burn vs build bridges)
• Strive to understand the request
• Individual(s) behind it, and their motivations
• Problem(s) they’re trying to solve
• Why they think it’s important
• Lead them towards them thinking like a PM
• They need understand the problem and its potential
value
• Run the problem through the business motivation
• Get them to an “aha!” moment of their own (in any
direction)
Is this aligned with our vision & value prop?
Does it contribute to our goals?
More than our current
pipeline?
How much effort
does it require?
Is it
worth it?
The idea funnel
Ideas Feature Requests Random 💣

A mini framework
1. Get to the Problem Statement
2. Understand the Problem Scenario
3. Establish the Perceived Value
4. Build the “Problem Case”

1. Get to the Problem Statement
• Consider all factors, from the user’s perspective,
specially:
• Situations leading to the problem
• how, why it happens
• Variations on the problem
• what if…?
• Additional problems caused by solving this one
• if we go down this path, what else would the user need?
• Possible solutions with current product
• not ideal, partial

2. Understand the Problem Scenario
• ‘5 Whys’
• Comes from Toyota. Used for Problem RCA. Adapted to underlying
reason
• Iterative interrogation. Doesn’t have to be 5
• Shouldn’t just be a sequence of ‘Whys’. That’s not the point
• Careful with sensibilities
• Explore multiple paths

3. Establish the Perceived Value
Priority comes from answering: How big of a problem is
this?
• Not in general, but with regards to product’s
goals/strategy/value proposition
Ask stakeholder how big they believe this problem to be,
then:
• (When market oriented) Validate assumptions
• (When internal) Reach agreement on impact/value

4. Build the “Problem Case”
• Problem Statement
• Scenario
• Situations leading to it (causes in context)
• Variations
• Additional problems caused by solving it
• Possible solutions (with current product)
• Perceived value (vs real value)

Sometimes we need to give up…
• Negotiate compromises
• Middle ground
• Tracking metrics
• Create strategy for change
• Evangelize product best practices
• Identify blockers and help them move forward
• Accept this is a long game
• It’s a cultural thing. Never done. Resistance.
• Our job is also political. Alignment is just another metric we need to
optimize

What we talked about:
1. Strategic alignment
2.Communication
3.Culture

We learned how to…
• Clearly articulate the product strategy
• Align around different aspects of the roadmap
• Drive consensus around key issues
• Be proactive (and strategic) communicators
• Be effective communicators
• Share impact and learnings
• Address a solution-first culture

Check out

• Manage your career as you
would your product
• Set a vision and planning
horizon
• Set development and
professional goals + objectives
• Assess where you are and
create a plan
• Track progress
• 5k+ free, curated resources
on every PM topic
• Courses, workshops,
coaching, special discounts &
community!

Thank you!
📨
daniel@career.pm
🐥
@listentodaniel
🧑💼
in/dzacarias

Daniel zacarias - Productized Masterclasses

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