Episode 3: Managing internal stakeholders with Daniel Zacarias, Product Management Guru

Product Demand Intelligence Podcast

About The Episode In this episode, we speak with Daniel Zacarias, Product Management Consultant and blogger at Folding Burritos, about his framework for effectively working with internal stakeholders. Managing internal stakeholders is a real challenge for product management teams; especially when there can be so many competing and conflicting voices acting on product direction. Daniel and I met a couple of years ago and I was taken by his very human and practical approach to product management. Dealing with people is one of the most rewarding yet challenging aspects of the job so I was thrilled when Daniel joined me to talk about this topic in detail. The episode is based on Daniel’s blog post Moving from Solutions to Problems. In the episode we walk through: + How Daniel first recognized the importance of internal stakeholder management as part of the product development process; + Leading internal stakeholders away from solution-thinking and towards a problem-based approach; + An in-depth look at Daniel’s Problem Case Framework for creating positive relationships between stakeholders and product teams. Who Should Listen? This episode is perfect for product managers who are interested in learning a mini-framework for involving internal stakeholders in product decisions in a powerful and productive way. It’s also great for anyone who works in a product organization to understand how they can proactively support the work of their product teams. Key Takeaways: + Problem statements from internal stakeholders are so much more useful than being presented with solutions; + You have to help stakeholders bring problems rather than solutions to product teams - this requires some thought and a little bit of process; + It’s easy to implement a mini-framework to revolutionize how the product teams interact with internal stakeholders.