Six Powerful Questions to Engage Stakeholders and Remove Impasses

One of the most difficult jobs as a Product Owner (or product manager) is reaching consensus and developing sustainable solutions with stakeholders who oftentimes have varied interests and (sometimes hidden) agendas.  This is especially true if many of these stakeholders have greater positional authority than the Product Owner.  When I find myself in these situations, I find a well-timed Powerful Question often will unlock the impasse.  Here are six powerful questions that you can use when speaking with stakeholders. 

Focus on Customer Centricity

Customer centricity is a business strategy that prioritizes the needs, expectations and satisfaction of customers in every aspect of an organization’s operations.  Ranjay Gulati, professor at the Harvard Business School, has spent over a decade studying customer-centric organizations.  He published his findings in a book, Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business.  In this book, Gulati describes that when businesses adopt a collaborative, “outside-in” perspective, aka a customer perspective, when developing new products and services, this leads to exceptional market performance. 

When stakeholders demonstrate they are confused or unsure about what are the important priorities and needs, the best Product Owners will ask, “How will this choice benefit the customer?” as a way to move the conversation forward.

Focus on Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation and discovery.  One of the earliest pioneers in Design Thinking is the famed design firm, IDEO.  Product designers who adopt the Design Thinking mindset work in cross-functional teams to develop software-enabled solutions that “delight” customers and end users.  In this context, “delight” refers to the emotional response – a feeling of joy, surprise or satisfaction – the user experiences when they interact with a solution that solves their problems in a way that is both elegant and intuitive.  If Customer Centricity is the strategy, then Designing Thinking is how that strategy is brought to life.

 When stakeholders focus on implementation details and lose sight of the big picture, the best Product Owners will ask, “What problem are we trying to solve (for the customer)?” as a way to provide clarity.

Focus on the Three Rules

In 2015, Mumtaz Ahmed and Michael Raynor published a statistical analysis of thousands of publicly-traded companies to uncover why some companies were able to achieve exceptional, long-term market performance.  Their startling results can be summarized with three rules:

1. Better before cheaper: offer customers more value, rather than lowering prices.
2. Revenue before cost: improve profits by increasing volumes or earning higher prices, rather than cutting costs.
3. There are no other rules: view all other choices through the lens of the previous two rules.

When stakeholders are having trouble reaching a business decision, the best Product Owners will emphasize product differentiation (“How can we make the product better?”) or identify features and capabilities that will improve sales and\or allow the business to earn higher prices (“How can we increase revenue?”).

Focus on the Cost of Delay 

In 2012, Don Reinersten popularized cost of delay (CoD) as the “one thing to quantify” for product development organizations.  In general, CoD is defined as the economic impact of postponing the delivery of a product or service.  CoD can be computed using the following formula:

Cost of Delay = Σdelays * economic benefit

When stakeholders are at an impasse on how to prioritize features, capabilities or other investments, the best Product Owners will ask, “Which of the following items has the highest (or lowest) cost of delay?” as a way to focus the attention of business leaders on the business impact of their choices.

Focus on the Theory of Constraints

Software development is a system of interdependent parts joined together by a common purpose.  The ability of the system to achieve its purpose depends on how well the parts interact with one another, not how well the parts perform individually.  According to Eli Goldratt, author of the Theory of Constraints, every system will have exactly one constraint, or bottleneck, that inhibits the fast flow of value.  In order to improve the performance of the system, it is important to step back and see the whole system.  Only after this first step has been taken will it be possible to identify and remove the constraint.

When stakeholders, teams and organizations debate how to improve the performance of the software development process, the best Product Owners ask their peers, “Where is the bottleneck in this system?”  This question encourages them to think holistically about the system instead of focusing on the performance of the individual components.

The Six Powerful Questions

In summary, here are the six powerful questions you can use to remove impasses that may develop with stakeholders.

1. “How will this choice benefit the customer?”
2. “What problem are we trying to solve (for the customer)?”
3. “How can we make the product better?”
4. “How can we increase revenue?”
5. “Which of the following items has the highest (or lowest) cost of delay?”
6. “Where is the bottleneck in the system?”