Stakeholder Management
Product managers don't have direct authority over most of the people they work with. Learn how to identify, prioritize, and communicate with stakeholders to build trust and drive alignment.
Dispatch N° I — The Stakeholder Who Agrees in the Meeting Then Kills It in Slack
Phantom alignment is the most dangerous bug in stakeholder management. Why the nod was real but the agreement wasn't, four field signs to spot it early, and the three-move fix that converts meeting theatre into a timestamped yes before the 10 p.m. Slack rebuttal arrives.
Read the DispatchDispatch N° II — Hallway Decisions: How to Stop Losing Meetings You Weren't Invited To
The real decisions happen in the hallway, not the meeting. A map of the parallel universe of shadow 1:1s — why the pre-meeting always beats the meeting, and four moves that get a new PM invited into the room where it happens (instead of reacting to what was decided there).
Read the DispatchDispatch N° III — Someone Committed Your Team to a Deadline You Didn't Agree To
Sales closed the deal by promising the feature. An exec named a date to a partner. A peer wrote 'I assumed we'd just…'. A recovery playbook for the unauthorised commitment — the three species to tell apart, the first forty-five minutes of triage, and the three-option move that converts other people's promises into authorised trade-offs.
Read the DispatchDispatch N° IV — Your Executive Sponsor Has Stopped Replying
Eight days. Two unread messages. One increasingly worried product manager. Why sponsors ghost (capacity, priority, politics, mood), the four-question diagnostic, and the counterintuitive fix — offer them an exit. Plus: how to know when a stalled project should be quietly buried with dignity.
Read the DispatchDispatch N° V — The Engineer Who Blocks Every Decision with Vague Risk
Every proposal meets the same wall: 'that's actually way more complex than you think.' A guide to the Vetocrat — three flavors of veto (legitimate, lazy, political), four moves to unstick the loud technical stakeholder without steamrolling, and why the engineer who says no most often is still a net positive in the room.
Read the DispatchDispatch N° VI — The Executive Who Saw a Thing on a Flight and Now Wants It Built
The 10:47 p.m. 'quick thought' email from your CEO, CPO, or loudest VP. Why saying no doesn't work — and what does. How to shape the pet feature into a two-week experiment with a kill criterion, hold up the strategy mirror without sounding preachy, and recognise the rare occasions when the pet feature is actually the best idea anyone's had in six months.
Read the Dispatch