The Influential PM — 10 Tactics to Influence without Authority
Product managers require a diverse set of skills to excel at their role, including design, technical, analytical, communication, and more. Yet there is one skill that I find is often underrated but critical for the success of a product manager. And that is the skill of ‘Influence without authority’.
There’s an old adage that Product Management has all of the responsibility and no official authority. Based on my years of professional career, I find this to be a statement of truth. Product managers have a unique challenge in that they own the product, yet do not manage any of the people who are directly responsible for executing on the product. While I agree with this organizational design to ensure separation of concerns and specialization of skills, it leads to product managers needing the ability to influence others to help them achieve their objectives without the direct authority to do so. That’s one reason why Product Management is an incredibly difficult job, and at the same time why it is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world.
There are four distinct constituencies within an organization that a product manager is required to influence without authority in order to ensure the success of their product:
1. Engineers, designers, and testers on your product team - The most critical to influence are the other members of the product team, including the engineers, designers, and testers directly responsible for designing, developing, and testing your product features.
2. Other product teams to drive integration scenarios - In order for your product to be successful inside of your ecosystem, you often have to work closely with other product managers running other product teams to ensure your product integrates deeply across your company’s product suite.
3. Other disciplines to leverage shared resources - Beyond your core product team, there are often shared resources across other disciplines that you’ll need to leverage to ensure your product is a success in the market. This includes marketing teams, customer support teams, business development teams, and more.
4. The executive team for continued resources and prioritization - In order to ensure your product continues to get the level of priority and resources needed to be successful, you’ll need to continually ensure executive support for your product initiatives.
There’s no simple playbook for successfully influencing these four constituencies. And it’s as much an art as it is a science. That said, I find the following tactics extremely invaluable for being successful at influence without authority:
1Know your Market/Customers: Influence by knowing the market and imparting wisdom to the team — he who knows the market wins, otherwise you’re listening to the loudest voice! Influence comes from having expertise and knowledge and this is what I sometimes tell product managers, you got to be the go-to person for your product. If somebody has a question, if they really want some issue resolved, if they really want to think about the right answer to a particular problem, they will come to you as the first port of call. So, this authority comes from expertise, from knowledge.
2 Get Executive Sponsorship: Find an executive level sponsor who can act as a “sword” and “shield”. Very frequently, you will compete for resources, you’ll run into roadblocks, and you will need to find Executive Sponsors who can play two roles, role of a sword to cut through barriers, and shield, to protect you from politics or challenges that you might face. Now, this executive sponsorship needs to be used selectively, so that you are not crying mommy every time there is a problem.
3Recognize Accomplishments: Praise the work of teammates and give them credit. You must recognize and respect other people’s accomplishments, give them credit, give them more credit than is due, and that helps them be more motivated.
4Use Facts: Support your arguments with factual data — without facts, the loudest voice wins! Make a habit of relying on facts, not opinions, particularly if you are facing people who are disagreeing with you or with your viewpoint. Bring data to bear, support your arguments with facts. Without the facts, the loudest voice wins and you don’t want to be in that situation.
5 Build Consensus: Build consensus by making each team member feel that they own the decision, that they are part of the decision.
6 Respect Expertise: Make sure that you recognize expertise. If you want other people to respect you, you need to respect them. Never question the technical expertise of engineers or the sales expertise of sales people, and they will then respect you for your customer expertise, your product expertise.
7 Borrow Authority: Reference external authorities (What would Steve Jobs/Customer X do?) It’s always good to ask what would Steve Jobs (or other leader that you admire) have done in this case. What would the customer have done? Borrow external authority. In fact, sometimes I find that in meetings, you leave one chair open and you say, that’s the customer’s chair. What would they do?
8 Take Ownership: Represent the team’s decision to the senior leadership team even if those decisions are unpleasant and the communication is unpleasant.
9 Listen Actively: Understand people’s viewpoints, understand where they’re coming from, understand their priorities, understand their biases. That is the key to negotiation. In negotiations, it is very important to understand the other person’s viewpoint and where they’re coming from.
10 Exude Confidence: Inspire the team by being confident — Fake it till you make it! Even if you don’t know all the answers, if you don’t have, you need to inspire by confidence. If you appear that you’re wavering, that you feel under confident, your team will not be inspired. So, how do we influence product decisions?
These are some ways to influence without authority, to negotiate, to empathize, and to make sure that you are trying to get all the functions to move in the same direction, in the service of the product, even if you don’t have authority over the people who work with you. In short, influence without authority is a critical skill for any product manager to master to ensure they can execute on their product through the many people that are required to make it successful.
References:
- The Most Underrated Product Management Skill by Sachin Rekhi
- Product Strategy coursework by Kellogg School of Management