You’re Frustrated Because You Have an Alignment Problem
It’s Tuesday morning.
You have just finished your weekly sync meeting with your “Let’s-build-this-awesome-feature-and-move-fast” team and are planning for your executive overview later in the afternoon. You’re feeling good about the plan, the requirements, the backlog, you even have some pre-liminary data to support the approach. It’s go time.
It’s Tuesday afternoon.
You just had what may have been one of the worst meetings in recent memory.
Bill, the Director of Sales chewed you out for not including the “Must-have-to-sell” feature in your MVP.
Cheryl, the VP of Operations, said “It’s been 5 weeks and nothing has been done?! What is taking so long?”
Alan, Head of Marketing, asked about a completely different customer segment than the one you are targeting.
Meanwhile, Sandy, your boss and the Director of Product, actually said things were looking good and going in the right direction.
You are questioning what you should even be focused on.
You have an alignment problem.
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I’ve seen this play out in some form or fashion dozens of times, PMs work really hard and diligently only to discover that what they thought was the most important thing to build didn’t actually line up with what the organization or department wanted/needed.
This problem starts way before teams start building anything, it starts before discovery, and before feature planning.
It starts the moment a PM skips to “What to build” rather than “Why we build”
How to diagnose it?
You’re in luck, an Alignment Problem is actually super easy to figure out. Simply go to each of your stakeholders and ask them “What are the two most important outcomes we’re trying to achieve with [project]?”
If you get different answers from different people, bingo, you’ve found your problem.
When Bill, Cheryl, Alan, and Sandy all give you different responses on what matters most, it won’t matter what you build because everything will be wrong to someone; probably multiple someones.
Your job as a PM and leader is first to align everyone around a cohesive mission and THEN build something great.
How to fix it?
The good news is that once you know you have a problem, you can begin to work on getting everyone on the same page. Below are a few approaches you can use to course-correct
The Goal:
Have everyone agree on the outcome you are trying to achieve. This is the WHY
This takes different forms, but the general rule of thumb is: be as high level as you have to be and no more. Oftentimes it looks something like:
- Make our customer sign up process faster and generally easier
- Position our product so that it can reach [Target Customer Segment] in a new way
- Increase the amount of add-ons available for customers to purchase
Note that none of these describe how you are going to do this or even to what extent, nevertheless, this statement acts as the guiding principal for the entire Product Initiative (sometimes multiple Product Initiatives). As Chip and Dan Heath say in Made to Stick referencing military practice. This is the “Commanders Intent”
Practical Tips:
“Great” your thinking “How on earth do I get Bill, Sheryl, Alan, and Sandy to agree on this?”
I’m glad you asked, here a few practical tips, the main theme is that you are the one asking the questions, and you are the one driving alignment.
Make stakeholders talk to each other
- Call a meeting and name it something like Alignment for Project [name] and make sure all relevant stakeholders can make it. The goal is that you leave that meeting with everyone agreeing on the Commanders Intent. People will fight it, but you absolutely cannot function as the middle person between misaligned people, they have to compromise with EACH OTHER.
Stay ruthless
- You are the magnetism that makes all compasses point north, you have to stay ruthless in keeping people on track, focused, and staying high level. You absolutely CANNOT let this meeting devolve into how because if it does, there is no coming back. Keep people focused on WHY you are doing something and the outcome you are trying to achieve.
Stay humble
- Even if you are the smartest person in the room, you are not the smartest person in the room. Make sure people know you want the best outcome and not for your ideas to win. Sure you should make a strong case but always be quick to give ground on less important issues to show that you are not just willing to work with others, but that you want what is best for the organization.
Sometimes this process takes one 30 minute meeting, sometimes it takes a month. The important thing is that you DO NOT MOVE ON from this until everyone has come to an agreement on the Intent. If you do, you are setting yourself for failure down the road.
Deciding What to Build
There is always going to be disagreement on tactics and the minutiae of execution, it’s just part of the job. However, you now are equipped to always tie everything back to the agreed upon intent. You can now use Data, market research, technical feasibility etc. to make a great case and informed decisions on the best way to achieve what you set out to achieve.
Now when Bill asks you about why a feature isn’t included, you can turn the tables and ask him how it aligns to the Intent more than what you have laid out.
As a side note, when you spend the time on great alignment on the front end, you will be amazed at how much faster you are able to move because you won’t encounter continual friction and pushback every step of the way. As an added bonus, it also makes deciding What to Measure orders of magnitude easier because you already know the outcome you are trying to achieve.
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Have you run into an alignment problem? Let me know how it went in the comments.
