Justin Storm, House of Rohl, Group Product Manager
“Identify the influencers you need to get support from, and understand what they require from you to give their support.”
Justin Storm knows that when you’re designing and launching a product, it’s important first to identify the key stakeholders from whom you need buy-in. “Identify the influencers and their personality types, and understand what they require from you to be an advocate for your project. When I need to gain alignment, I find it helpful to share my product vision right off the bat. This will allow them an opportunity to evolve the idea forward and get their early buy-in. This process usually creates an advocate that will be invaluable in the later stages of development. It has been my experience that these influencers will be critical towards overcoming challenges around resource prioritization, communication alignment, and eventual project approval,” he explains.
This process of personality identification, as Storm describes it, requires heavy lifting at the beginning, but it’s well worth the trouble. “It isn’t easy. It takes patience, sensitivity, and the right timing to bring them into the process. If the idea isn’t developed enough, they may not support it, and if it is too far down the path, it may cause issues with launch timing. Once you have them on the same page and they’re aligned with you, the whole thing tends to go according to plan,” he says, adding that it’s better to seek your own advocates and nurture productive working relationships with them than receive assigned champions from higher-ups in the organization.
This process of personality identification, as Storm describes it, requires heavy lifting at the beginning, but it’s well worth the trouble. “It isn’t easy. It takes patience, sensitivity, and the right timing to bring them into the process. If the idea isn’t developed enough, they may not support it, and if it is too far down the path, it may cause issues with launch timing. Once you have them on the same page and they’re aligned with you, the whole thing tends to go according to plan,” he says, adding that it’s better to seek your own advocates and nurture productive working relationships with them than receive assigned champions from higher-ups in the organization.
This is an excerpt from 7 Experts on Product Leadership. The eBook was generously sponsored by Workfront.
