🎧 Why Asking for “Alignment” is a Mistake
If you're feeling stuck on a project or can't quite figure out how to get alignment with your stakeholders, this podcast is for you.
In this episode, I show you a better way to get alignment quickly so you can make better decisions, faster.
The 'Safe to Try' approach is one of my go-to techniques for decision-making and has been an immediate level up for so many of the Product Managers I have coached over the years.
If you're feeling stuck on a project or can't quite figure out how to get alignment with your stakeholders, this is a must-listen.
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Learn more about my SHINE 1:1 coaching program for Product Managers seeking promotion and greater leadership impact. It's designed to help you grow your confidence, stand out as a strategic thinker, and take the next big step in your career.
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Jess Sherlock (00:00)
Do not ask for alignment. Do not ask for feedback. Do not ask, what do you think?
It is not productive and it is not going to give you what you're actually looking for. let me offer you some different language that I have found time and time again produces a much more aligned conversation and ultimately get the decision made.
Jess Sherlock (00:21)
Welcome to another episode of AFTER THE CERT the career podcast for product managers who've collected all the certifications and taken all the courses and still feel stuck in their product career. I'm your host, Jess Sherlock, product management career coach. I know firsthand what it feels like to be overwhelmed, lonely, and stuck in your product career. And I'm on a mission to help you feel confident and empowered to take the lead your product career and achieve your unique career goals.
on me for practical and actionable advice, plus relatable stories from PMs navigating the messy middle of their career.
And remember, if you're feeling stuck with your product management job search, worried about making a great impression during your first 90 days in a new product job, or you want to position yourself for a promotion at work, I'm here to help. You can check out my coaching programs at jesssherlock.com/apply.
and book time on my calendar so we can chat.
Let's get into it.
Jess Sherlock (01:17)
Hey everyone, we have a fun topic for today and this is one that usually gets me fired up. So if you're listening and you've been in a coaching session with me before, you've probably heard this topic before. If you have not, then just know that this is a topic that I feel really passionate about because it's a problem I see so often, but it's so avoidable. All tell me if this is you.
Do you ever feel frustrated because there are folks on your team or maybe your stakeholders where it feels like you just can't get alignment? You're seeking this elusive, perfect alignment and you're saying things like, swear, I have said this over and over again, no one is listening. I have been saying we should do this, no one is listening. Does that sound like you? Because if so,
Here's what I usually notice, and I want you to ask yourself whether these two things are true in a situation maybe that you're dealing with right now with not being able to get alignment. Here's the number one thing that I notice. Often, it's not actually clear who the decider is. Think about that for a moment. Usually,
there is someone who ultimately has the decision ability on a key decision that we need to make. Maybe it is around whether or not we are going to prioritize something that will interrupt our roadmap. Maybe it is to expand the scope of something beyond what we had initially planned for our MVP. Whatever the decision is, whatever this issue is that you're trying to get alignment on, if you don't know
who the decider is, then how on earth can you get alignment? Because then it's just you and everyone else's opinion
at odds with each other. usually what I notice is it's not clear who the decider is. So ask yourself, who is the decider? Sometimes it is the person who is most senior in that part of the organization. Other times it may not be exactly clear and it may take some work to go figure out who the decider is. All right, here's the other thing that I usually notice PMs will come to me in a coaching session saying how frustrated they are.
that they've said what we should do a few times and quote unquote, no one is listening. And what I'll usually say is, okay, tell me about how you communicated it. And what I'll hear is that it's been fairly informal, I mentioned it in a one-on-one or I put it in a Slack update. And just as important as it is to know who the decider is, it's equally important that someone, usually you, the PM,
have put together a thoughtful proposal. Because without these two ingredients, you're usually not gonna get anywhere. And this is where folks are by the time they get in touch with me, they're really stuck and they're really frustrated. So I wanna help you avoid this situation in the future by telling you what I recommend instead. Number one, you wanna identify the specific decision that needs to be made.
And I would recommend that you consider whether it is a one-way door or a two-way door decision. if you haven't heard of this framework, the concept behind a one-way door or a two-way door decision is essentially,
this decision reversible?
all to say, to summarize, you need to understand the specific decision and you need to understand whether that decision is easily reversible or not, because the harder it is to reverse, then of course, the more thoughtful you want to be with.
how you go about making this decision, who's involved in the decision, and how much research you might want to do in order to make the decision. So step number one, identify the specific decision and determine whether or not it's reversible. number two, you got to identify the decider. Now, sometimes it's you as the PM. Other times it might be your manager, a product leader, or even someone on the business side if you work on a B2B product.
Maybe it's someone in your customer success side or sales team or support team who needs to actually be the decider. It really depends on what the situation is. But sometimes it's obvious who the decider is. Sometimes there's a little work just in figuring out who the decider is, but it's work well done because the worst case scenario is that you go about trying to get this decision made only to find out that the wrong people were in the room. And I know that this sounds so obvious, but
I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with PMs where I say, well, whose decision is it to make? Who's the decider? And more often than not, folks have trouble answering that question. So I want to encourage you to always be thinking about that. And the decider is just one person. The other folks that might be easy to forget about are anyone who needs to be consulted or informed.
it's a situation where the decider would be, your product leader, let's say, who's gonna be the one to help decide what's in or out for this MVP that we wanna demo at an upcoming user conference. Great, we know that that person is going to be the decider, so we definitely have to make sure we're speaking with them. But who might need to be consulted or informed?
In a lot of cases, at least when I remember having a user conference I was a part of, it was really important that our customer success team was consulted as a part of it because they were preparing to talk to their customers who were going to be at this event. Maybe our support team needs to be informed because they might get an onslaught of questions about that functionality. And so we need to make sure that they understand what's going to be demoed so they can be prepared to support it.
Step two is who is that decider, but also who are those stakeholders who need to be consulted or informed so that you can loop them in in the right way as well. So sometimes those two steps are easy, sometimes not so much. And if you're new to the team, this may be something you have to put extra effort into if you're just not familiar with stakeholder dynamics. Because the real fun fact, especially about small teams,
is that people's titles don't always tell you who can interrupt a project and who can cause a project to be brought to a screeching halt if they weren't involved, So if you're not sure who the decider is, you're not sure who needs to be consulted and informed because maybe you're new to the team, then ask around, ask other PMs on the team, ask your manager and kind of find out like, hey, who are the people been critical to decisions like this in the past,
Now for arguably the most important step, which is you actually have to create a proposal. often I'll hear people say, I can't get alignment. I just keep repeating myself. No one's listening. And remember when I said, Hey, how have you communicated this? Basically never do people say that they've actually written up a proposal, Usually they say they've put together a Slack
message or update or they brought it up in a one-on-one. But here's the thing, a proposal is not a slack message. It's not a conversation. It is a written document that you have put deep consideration into. It's data driven. It's thoughtful. It's something, think of it this way. This proposal is something that you would feel confident executing even if there was no one else who needed to approve it.
So imagine it was your own business of one. You were writing up this proposal in order to get yourself aligned on your game plan and then you were going to go execute it. No one else is going to approve it, right? So I know that might feel like a bit scary, but that's the idea is that someone needs to really look at the ins and outs of this decision, the trade-offs, the pros and cons, and put together a proposal for what we should or should not do.
and then it needs to be presented. Now, the presentation
can be as formal as your organizational culture needs it to be. But all I care about is that it is a conversation with the right people in real time. So this is not a slack thread. This is ideally an in-person or like a live video call type of conversation where you have yourself, the decider, and any of those other stakeholders who need to be consulted or informed. And in this conversation,
You don't want to go into it unclear on how people are feeling. if you don't have any relationship with the decider or these stakeholders, it may benefit you to kind of lobby those folks in advance, meaning having some one-on-one conversations with those folks in advance to gauge their opinions, gauge their feelings on the topic, because you never want to be blindsided when you have a key group of people together like this, because it'll just undermine your credibility.
you wanna put together this proposal that you feel really good about, That you would kick off today if it weren't for the fact that you needed approval. Go present it. And in this meeting, here's what I don't want you to do. I hate this so much. Do not ask for alignment. Do not ask for feedback. Do not ask, what do you think?
It is not productive and it is not going to give you what you're actually looking for. So let me offer you some different language that I have found time and time again with myself, but also with my clients produces a much more aligned conversation and ultimately gets to the right conversation that's going to get the decision made.
So if you've come into this meeting with a strong proposal, the goal is to surface
reasons why this proposal
should not be done. here's how I would recommend facilitating this conversation. And remember, it's in real time. there's three things you're looking for. Number one, are there any questions that you can answer? ideally, folks have read your proposal and you are able to answer any clarifying questions.
And these should, I always joke, they should not be leading questions. But things like, hey, does this mean da-da-da-da-da? Now is not the time to be saying questions that are gonna open up a can of worms or that are really like leading towards a different idea, for example. So clarifying questions are an important part of the conversation. Number two, reactions.
it's really common when you're sharing your proposal that some folks just may have a negative reaction. And maybe this resonates with you. Have you ever presented an idea to someone and they respond with what sounds like a feeling or a reaction, you hear them, but you're also not quite certain if you should take action on it? I hate that feeling.
But it's really common for me to hear from PMs who have experienced this where you share your proposal and someone says, I don't know, it just makes me nervous. And you're kind of like, okay, so should I not do it? Like, okay, you're nervous. And that's not your action item to take, right? Or I don't really love this. Okay, that's not an action item.
But it is a reaction. So as someone who's making the proposal, I do like hearing reactions. I want to hear how people feel, what their gut says, but I'm looking for things that are actionable. And sometimes I will just say back to a stakeholder, okay, that sounds like a reaction. I don't think I'm not hearing a way to take action on it, but I want you to know that I hear you and I feel good about this direction given the data I've seen. Maybe you can share some details about why you feel confident.
But what you don't want to do is say, okay, you feel nervous. So now I'm going to let my proposal completely fall apart. So if you're not feeling the same way that that stakeholder's feeling, then it may just be something that you let exist. Now here's what's really important to identify. And this language is really powerful, right? So we've asked for questions, we've asked for reactions. Now we want to ask for objections.
Isn't that a powerful word? So imagine that you have your proposal. You're like, I'm going to do this. This is what I think we should do. Are there any objections? I love that question because what you're really saying is, is there any reason this proposal is not safe to try? Is there any reason we should not do this?
It really puts the onus on your decider and on your stakeholders who are in the room to articulate an objection. And then sometimes you can shut down an objection very quickly where someone might have a concern about, I don't know, the feasibility of something. And you can say, oh, no, no, I confirmed with the engineering team, we can do this, right? Or maybe it's a legal thing and maybe you've done your due diligence to go chat with the legal team, right?
So sometimes an objection will come up that's a really good point, but you've already handled it. So you can just reassure that person. But if there truly is an objection, we should not do this thing because it positions us in a way that moves us further away from our vision for the product, or this is too much of a legal risk for some reason, right? Like true objections.
you do want to hear about and you want to have the opportunity to address them, but if you can't, then certainly none of us want to move forward with a proposal that isn't safe to try. So I love that language, are there any reasons this is not safe to try? And you can of course use this in this context where you've put together a proposal on a significant decision and use this language to have the right conversation.
But this is also a question that I love to ask even in these smaller interaction moments where it's not a major decision, but maybe we're hashing out some ideas for an upcoming sprint, or some design edits, right? And we have some ideas and you say to the team, hey, does this feel safe to try? Like sometimes it's just about asking a question that's gonna shift your stakeholders or your team into a mindset.
so that they can have a more productive conversation. Our brains can be scattered at times. And so as a coach, I've learned that questions can be a really powerful way to have the right conversation. But this is a tool that you can start using right away. And I have clients where I pretty regularly will hear from them, my God, I used the safe to try method today and it was so good. I've even had folks tell me that their team members started to use it as well because they found it really helpful.
Now I'll ask you, Cause talk is nothing without action. So I'm curious, is there a project right now that feels stuck? Is there something going on in your product, in your team, something that feels stuck where you might be able to try this approach? Great. is is literally one of my favorite. It's one of the most effective techniques that I offer people. And anytime this
frustration around alignment comes up, I always go straight to the safe to try approach. So I truly hope that this is something that you try to put into action as soon as possible or in the next opportunity that you get in order to produce better conversations and make a decision. Because you know what? Most of the time, the wrong decision is going to be better than no decision because at least we can learn and iterate.
As always, If you have questions, reactions to this episode, please reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a DM. I'd love to hear where you're feeling stuck. And my SHINE program is actually designed to help you with these sorts of things,
Being a great PM is of course about hard skills, but it's also about soft skills like being able to navigate difficult situations, have effective stakeholder relationships and navigate trade-offs. so if you're feeling stuck and you'd like more support like this, you might find my SHINE program really helpful to get unstuck in your career, get to that next level, maybe get a promotion.
And so feel free to check out my SHINE program at jessherlock.com/shine Again, that's jessherlock.com/shine. You can check out all my programs at jessherlock.com/apply. And like I said, connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a DM. I'd love to hear from you and I'll see you next time on AFTER THE CERT.
