OSTs Unlock Simpler Stakeholder Management

Organizational change happens unevenly. Even when a company tasks a team with a clear desired outcome, it can be hard for leaders to let go of dictating outputs. This is especially true during times of stress, when we tend to fall back on old habits. As a result, it’s not enough for a product trio to make evidence-based decisions about what to build; they also need to justify those decisions to key stakeholders along the way.

Unfortunately, many teams struggle to get this right. When it comes to sharing work with stakeholders, product trios tend to make two common mistakes. First, they share too much information—entire interview recordings or pages and pages of notes without any synthesis—expecting stakeholders to do the discovery work with them. Or second, they share too little of what they are learning, only highlighting their conclusions, often cherry-picking the research that best supports those conclusions. In the first instance, we are asking our stakeholders to do too much, and, in the second, we aren’t asking enough of them. The key to bringing stakeholders along is to show your work. You want to summarize what you are learning in a way that is easy to understand, that highlights your key decision points and the options that you considered, and creates space for them to give constructive feedback. A well-constructed opportunity solution tree does exactly this.

When sharing your discovery work with stakeholders, you can use your tree to first remind them of your desired outcome. Next, you can share what you’ve learned about your customer, by walking them through the opportunity space. The tree structure makes it easy to communicate the big picture while also diving into the details when needed. Your tree should visually show what solutions you are considering and what tests you are running to evaluate those solutions. Instead of communicating your conclusions (e.g., “We should build these solutions”), you are showing the thinking and learning that got you there. This allows your stakeholders to truly evaluate your work and to weigh in with information you may not have.