Case 03 / Stakeholder Management
When three functions mean different things by the same positioning
Product, sales and marketing were working from different assumptions about target market and differentiation — without anyone having disagreed.
- Role
- Head of Product Retail
- Context
- B2B software vendor, retail technology
- Reading time
- 4 minutes
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Executive Summary
01 / 07A positioning process where the real work sat in front of the content discussion: clarifying what was actually to be decided, and who had to be in the room for it.
The situation
02 / 07One shared wish. Three different meanings.
A cross-functional process was scheduled for retail positioning. In the preliminary alignment it became clear that the participants held different views on the goal, the group of participants and the approach — not in dispute, but unnoticed.
Alongside that sat a legitimate wish to unify market positioning, portfolio and external communication. That wish was shared too. It simply meant something different to each function.
Shared wish
- Unify positioning, portfolio and communication
Understood differently
- Product
- Sales
- Marketing
= unnoticed differences on goal, participants and approach
The real problem & My mandate
03 / 07The risk is not conflict, but the unclear decision.
The risk was not open conflict. Open conflict is uncomfortable but productive — it forces a decision.
The risk was the unclear decisions. When product, sales and marketing leave a workshop with different assumptions, contradictory messages and priorities follow. The bill arrives months later and in a different disguise — as a roadmap conflict, as a communication problem, as sales frustration about a product that supposedly promised something else.
Open conflict
Uncomfortable, but productive
Unclear decision
The bill comes later
My mandate
I brought the product strategy perspective. Concretely: question the goal, the basis for decision and the stakeholder set-up, and insist that the result stay connectable to strategies and work that already existed.
This was explicitly not a facilitation role. It was the role of the person asking the uncomfortable preliminary questions before the group moves into the more pleasant discussion of content.
Approach
04 / 07The prior questions first, the wording second
- A
Clarify purpose and decision frame
Before any discussion of substance, it had to be transparent what was to be decided and which existing work would be taken into account. The question looks bureaucratic and is the actual lever: it separates a workshop that decides something from one that discusses something.
Before any content discussion - What is to be decided?
- Which existing work counts?
- B
Think about the participant list backwards
Not "who has an interest" but "who has to implement the result later". The connection between sales, product and market communication in particular had to be represented, otherwise positioning gets agreed but not applied.
- Sales
- Product
- Market communication
Who has to implement the result
- C
Surface assumptions before arguing about words
Instead of optimising formulations, the strategic base questions were addressed: target market, customer problem, differentiation, commitment. An argument about wording is nearly always a disguised argument about one of those four.
Four core questions instead of wording - Target market
- Customer problem
- Differentiation
- Commitment
- D
Make results connectable
Positioning that cannot be translated into portfolio, roadmap and communication is a text document. The test is banal and effective: which roadmap decision looks different after this than it did before?
Connected to
- Portfolio
- Roadmap
- Communication
The trade-offs
05 / 07Three tensions in the process
- Speedparticipation
A small group works faster but loses important knowledge and the later acceptance of the people who have to carry the result.
- External facilitationinternal ownership
External consulting creates structure and neutrality but does not replace internal commitment. An externally facilitated result without an internal owner quietly expires.
- Fresh startexisting strategy
Starting over creates clarity but ignores existing work and learning curves. Restart too often and the organisation learns not to take strategy seriously.
Outcome
06 / 07- 01
Transparency emerged about the goal, the stakeholders and the strategic follow-on questions — precisely the things that had previously been answered differently by implication. Positioning and actual product strategy moved closer together.
- 02
The most important result was a shared understanding at management level: strategic communication cannot emerge in isolation inside one function. Locate it there and you get a message, but not alignment.
What I took from it
07 / 07Alignment is not consensus on every detail. Alignment is clarity about what was decided, why, and with what consequences.
Critical questions are productive when they improve the decision process — and not when they defend a position. The difference is hard to see from the outside and decisive for the effect.
Competences shown
- Stakeholder Management
- Decision Framing
- Strategic Facilitation