Thread by @nurijanian

Your stakeholders aren't crazy.

After 6 years of product management, I've realized: every "difficult" stakeholder behavior has a hidden logic.

A thread on the psychology of product stakeholders 🧠

1/ Sales: The Future-Focused Hunters

What they see:
• Revenue targets looming
• Competitors taking deals
• Prospects making demands
• Commission at risk

What they feel:
• Urgency to close deals
• Fear of losing opportunities
• Frustration with product gaps
• Personal financial pressure

This is why they:
• Push for custom features
• Make promises to customers
• Escalate to leadership
• Sound desperate sometimes

2/ Support: The Problem Absorbers

What they see:
• Customer pain daily
• Repeated issues
• Workarounds failing
• Mounting tickets

What they feel:
• Emotional drain from complaints
• Responsibility for customer success
• Powerlessness to fix root causes
• Pride in finding solutions

This is why they:
• Escalate aggressively
• Get emotional about issues
• Create elaborate workarounds
• Take product issues personally

3/ Engineering: The Complexity Guardians

What they see:
• Technical debt growing
• Architecture breaking
• Timeline pressure
• Quality vs speed tradeoffs

What they feel:
• Pride in craft
• Fear of future maintenance
• Pressure to deliver faster
• Frustration with unclear requirements

This is why they:
• Push back on timelines
• Focus on technical elegance
• Seem resistant to change
• Want perfect requirements

4/ Marketing: The Market Watchers

What they see:
• Competitor movements
• Market trends
• Brand perception
• Campaign deadlines

What they feel:
• Pressure to differentiate
• Fear of market irrelevance
• Need for clear narratives
• Anxiety about positioning

This is why they:
• Push for feature parity
• Request "marketable" features
• Focus on competitor moves
• Need long-term roadmaps

5/ Analytics: The Truth Seekers

What they see:
• Usage patterns
• Conversion drops
• Engagement metrics
• Growth opportunities

What they feel:
• Confidence in data
• Frustration with gut decisions
• Need for measurement
• Pride in accuracy

This is why they:
• Question assumptions
• Push for more tracking
• Focus on metrics
• Resist intuitive decisions

6/ Product Executives: The Vision Keepers

What they see:
• Board expectations
• Market opportunities
• Resource constraints
• Competitive threats
• Organizational politics

What they feel:
• Pressure to deliver growth
• Fear of strategic missteps
• Responsibility for team success
• Frustration with execution speed
• Anxiety about market position

This is why they:
• Change priorities frequently
• Push for faster delivery
• Focus on high-level metrics
• Sometimes contradict themselves
• Micromanage key initiatives

7/ Fellow Product Managers: The Territory Guards

What they see:
• Overlapping responsibilities
• Shared resources
• Dependencies
• Career competition
• Political dynamics

What they feel:
• Ownership anxiety
• Resource scarcity
• Career pressure
• Fear of being overshadowed
• Need for recognition

This is why they:
• Resist cross-product initiatives
• Guard their roadmap territory
• Compete for engineering resources
• Sometimes withhold information
• Push back on dependencies

8/ UX/Design: The User Advocates

What they see:
• Inconsistent experiences
• Design debt
• User frustration
• Quick fixes accumulating
• Research insights ignored

What they feel:
• Pride in craft
• Frustration with compromises
• Responsibility to users
• Creative ownership
• Professional standards pressure

This is why they:
• Push for perfection
• Resist quick solutions
• Need research time
• Get emotional about details
• Fight for user testing

9/ Business/Strategy Teams: The Number Crunchers

What they see:
• Unit economics
• Market sizing
• Investment returns
• Competitive analysis
• Strategic fit

What they feel:
• Pressure for business case clarity
• Fear of poor investments
• Need for quantifiable results
• Frustration with vague value props
• Career risk from failed bets

This is why they:
• Demand detailed forecasts
• Focus on financial metrics
• Push for market validation
• Question every assumption
• Need extensive documentation

10/ The Master Key: Understanding Incentives

Every stakeholder's behavior makes sense when you understand:

• What they're measured on
• What keeps them up at night
• Who they report to
• How they get promoted
• What risks they carry

Unfortunately often the incentives are misaligned and it doesn’t help to wish they weren’t.

I spent years fighting stakeholders before learning this.

11/ The PM's Role: The Synthesizer

Your job isn't to make everyone happy.

It's to:
• Understand these perspectives
• Find common ground
• Make informed tradeoffs
• Keep everyone informed

I learned this after years of trying to please everyone and burning out.

Stakeholder management can feel overwhelming.

That's why I curated clear, contextual frameworks at - so you can find exactly what you need when dealing with specific stakeholder challenges.prodmgmt.world/products/produ…

13/ Remember:

Your job isn't just building products.
It's building trust networks.

Every stakeholder relationship is a long-term investment.

Build these bridges before you need them.

You're not just managing a product.
You're orchestrating a complex human system.

14/ Practical Application:

For each stakeholder:
1. Map their incentives
2. Listen for underlying fears
3. Acknowledge their constraints
4. Show you understand before pushing back

15/ Remember:

Everyone is trying to do their job well.

Their "unreasonable" behavior usually comes from:
• Misaligned incentives
• Different time horizons
• Incomplete information
• Personal career risks

Understanding this changes everything.

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