THE VALUE-BASED STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT CARD

The Ultimate Tool for Improving Your Stakeholder Engagement

Your stakeholder wants to collaborate with you. Your stakeholder wants value from you. Your stakeholders have preferences and a unique worldview. Your stakeholders are very human-like. Start engaging with them so you can play the game together to WIN!

We have a super simple tool that will help you shift the conversation to value. You can only dowload it if you promise you will use it! ;)

Align Your Team for Better Product Decisions

In the fast-paced world of product management, aligning stakeholders around shared values can be the difference between a thriving product and one that falls flat. That's where the Value-Based Stakeholder Engagement Card comes in. It's a simple yet powerful tool designed to make values transparent and drive better decision-making.

What Is the Value-Based Stakeholder Engagement Card?

The Value-Based Stakeholder Engagement Card is a visual framework that helps product teams and stakeholders articulate and align on four key value dimensions: Customer Value, Company Value, User Value, and Personal Value. At its center is the "Stakeholder", defined as "A person you must engage with in order to be successful with...", surrounded by prompts to explore why customers buy your product, how it benefits the company, the positive impact on users, and personal motivations for engagement.

This card serves as a model to facilitate discussions, uncover hidden assumptions, and ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction.

How Product Managers and Leaders Can Use It

Product managers and leaders can integrate the card into their workflows in a few straightforward steps:

Identify Your Stakeholders: Who are the key players impacting and influencing your product? Schedule one-on-one conversations with each.
Fill in the Sections Together (start anywhere!) Use the prompts to brainstorm and document:
- Customer Value: What do we what the reason to be why customers buy our product?
- Company Value: What do we think is the way our product is valuable to the company? How is it an asset (not a liability)?
- User Value: What positive impact do we think the product has or could have on the user’s life? What do we think a user will brag about? How would we want customers to answer, “What do you love about our product?”
- Personal Value: What do we hope to get out of this engagement? How do we want to engage with each other to achieve that?
Iterate: Agree on a cadence to revisit the card (e.g., quarterly) and update it during major pivots to keep values front and center.

Intended & Expected Outcomes

By using the card, teams achieve:

Transparency: Surface unspoken values and motivations, reducing misunderstandings.
Better Relationships: Foster empathy and trust among stakeholders, turning potential adversaries into collaborators.
Improved Decision-Making: Base choices on shared values rather than silos or gut feelings, leading to more customer-centric products and efficient processes.