Treat stakeholders like users
The mindset shift that completely changed my career
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What does “treat stakeholders like users” mean?
I spent years trying to convince stakeholders the importance and value of user researchers. It felt like I was constantly begging or compromising to feel heard and seen by stakeholders. Sometimes they didn’t value user research, couldn’t find time for it, or ignored the findings in favor of assumptions or opinions. As a result, I felt frustrated and helpless when working with stakeholders.
One day, I got sick of it. I didn’t want to feel like I was begging colleagues anymore. I was burnt out and tried of banging my head against the wall. But I wasn’t sure what to do instead.
I was in a meeting later that day and one of the stakeholders was talking about how he felt like he was trying to convince users to use a certain feature, and how frustrating it was. I opened my mouth to say, for the millionth time, “we should do user research to understand our users.”
And then it clicked.
We constantly tell our teams to focus on our users. Whenever they aren't sure about something, we tell them to ask users. Whenever they want to make decisions, we beg them to keep users in mind. We ask them to empathize with users.
Yet, do we do this with stakeholders?
I would spend hours on reports or deliverables, and no one seemed to care. At one point, when I was working with a low budget, I created my own repository from scratch. I got a few developer friends to help, making it perfect. My stakeholders could not ignore research now because I had set them up for success. They didn't use the repository.
I spun in circles until I realized what I was doing. I created reports, personas, repositories, and even research projects, but these outcomes were mine. I made them based on the rules and best practices I had learned over the years.
And that was the key for me. I'd committed the acts we begged teams not to do. I had ignored my users. I didn't think about their needs, goals, pain points, or motivations. Instead, I thought about what I was taught to do. And I made so many assumptions about what I learned was the right way of doing things.
Our stakeholders are our users, and it is crucial to think about them in this way. If we don't, we risk missing the mark on our deliverables and potentially our entire process. It’s the equivalent of asking a designer to create something without any user feedback.
This guide will help you shift your mindset and put into place strategies that help you align and collaborate so much better with users.
How to conduct stakeholder interviews
We need to empathize with our stakeholders because they are ultimately the users of our information. They use our products, such as reports, repositories, and deliverables. We ask them to be a part of our process.
If we don't understand our stakeholders, how do we create an experience for them that aligns with their needs and goals and that alleviates their pain points?
Stakeholder interviews are the perfect way to begin this empathetic process. You can even offer an incentive like coffee or lunch, or some sort of raffle for prizes. When I started doing stakeholder interviews, I bought lots of coffee and even gift certificates to favorite lunch spots.
Prepare for the interviews
Whenever I go into stakeholder interviews, it is important to have a clear goal, outcomes, and a script. I treat this similarly to a research project.
Of course, goals vary depending on what information you need from stakeholders, but my most common goals for these stakeholder interviews are:
Understand stakeholder needs when it comes to user research (as well as their learning needs and how they digest information)
Identify the pain points they have in their team, as well as with user research
Discover the goals they have for themselves and their teams
Uncover their previous experiences (and anxieties) with user research
Understand their mental model about user research and how they currently interact with user research and deliverables
My outcomes include:
Have a better understanding of what stakeholders are working on so that I can best align my work to support them (and show them the value of user research)
Understand their pain points about user research so that I can ensure the projects I pitch help ease those pain points and anxities
Create and share a user research process that makes sense to me and as well to my stakeholders so that we are aligned and reduce any barriers to entry
Empathize with them in understanding how they interact with user research to make it the best possible experience
Whenever I reach out to stakeholders to book this session, I typically invite them for a 60-minute 1x1 where I share:
“I would love to take this hour to understand more about your role, your goals for yourself and team as well as your previous experience with user research and your current experience with our research process. Think of this as a user interview, except this time you are the user!”
Conduct the interviews
There is something slightly easier about user interviews because, theoretically, you are likely never going to see the participant again. Or, at least for the most part, you aren’t working with them day-to-day (unless you are conducting a lot of internal/organizational research).
With stakeholder interviews, it can be tricky because sometimes they won’t want to share information that hurts your feelings, so you have to do your best to remain as objective as possible and remind them of this. My introduction calls this out and reassures them that I am really there to learn and improve with their feedback and can’t do it without honest thoughts!
Here is an example of my intro:
“I’d love to chat today about your current goals for yourself and team, as well as any needs you have for user research that come to your mind. Additionally, I want to hear about any pain points you have with user research, based on your previous experience as well as our current process and approach. I know this might be tough to share, but I really appreciate your honest feedback because that is the only way we can improve and make this as seamless an experience for you as possible! My outcome is to truly understand your experiences and thoughts, so please feel free to share - you won’t hurt my feelings”
In terms of the interview questions, I generally follow the TEDW principle, but, with stakeholder interviews, we can be a bit more leading in our questions and even ask some future-based questions. However, whenever you can, try to follow open-ended question techniques!
I organize my questions via my goals, so my script could look something like:
Goals, needs, and pain point questions
Within the first section, I dive into the following questions:
What are your main goals day-to-day? For this quarter? Beyond?
What would you like to achieve yourself? With your team?
What are some metrics/OKRs that you would like to improve? Why?
What would the ideal outcome be by the end of this quarter? The end of the year?
What areas are you struggling with when it comes to achieving these goals?
What are some of your ideas to achieve these goals/OKRs/metrics?
What are generally some areas in the process that you struggle with? How would you improve this?
Previous experience with UX research questions
To understand more about their previous (and future) experience with user research, I ask:
If I asked you to define user research for me, how would you explain it?
Have you ever worked with a user researcher before? If yes, tell me about the experience?
How do you feel about user research?
Tell me what happened the last time you did user research.
Tell me about a time when research went poorly. What happened? How would you improve it?
What are the most significant barriers you feel to conducting or including user research?
How could we improve our relationship?
How could you imagine user research helping you with (the goals, needs, and pain points mentioned above)?
In my membership, one of the templates is a huge interview script filled with stakeholder alignment questions to make sure you aren’t missing anything!
Analyze the interviews
Just like with any other user research project, analyzing the information makes it actionable! I create an affinity diagram (you can use this board as a jumping off point) for each stakeholder, categorizing each space with:
Goals
Needs
Pain points
Previous experiences
Process feedback
As an example, I'm working with a product manager on the retention team at a meal kit subscription company.
The first thing I do is my stakeholder interview and affinity diagram:
I then identify any themes across stakeholders to highlight things like (we will dive deeper into this in the next section):
Where I can make improvements in the user research process
Pain points that stakeholders are having that I can address
Research needs or goals that span different teams, which could become really holistic and impactful research projects
This is the first step in beginning to work with and align better with your stakeholders, and leads perfectly into the next step. Please try not to skip these interviews as they gives us the context we need to make the rest successful!
Whether you have been at your organization for a week, six months, or two years, it is never too late to conduct stakeholder interviews and go through this process!
Align your work with stakeholders’ needs and goals
Now that we have all this information from stakeholders, we can get to work in aligning with them so that we are doing our most impactful and valuable work. Let’s go through the steps of using that information we found to collaborate with our stakeholders.
Form potential research ideas based on your affinity diagram
Now that you have all this amazing data, it’s time to take some ideas and make them concrete. Through this affinity diagram, there is information on stakeholders’ needs and goals for their teams. The most impactful research we can do (and the easiest way to show value to teams) is if we conduct research that immediately and positively impacts their needs and goals.
Let’s take a look at the example above:
From this information, my stakeholder needs to understand:
Why people are canceling their boxes
What pain points or unmet needs are coming up
How to alleviate those unmet needs or pain points
What is missing or confusing about the experience
This gives me some potential ideas already for user research that I can jot down. If you want, at this step, to go one step further, you can already start to prioritize the potential project ideas. Whenever I prioritize, I use an impact and effort matrix, which looks at how much impact the research project would have on the team/organization and how much effort the end-to-end project would take.
Additionally, you can look across stakeholders to identify similar themes/patterns in needs to think through some potential cross-functional research that would positively impact multiple teams!
Brainstorm ways to address their pain points or anxieties
Before running straight into a research plan, it’s essential to look into what their pain points or anxieities surrounding research are. If we tackle these up-front, we are more likely to ease stakeholders’ minds and get buy-in for our research. I always say that transparency and empathy are key, so addressing pain points head-on is super effective.
Going back to our example:
To address these anxieties, I would:
Ensure the goals of the research address the business problem and metrics
Make sure we are getting information that can help make decisions to move the metrics further
Use a mixed-methods approach to help with small sample size anxiety
Find an approach that delivers value quickly (even if it's only part of the study)
Understand their overarching needs & learning style to choose a deliverable
Now on to the next step, which looks at diving a bit deeper into a particular project. At this stage, I float a potential research idea by them that they mentioned and that I think would be a really impactful project. If you did your prioritization exercise above, then you can use the most prioritized projects to get a bit more information. If you haven’t already prioritzed your ideas, now is a great time to do so.
Once you pick 1-2 projects, you need to get a slightly deeper understanding of what type of information the stakeholder needs and the decisions they are trying to make.
For this step, I simply send them the following prompt to fill out:
I need (information needed) to answer (questions they have) by (x timeline) in order to make (the decisions they need to make).
If you want to do this in a more-interview style format, you can use the following questions:
What type of information do you need at the end of the project?
What decisions do you want to be able to make?
What are the top three questions you need to be answered?
In which ways do you best digest information?
How could you imagine seeing these results?
Let’s look at a quick example of answers to these questions and potential outcomes:
This information will really help you with going deeper into the goals of a project, the timeline, and the type of deliverable that might be best!
Brainstorm ways to improve the current process
Before creating the research plan or roadmap, we want to brainstorm ideas and ways to improve the current process. So, taking in the feedback, what are some ways to optimize or make the user research process smoother?
Some ideas could include (but these should be based on feedback!):
Including an intake form to get research requests easily in one place and reduce meetings
Creating transparency by having a clear prioritization process
Reducing barriers by including a sign-up sheet for each project
Make sure to include research plans in your project as an easy way to align
Pitch your research plan (or roadmap) based on their goals and needs
Once you have all the above information, it’s time to share a research plan or a roadmap based on the goals and needs you identified. This research plan or roadmap can be both for an individual stakeholder as well as a group of stakeholders if you’ve identified cross-functional research projects.
Let’s look at an example from the project above:
Research plan
Goals:
Understand the top reasons people cancel their box after discount period
Uncover the decision-making process of box cancelation after discount period
Identify the major pain points with the box before cancelation during discount period
Success metrics: Fewer cancelations after the discount period & more boxes/customer
Methods: Survey + 1x1 interviews (start fast)
Recruitment:
Survey: 150 people who recently canceled after a discount period ended + 150 who are currently in the discount period
1x1 interviews: 15 people who recently canceled after discount period
Deliverable: Report with visuals + recommendations to make changes based on pain points & needs
Next steps: Ideation workshop to solutionize the pain points
Outcome: Prototypes + ideas to test with users
Timeline: 4-5 weeks (survey results ready in 1.5 weeks)
This research plan addresses:
Slow research anxiety by including a quantitative component that gets us some quick intermediate insights
Small sample size worry by including a survey
Directly impact business and team goals through the goals and ideation session to immediately create solutions
The way people digest the research by including a few different types of visualization in the report
Taking the information you learned and using that to curate your research plan will get you much more buy-in from stakeholders because you will have addressed their anxieties as well as highlight the direct impact research can have on their goals and needs!
Instead of a research plan, you can put together a roadmap of various projects. Check out this article to learn more about creating a roadmap and backlog (+ a template to get you started)!
Put constant feedback in motion
Getting feedback from your stakeholders doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t!) be a one-time project. Ideally, the most success I’ve had in getting buy-in and engagement from stakeholders is when I have had the space for them to give me consistent feedback. Some really great ways to get continuous feedback from stakeholders are:
Holding retrospectives after each (or every few) research projects
Implementing a stakeholder satisfaction survey
If you have a team, hold regular research reviews
Use a "Failure" journal to help track your projects, improvements, and progress
How to work with stakeholders that “don’t care”
As researchers, we got into user research because we love it. Talking to people, trying to understand them, bringing data together, and sharing information with others is exciting. However, it may not be everyone's cup of tea (or we'd have way too many researchers). We are specialists, and not every stakeholder will love our specialty. The best we can do is show them how we can help. Because even if they don't love user research, they can appreciate it.
It took me up to eight months to shift some relationships with stakeholders. It can take three to six months to change these relationships and gain trust. Keep at it and be consistent - building trust can take a lot of time!
If your stakeholders still don’t care or won’t talk to you, here are some things you can still do to be effective in your role WHILE building your case studies:
Do product-team agnostic research (such as personas, journey maps)
Look into data analytics, past research, or customer support to identify research projects
Do internal research (if applicable) if you can't get access to users
Work with any champions you can
Do user research for other departments (ex: marketing)
And, once you have the space to apply and interview at other companies, do so!! You deserve to be valued!
Your next steps:
Make meetings with stakeholders to conduct your stakeholder interviews
Remind stakeholders you are there to support them with their work
Gather the data and highlight their goals, pain points, and needs
See if there are any similarities for larger projects across teams (huge impact!!)
Brainstorm the projects that will immediately help the team
Do impactful research!
(Make sure you are continuing to learn)
Rinse & repeat
If you loved this and want to dive deeper into these topics while having a community of support to help you with these issues, you would enjoy my user research membership!