Aligning Interests

Aligning executive stakeholders with conflicting priorities is a puzzle many product people face. How do you solve it? When stakeholders pull in different directions, the secret isn't in aligning immediately around a product vision. Instead, elevate the conversation: align first on company goals. What outcomes do we aspire to achieve as a company? This unified understanding of company priorities becomes your north star. Here's how you can approach this: 1️⃣ Level Up the Discussion: Before diving into a product vision, ask stakeholders to agree on broader company goals. What did your CEO emphasize as priorities for your business? This context is crucial. It sets the stage for aligning individual goals to the bigger picture. 2️⃣ Connect Back to Product Vision: Once unified on company objectives, demonstrate how the product vision helps achieve these goals. "Here's our shared goal. Based on customer insights and priorities, this vision drives us towards it.” This shows your vision isn't just arbitrary—it's informed and intentional. 3️⃣ Seek Constructive Feedback: Encourage dialogue. Why might a stakeholder disagree with the vision? Is it truly about priorities, or personal impacts and unmet goals? This feedback refines your approach but remember, the product vision isn't a committee decision. It's guided by data and customer needs. 4️⃣ Give Credit and Build Back: Stakeholders feel valued when their input shapes outcomes. Make sure to recognize their contributions. This fosters trust and buy-in. Being stuck in the build trap often arises from chasing outputs over outcomes. Aligning on higher-level goals ensures your product strategy isn't just a list of features but a pathway to delivering real value. 🎯 So, next time conflicting priorities emerge, remember: align at the top, then articulate a product vision that navigates towards those shared company goals. How have you managed stakeholder alignment in your organization? Share your experiences!

Projects don’t fail because of tools. They fail because of relationships. Stakeholder mapping isn’t bureaucracy — it’s how you build trust before you need it. It’s how you identify the voices who can accelerate progress… and the ones who can quietly stall it. Too often, teams treat stakeholders as obstacles — people to manage, not engage. But here’s the truth: if you don’t bring them in early, they’ll slow you down later. I use my Audit–Align–Act approach for every complex initiative 👇 1️⃣ Audit – See the full landscape Identify everyone touched by the work — directly or indirectly. Decision-makers, downstream users, quiet influencers. Understand the landscape early so you can anticipate tension and find allies. Stakeholders aren’t roadblocks. They’re early warning signals and success partners — if you know how to engage them. 2️⃣ Align – Understand influence, interest, and motivation Not every stakeholder carries the same weight. Audit for interest (who cares) and influence (who decides). Then go deeper: ↳ What’s their background? ↳ What’s their currency — recognition, data, control, speed? When you understand what drives people, you can advocate with them, not around them. 3️⃣ Act – Plan how you’ll engage This is where trust turns into strategy. Plan engagement based on what you’ve learned about each stakeholder: ↳ Who needs visibility and consistent updates? ↳ Who prefers a one-on-one conversation? ↳ Who values brief summaries versus detailed decks? ↳ Who can be a bridge to other groups? And yes — this also means making time for the informal moments. ↳ The hallway check-ins, coffee chats, or casual lunches where people let their guard down and share what’s really on their mind. ↳ Those touchpoints often reveal more than formal meetings ever will. ↳ Because influence is built one genuine interaction at a time. Stakeholder mapping isn’t a kickoff exercise. It’s a living process that strengthens alignment, relationships, and culture. If you’re not mapping your stakeholders, you’re leaving your success to chance. How do you ensure all stakeholders are seen and heard in your projects? ♻️ Repost to share with your network. ➕ Follow Janet Kim for more stories on leadership and career transformation. ~~~~~~ 📩 Want more strategies like this? Subscribe to Level Up Weekly - link in the Featured section. ~~~~~~ I leverage 19 years in Stanford tech to help emerging leaders think strategically, build influence, and execute with confidence, so you’re seen, heard and valued.

𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝗠𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗟𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗢𝗻𝗲 Early in your career, everything feels urgent every opportunity, every introduction, every title. You run faster because you’re told speed is proof of ambition. But meaning isn’t built through motion. It’s built through alignment. The quiet discipline of ensuring that what you do, how you do it, and why you do it move in the same direction. At its core, alignment has three dimensions: 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: when your values, strengths, and career choices reinforce each other. 𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: when your work contributes meaningfully to the company’s mission, culture, and strategic goals not just its metrics. 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: when the way you influence others reflects both your integrity and the leadership standards your organization aspires to. When these layers support each you succeed. When they conflict, you create exhaustion and fail. Psychology calls this the balance of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Philosophy calls it choosing significance over status. At The LeaderCraft Lab, we call it the foundation of sustainable performance: Alignment → Purpose → Performance. This is because clarity of purpose isn’t soft, it’s strategic. It helps you decide what to say yes to, what to walk away from, and how to grow without losing yourself. Ask yourself this week: Where do my personal values align (or clash) with my organization’s mission? How do my daily choices reflect both my integrity and my company’s direction? What kind of impact do I want my leadership to create, here and beyond here? You don’t have to wait to burn out to start aligning. Meaning isn’t the reward for surviving your career. It’s the strategy for sustaining it. Start with the Leadership Reflection Journal from #TheLeaderCraftLab, designed to help emerging leaders audit their personal, organizational, and leadership alignment before success becomes survival. I’m Marie-Therese Phido, helping leaders and professionals rethink performance, restore purpose, and lead from alignment again. Let’s connect, and start the recalibration conversation. Hashtags: #TheLeaderCraftLab #EmergingLeaders #LeadershipAlignment #CareerGrowth #OrganizationalCulture #MeaningfulWork #LeadershipDevelopment #SelfLeadership

A sales rep and his fiancée are earning $300,000 a year combined. Their number one goal this year is to buy real estate. So where are their dollars going? 12% into a pre-tax 401k when his company only matches 4%. Extra payments toward student loans because he felt like he had to eliminate them before buying a home. And almost nothing into savings he can actually access. His dollars are not aligned with his goals and he didn’t even realize it. This is what I see over and over again with high earners: They do what’s easy. They do what’s convenient. They follow the conventional playbook of max out the retirement account and pay down debt as fast as possible. But then when I ask “what’s your number one goal?”… the answer is almost never “retire in 35 years.” It’s buy real estate. It’s start a business. It’s build something NOW. And all three of those require liquidity that they don’t have because every dollar is locked up in a 401k they can’t touch or going toward debt that could have waited. The match is free money. Thats great… But contributing 12% pre-tax when your biggest goal requires accessible capital? That’s a misalignment. Paying down student loans at a low interest rate when you need cash for a down payment is a total misalignment. The first step in any financial plan should be aligning your dollars with what actually matters most to you. Not what the internet tells you to do… Not what “feels” productive… We realigned his savings strategy in one conversation. More liquidity. Less 401k. A real plan to get into real estate this year instead of 3 years from now. What’s your number one financial goal this year… and are your dollars actually aligned with it?

Diverse investor interests can lead to decision making deadlocks. Is your governance structure built to handle conflicts? As your investor base grows, so does the potential for misalignment. Discover how to design governance frameworks that facilitate effective decision making and align stakeholder interests. ⬇️ Governance complexity and investor misalignment can cripple decision making. As more investors come in, competing interests can impede growth. Avoid this by: + Structuring the board for efficiency: Too many seats, too early leads to slow decisions. Balance representation while keeping governance agile. + Aligning investor priorities early: Growth vs. profitability, short term liquidity vs. long term scale... Misalignment here leads to boardroom conflicts. + Defining decision making authority: Clearly outline what requires board approval vs. what mgmt can execute independently. + Preventing deadlock scenarios: Supermajority voting and unanimous consent provisions can stall key decisions. Set clear tiebreakers. + Standardizing reporting and updates: Different investors may demand different insights. Establish a unified reporting cadence to avoid distractions. A mismanaged investor group slows everything down. Set clear rules before it turns into a bottleneck.

"Aligning incentives" is a favorite buzzword in the entrepreneur space. It means: how can we make what I want coincide with what you want? It also happens to be the biggest problem in the mental health space right now, IMHO. Incentives are not aligned. Founders want to scale a business and keep investors happy. Investors want to make lots of returns to make up for investments that didn't make any returns. Clinicians want to take care of themselves and their clients. Payors want to stay in line with parity laws without paying out too much on mental health. It's basically a high-stakes game of rock-paper-scissors. Investors overrule founders by controlling capital and board seats. Founders overrule clinicians by controlling their wages and workloads. Clinicians trump investors by controlling the product, which is their labor—no clinicians, no business. (And, of course, they're all limited by payors, who hold the purse strings and arbitrarily decide how big the pot actually is.) Until we can change the system so that the only way to build a profitable, scaleable, investable business is by taking care of ALL stakeholders (and I suspect that will have something to do with those purse strings...), we're not going to see much change. As long as we're all pulling different directions, the wagon's not going to move. #mentalhealth #therapy #investors #payors #founders #therapists

#ThrivingToGetWorkDone Post 5 of 9: Aligning Interests and Incentives; Creating Win-Win Situations Aligning interests and incentives is crucial when collaborating with people who don’t directly report to you. It helps to ensure that everyone has a stake in the outcome and is motivated to contribute effectively. Here are two short use cases on how to activate this skill in routine work within the hospital industry: Use Case 1: Aligning Incentives for a New Patient Safety Initiative You’re leading a hospital-wide initiative to reduce patient falls. To ensure buy-in from various departments like Nursing, Housekeeping, and Rehabilitation Services, you propose an incentive program. “For every month that we achieve a 10% reduction in patient falls, the department with the most effective safety measures will receive recognition at our monthly staff meeting, along with a small budget for team development activities.” By aligning the incentives with the goal, you encourage all departments to actively contribute to patient safety, creating a shared sense of responsibility and motivation. Use Case 2: Aligning Interests in a Hospital Outreach Program In another scenario, you’re working on a community outreach program to increase health awareness. You recognize that different departments have varying interests, so you align them by saying, “Our goal is to reach 1,000 community members through this program. For every department that contributes significantly—whether by providing medical expertise, organizing events, or managing logistics—we’ll highlight your department’s efforts in our annual report, which is shared with our board and stakeholders.” By aligning their interests with the broader hospital goals, you ensure enthusiastic participation across the board. #My2Cents: Aligning interests and incentives ensures that everyone is working towards the same goals with the same level of enthusiasm. When people see how their contributions lead to mutual benefits, collaboration becomes natural, and success becomes shared. These posts aim to invoke a better overall environment by sharing practical ways to enhance workplace collaboration and productivity. How do you align interests and incentives in your workplace? Share your strategies in the comments! #Leadership #Teamwork #WorkplaceCulture #Incentives #HealthcareLeadership #ThrivingAtWork #Collaboration #HospitalAdministration

Equity vesting in search funds is crucial for aligning searcher and investor interests. In acquired businesses, structuring vesting structures to incorporate performance-based incentives can enhance motivation, align goals, and create value. Traditionally, a portion of equity vests upon acquisition, with the remainder tied to time or IRR targets. Typically, searchers might vest 25% (solo) and 30% (partner)— 1/3 at acquisition, with the rest vesting over subsequent years or contingent on time running the company and/or performance metrics. Performance-based incentives can: → Align interests: Tie a larger portion of equity to performance, encouraging searchers to focus on long-term value creation. → Motivate searchers: Early vesting based on performance can alleviate anxiety and allow searchers to concentrate on building and scaling the business. → Boost investor confidence: Performance-based incentives can enhance trust and collaboration between searchers and investors. To successfully implement performance-based incentives, consider: → Board composition: A board with experienced members who understand the search fund model is essential. → Flexibility in agreements: Legal agreements should allow for adjustments in vesting schedules based on performance outcomes. → Clear performance metrics: Establish clear, measurable performance metrics aligned with the overall strategic goals of the business. By incorporating performance-based incentives, search funds can create a more robust alignment between searchers and investors, driving significant value creation in acquired businesses.

One of the many aspects of entrepreneurship I love is the creative freedom I have to run JetRockets how I please. There’s no singular best way to run a company, and that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship. Something I particularly love about onboarding a new client is that I don’t arbitrarily assign engineers to work on that client's product; I align the project in accordance with the engineers' passions. Not all software projects are created equal, and people have preferences regarding what they enjoy building. I know my software developers well, including their passions, and aligning their interests with the right projects is critical. When developers work on projects that align with their interests and passions, they are naturally more motivated and engaged. Don’t get me wrong – regardless of interest, we aim to deliver. However, passion leads to enthusiasm and an overall productivity spike. If you’re an agency owner with a fulfillment-heavy employee count, identify their interests and allocate them projects accordingly; it’ll pay wonders in the long run.