Balancing Tech Proficiency and Stakeholder Goals

How do you balance technical proficiency with stakeholder goals? Who talks to whom, and who owns the process as you build out your product management teams while showing your stakeholders their much-needed ROI?

These are some of the challenges Rob Wisniewski has faced over the years as a CTO who has specialized in helping companies scale while automating their big idea.

Rob Wisniewski is a Managing Director in Blackstone's Technology and Innovations Group and has worked in a variety of tech leadership roles in multiple industries and at various stages of company growth.

Stakeholder sophistication is a key component for Rob as you establish a healthy stakeholder connection while also assessing when to put your product management team in the same room as your stakeholders.

Learning that the stakeholders control the process and that as you scale up your effectiveness as a tech organization, you become more human and therapy-driven anyway (which in turn helps your stakeholder approach) are just some of the smart insights that have made Rob a much sought-after CTO.

An external valuation can also be important at the right stage of product development as we "learn to get out of the way of our own experiments," as Rob succinctly puts it.

There's also good news in this episode for owners looking to tighten their belts as Rob and Debbie comment on the merits of getting better outcomes with a measure of economic restraint.

Join us for a lesson in remembering why we create value when we create tech – and how we can protect that process through healthy corporate culture and communication. Please join us.

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"For me, it's about finding that product management discipline, really putting time, effort into your version of it, and making sure that there's transparency with the stakeholders via that function." ~ Rob Wisniewski

In This Episode:‍

• Appreciating your purpose of creating value with your tech
• Who gets to talk to whom when you're building out your product management?
• Understanding stakeholder sophistication
• Why the process is owned by the stakeholders
• What happens when stakeholder needs and priorities conflict?
• What has Rob seen insofar as 'mistakes in the making'?
• Getting a better outcome with a measure of economic restraint