Strategic Project Advocacy

Strategic Project Advocacy (The "Fight the Good Fight" Framework)

This framework enables Product Managers to drive essential but unpopular work by reducing the "cost of help" for partners and using visceral evidence to create emotional urgency. Instead of asking for a massive resource shift, you build a "low-friction" coalition that proves value through small, scrappy wins.

The Advocacy Workflow

1. Gather Visceral Evidence ("Show, Don't Tell")

Move beyond abstract metrics. Use "painful" qualitative data to create an emotional connection to the problem for stakeholders.

• Customer Recordings: Share clips of users struggling with the specific friction point.
• Visual Side-by-Sides: Show the current "painful" experience versus a mockup of the "ideal" experience (e.g., "This new flow cuts 20 clicks").
• Rich Feedback Quotes: Extract specific language from surveys where customers describe their frustration in emotional terms.

2. Map the "Revenue Connection"

Even for non-feature work, tie the investment to core business growth to justify the cost.

• New Acquisition: Demonstrate how high friction (low usability) increases the ramp-up time for new users.
• Expansion: Show how poor quality prevents existing customers from adding more seats or users.
• Churn Risk: Link low satisfaction scores (CSAT) to potential long-term retention issues.

3. Implement the "Shepherd" Resource Model

Instead of asking platform or partner teams to "bear the brunt" of development costs (which leads to "no"), offer to do the heavy lifting while they provide guidance.

• The Shepherd Role: Ask the partner team to nominate one person (a "Shepherd") to review your team's code and designs.
• Your Commitment: Your team writes the code and does the work within the partner's codebase.
• The Benefit: This lowers the barrier to entry for the partner team from "we don't have the capacity to build this" to "we can spare 2 hours a week for reviews."

4. Execute the "Scrappy" Start

Avoid asking for a massive, permanent team.

• Start Small: Begin with a tiny group (e.g., 2–3 people) to prove the hypothesis.
• Stage-Gate Growth: Only request more headcount once you have shipped a small improvement and seen a measurable lift in sentiment or metrics.
• Momentum Updates: Send regular, high-energy updates on small wins to maintain executive excitement.

Proactive Conflict Management (The "Fight Club" Ritual)

To maintain the coalition, you must address the inevitable friction points early before they become blockers.

• The 30-Minute Slot: Schedule a weekly 30-minute meeting exclusively for the "Triad" (Product, Engineering, and Design leads).
• The Explicit Goal: Enter the meeting with the mindset: "We are here specifically to have a conflict."
• The Rule of Confidentiality: What is discussed in the room stays in the room to allow for raw, unpolished disagreement.
• Early Detection: Use this time to bring up "unpopular" opinions or minor tensions before they escalate into project-stalling arguments.

Examples

Example 1: Improving Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

• Context: Usability is low, but the roadmap is full of new features.
• Input: 100+ survey comments about a specific "broken" workflow.
• Application: Record a video of a customer failing to complete the task. Approach the Platform team and say, "My team will write the code to fix this; we just need one of your senior devs to be our 'Shepherd' for reviews."
• Output: A 20% lift in CSAT for that workflow with zero roadmap impact on the Platform team.

Example 2: Implementing "Dark Mode" or Design Debt

• Context: Designers want a consistent UI, but Engineering sees no "feature value."
• Input: Competitive analysis showing modern standards and internal dev frustration.
• Application: Create a "Show, Don't Tell" prototype of the polished UI. Start with a "scrappy" pilot in one small corner of the product.
• Output: Proven "Quality of Life" improvement that gains enough momentum to be rolled out globally.

Common Pitfalls

• Asking for Permission, Not Partnership: If you ask a team to "do this for us," they will say no. If you ask, "Can we do the work if you review it?", they are much more likely to say yes.
• Falling in Love with the Solution: Don't get attached to a specific acquisition or tool. Stay focused on the problem (e.g., "Our goal is customer value, not specifically buying Company X").
• Polishing Too Early: Don't wait for a perfect proposal. Bringing "painfully unpolished" work to peer groups or triads early prevents wasted effort on the wrong direction.
• Avoiding the "Fight": Putting off difficult conversations makes them bigger. Use the "Fight Club" model to address 10-cent problems before they become 10-dollar problems.