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Influence Without the Title, with Jenny Wanger
Why do product teams stay misaligned? Jenny Wanger explains the structural problems: efficiency-focused handoff workflows, unclear strategy, and people left cleaning up decisions they didn't help make. She shares tested practices for influencing upstream decisions without formal authority: clarifying strategy through curiosity, bringing the right people in early (pre-mortems work), and publicly recognizing collaborators.
Key Takeaways
- Fire drills and half-finished features often stem from lost customer context in handoff-driven workflows
- Use curiosity, not criticism, to surface strategy gaps - Interview leaders and highlight missing pieces
- Run cross-functional pre-mortems early; rank risks by likelihood × impact, not opinion
- Make others look good publicly (CC their boss); build a reputation as someone worth inviting
Timestamps
- 02:42 The Misalignment Before Picture
- 05:05 The Handoff Trap
- 17:00 Strategy Gaps & Curiosity
- 23:00 Pre-Mortems & Early Involvement
- 32:00 First Steps
Resources
- Jenny Wanger: jennywanger.com | LinkedIn
Your Challenge
Pick one: Share a kudos with someone's manager, approach a colleague about a past bottleneck, or volunteer to run a pre-mortem.
Send us a message
Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.
Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.
Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA.
Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.
Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.
View all episodes
By Dianna DeeneyWhy do product teams stay misaligned? Jenny Wanger explains the structural problems: efficiency-focused handoff workflows, unclear strategy, and people left cleaning up decisions they didn't help make. She shares tested practices for influencing upstream decisions without formal authority: clarifying strategy through curiosity, bringing the right people in early (pre-mortems work), and publicly recognizing collaborators.
Key Takeaways
- Fire drills and half-finished features often stem from lost customer context in handoff-driven workflows
- Use curiosity, not criticism, to surface strategy gaps - Interview leaders and highlight missing pieces
- Run cross-functional pre-mortems early; rank risks by likelihood × impact, not opinion
- Make others look good publicly (CC their boss); build a reputation as someone worth inviting
Timestamps
- 02:42 The Misalignment Before Picture
- 05:05 The Handoff Trap
- 17:00 Strategy Gaps & Curiosity
- 23:00 Pre-Mortems & Early Involvement
- 32:00 First Steps
Resources
- Jenny Wanger: jennywanger.com | LinkedIn
Your Challenge
Pick one: Share a kudos with someone's manager, approach a colleague about a past bottleneck, or volunteer to run a pre-mortem.
Send us a message
Work with Dianna I help product development teams build quality into the front end when it's cheap and easy, not late when it's expensive and painful.
Book a 20-minute discovery call with Dianna's calendar. Whether you're navigating the "fuzzy front end" of product development and want to explore a workshop or advisory partnership, or you'd like to be a guest on this podcast. You'll leave with a summary, relevant resources, and a clear path for next steps within 24 hours.
Pierce the Design Fog (piercethedesignfog.com): my book on aligning cross-functional teams, defining clear design inputs, and accelerating product success. NIEA Finalist Award, reviewed by PDMA.
Connect with me: I'm most active on LinkedIn.
Free Resources for Subscribers Subscribe to the Quality during Design digest — https://newsletter.deeneyenterprises.com — for monthly actionable highlights, plus access to the Strategic Quality Integration Checklist (a free self-assessment download) and my Swipe File Vault.
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