Influencing executives: How product leaders get buy-in for great ideas

Executive overview

Product managers often forget their core skills — curiosity and empathy — the moment they walk into an executive meeting. Executives operate in strobe-light calendars, context-switching constantly, and have not thought about your problem since your last meeting.

The shift is to treat your executive as your key user: understand their incentives, communicate in their format, and go in to learn rather than to convince. Influence is not politics — it is increasing the odds that good ideas survive.

Understanding how executives actually work

• Executives switch from finance to HR to legal to product reviews without pause; they have not centered your problem
• Spend 30 seconds at the top of every meeting: why are we here, what did we cover last time, what are today's goals
• Ask "was there anything else you were hoping to cover today?" before diving in
• They optimise for a global maximum; you are optimising locally — help them see the connection
• Execs say things confidently out of necessity, not because they are certain; probe beneath the surface

Treating executives as users

• Apply the same curiosity and empathy you use for customers to your exec conversations
• Going in only for approval is a failure state they do not enjoy
• Going in to learn strengthens the product and makes the exec feel they built it alongside you
• "It's not my fault, but it is my problem" — own the outcome regardless of where blame sits
• If you don't respect the exec's judgment, you need to find a different organisation

Understanding executive incentives

• Ask what the board is pushing them on; everyone has a boss with pressures
• Replace "what's top of mind?" with spicier questions: "what pressures are you most afraid of messing up?" or "what are the key inputs to your success?"
• Map your pitch to their OKRs and success metrics — make the alignment explicit
• Your incentives should already be aligned; if they are not, have that conversation first
• Point out the alignment: how does your proposal move the metric they are responsible for?

Preparing the pitch

• Ask the exec's EA, chief of staff, or recent successful pitchers: what worked, what is she worried about right now?
• Use AI to simulate the exec: train a GPT on past review transcripts, run your PRD through it, ask what she will push back on
• Understand their communication style — doc with silent reading time, data only, or narrative presentation — and match it
• The Minto pyramid works for many: lead with the recommendation, then the options considered, then the evidence
• Present three options; the Goldilocks middle becomes the natural choice and shows you considered alternatives
• Put proof-of-process (all 16 user studies, all 15 options) in the appendix — the baseline expectation is that you did your job

Running the meeting

• If they glaze over when you are proving your homework, you have already lost them
• After a doc or Loom review, surface a "themes for discussion" section — flag the controversial items that can only be resolved live; handle clarifying questions offline
• Follow subtle threads: if an exec says "I wonder if…" or "have you considered…", that is an invitation — the best people take it immediately
• Speed matters: if you wait a week to follow up on a thread, the exec has moved on
• Ask "how strongly do you feel about this?" to distinguish mandates from passing ideas before deprioritising other work

Asking questions that unlock insight

• "That's so interesting — what led you to believe that?" disarms and opens a genuine dialogue
• Co-create by unpacking their belief system, then responding with your domain expertise
• Executives bring cross-functional context, board-level conversations, and industry roundtables — extract that and apply it to your thinking
• Use time with execs that is not a pitch: casual conversations early build the trust that makes later pitches land

Building trust over time

• Prioritise ideas that align with beliefs the exec already holds; avoid pitching wildly against their existing convictions
• Show results: ship things, feed outcomes back, build momentum before attempting the scarier pitch
• Kill things. Deprioritising a project you championed is one of the most trust-building moves available — it shows you share the company's incentives, not just your own
• Shrink the change: frame big bets as a one-week proof of concept or a low-risk experiment to get people over the activation energy hump
• Clarify the failure state upfront: "here's how we'll know this isn't working, and here's when we'll come back with a decision"

Asking for what you need

• Execs can move people, add resourcing, elevate or kill projects — constraints that feel fixed to you are often movable for them
• If the ask seems unreasonable, come back with: here's what I can do now, and here's what I need to do the 10x version
• Cross-functional buy-in from CS, marketing, or design is often what tips an exec from sceptical to committed — build that groundswell before the big pitch

Showing up as a senior leader

• You get paid to be the deepest domain expert in the room — bring that expertise, not compliance
• Thinking at the company level (not just your feature) is what distinguishes strategic thinkers from individual contributors
• Show the full space of options you considered even when the exec only asked for a recommendation
• Do the job you want, not just the job you have — bring CPO-level perspective to every interaction

AI and the future of influence

• Execution complexity is falling fast; the leverage shifts to deciding what work survives and convincing others to fund it
• AI is not yet good at being an anthropologist — novel user insights from genuine empathy remain a human edge
• Strategy clarity becomes more important, not less, as building speed increases; misaligned teams compound mistakes faster
• Treat agents like new junior colleagues: onboard them with your product philosophy, what success looks like, where they must not proceed without you
• Use AI as a never-irritated colleague: ask it to poke holes, red-team your ideas, surface weaknesses before the exec does