Melissa Appel helps product teams drive business value by creating real strategy instead of simply launching lists of stakeholder requests. By measuring success in terms of outcomes instead of output, she helps product teams align with cross-functional stakeholders to create roadmaps that solve real customer problems, turning your products from nice-to-haves into must-haves. With over 20 years in product management, and a passion for minimalist processes that simply work, she helps her clients stop iterating and start innovating. Melissa also co-wrote Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders.
Upcoming Talks
11 May 2026
Stakeholder alignment sounds simple until priorities collide, politics show up, and your roadmap starts to wobble. In this highly interactive workshop, Melissa Appel uses a fast paced simulation to help teams practise the real work of alignment: understanding incentives, negotiating trade offs, and landing a decision people will actually support.
Participants work in small groups as a fictional executive team, with each person playing a role with their own perspective and agenda. Across multiple rounds, you will build a shared recommendation for a CEO who is out of action, learning practical tactics for aligning peers and senior stakeholders along the way. The debrief turns the experience into repeatable tools you can apply immediately inside your own organisation.
Outcomes
- Diagnose why alignment breaks down (competing incentives, unclear goals, misread power dynamics) and what to do about it
- Practise influence techniques that build trust and reduce politics, even with difficult stakeholders
- Learn how to align groups around outcomes and trade-offs, not just a list of requests
- Create a simple stakeholder map and messaging plan that speaks to what different leaders care about
- Leave with a set of next steps to drive executive and cross-functional alignment back at work