Remember to demonstrate empathy and understanding for the parties involved in the situation you describe. Senior product managers often need to remain relatively neutral during conflict and lean on facilitation techniques and analysis to identify the most valuable solution possible.

"I am the product manager for an application suite that manages the request and approval process for creative work. It also tracks all of the costs associated with it. My stakeholders for this product are a mix of senior managers responsible for the development of media and senior managers responsible for financials. The creative side focuses on how quickly the solution could be used because any slow down to their process results in a loss of competitive advantage. The financial stakeholders are interested in tracking the costs for every work assignment throughout the process.

I was encouraged to work with each group separately but decided that it would be beneficial to bring them together so that they could foster a greater level of appreciation for the needs of each side. I set up a steering committee and facilitated meetings to allow them to share ideas and understand the collective impact of their requests. I was pleased to find that my clients quickly adopted a shared perspective resulting in my ability to more easily implement solutions that are understood and supported by everyone."