Two-Way Negotiation
What is a two-way negotiation?
A two-way negotiation is a collaborative process between a product leader and a product team to set outcomes. The leader brings the across-the-business view and communicates what's most important to the business, while the team brings customer and technology knowledge and communicates how much progress can be made on what timeline.
This negotiation balances business priorities with what's feasible, ensuring both parties are aligned on what's possible and what it will take to get there. This is the recommended approach for setting team outcomes—not having leaders dictate outcomes, and not having teams set outcomes in isolation.
What does each party bring to the negotiation?
The product leader (such as the Chief Product Officer or VP of Product) brings the across-the-business view of what the organization needs at that moment in time. They communicate business priorities but should not dictate solutions.
The product team—if they're practicing continuous discovery—should be closest to the customer with a deep understanding of the technology. They communicate how much they think they can move the metric in a given timeframe, usually a calendar quarter.
For example, a leader may suggest that reducing churn is the most important problem to address. The team then needs to understand what's the right way to measure engagement, what the current baseline is, what they've tried in the past, and how successful those efforts were.
What happens when expectations don't align?
This is where the real negotiation starts. If the business needs more than the team thinks they can deliver, you need to look at alternative approaches.
The team may need more resources. The team may need to take bigger risks with their experiments to find more upside, coupled with the leader fully understanding and accepting those risks. The key is to be on the same page about what's possible and what it will take from the beginning.
Learn more:
- Managing Product Teams for Success
- Shifting from Outputs to Outcomes: Why It Matters and How to Get Started
Related terms:
- Product Trio
- Outcome
- Continuous Discovery
- Autonomy
Last Updated: October 25, 2025