Tell me about a time when you had to manage upwards (that is, you had to manage and align stakeholders with higher titles than you to get things done).

Situation- I was assigned as a product manager for a leading entertainment parks brand. They wanted to develop an app to engage customers using the park. The business objective was to improve monetization using the app through add ons to tickets, deals at restuarants etc.

Task- Task to increase the user base and engagement of the app plus alignment with business objectives related to monetization.

Action- I decided to get to know what the customers wanted and with this in mind spent ~7 days at the Park. I observed the customers as they spread themselves in the park, enjoyed their rides, picked up restuarants for food etc. I found that customer needs were very different. They wanted an app that can show a preview of a rides, simple comforts like water, first aid, reasonably priced food etc. Hence the features requested by business were out of sync with customer needs

Result- I proposed a feature prioritization with focus on features that would increase engagement over a short term and use this engagement to manifest into monetization over a longer time. This required me to prioritize customer demanded features even though they would not result in any immediate increase in monetization