Design and product work
Stakeholder alignment
Also calledAlignment, Stakeholder management
Getting the people who influence a decision to agree on the problem, the goal and the plan, so the work is not undone later.
Alignment is the unglamorous work of reviews, written rationale, walkthroughs and one-to-one conversations with the people who can say no. It looks like overhead, but a design that is right and unapproved ships nothing.
The more senior the role, the larger the share of the week this takes. For a head of design it can be a third of the job.