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By Aumarie Benipayo

As marketers, our projects are rarely confined to just our own teams. We work with the product team to promote new features, design to provide graphics for our blog posts, or the web team to make sure that our landing pages actually work. So, to be a good marketer, you also need to be a master of stakeholder management.

But, as we all know, managing dozens of people for a project, making sure everyone is up to date, and keeping track of feedback is well, really hard. Especially when you also have to worry about getting your own work done.

To make the process a little easier, here are some ways we handle stakeholder management at Atlassian - with no unexpected hangups.

Manage stakeholders' roles and responsibilities

As you prepare to launch a project involving other people, conduct a stakeholder analysis and determine roles and responsibilities early.

Practically, this looks like a good old-fashioned brainstorm where you consider and assess who this project's outcomes are going to directly impact:

The people identified in these questions are your stakeholders.

Document roles and responsibilities

Defining roles will help give stakeholders clarity about what skills, insight, and time they need to bring into a project. This will also minimize the amount of "empty space" that a stakeholder might perceive in the project's process. Use documentation to solidify those roles and keep them top of mind throughout your project.

At Atlassian, we put a 2x4 table at the top of every project-related document in Confluence so that everyone always knows where they stand. Using the DACI framework, we assign:

A driver: who is in charge of managing stakeholders and making sure decisions are made on time.

An approver: who has the final say in decision-making.

Contributors: who can offer expert opinions for consideration or are directly involved in the project.

Informed stakeholders: who are notified of decisions.

Set stakeholder expectations early

Anticipating what stakeholders want to know based on their roles and communicating ahead of time can go a long way in alleviating anxiety, and demonstrates you're on top of things as a project manager. It also allows stakeholders to plan for how long the project will take and can curb unnecessary scrutiny that might end up slowing things down.

Stakeholders who aren't directly involved in the work of the project, but still need to be updated on the project's progress (the I's in the DACI mentioned above), will likely offer unsolicited opinions on what's happening if you let them. Keep these stakeholders heavily informed early and clarify that they're being informed now so that they don't start inserting opinions late into a project.

Stakeholder management is all about collaboration

Ultimately, stakeholder management is about empowering people and teams to function at their best while minimizing hang-ups along the way. Doing the hard work up front to give stakeholders clarity will start you off with a strong foundation as a project manager. This practice, along with giving stakeholders easy access to information, results in better functioning projects.

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Successful Stakeholder Management | Atlassian

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By Aumarie Benipayo As marketers, our projects are rarely confined to just our own teams. We work with the product team to promote new features, design to provide graphics for our blog posts, or the web team to make sure that our landing pages actually work.

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Many startup companies look to advisors to provide strategic advice and counsel on company operational matters. In contrast to putting together a Board of Directors, building a team of advisors (sometimes referred to as an Advisory Board or Board of Advisors) is completely optional. The addition of advisors can be beneficial for companies, as advisors can bring unique skill sets and experiences that can complement or enhance the capabilities of the company's founders and team members.

For early stage companies, advisors can be particularly useful for tasks such as building out a company's network of fundraising options, recruiting top-level talent and the development and deployment of cutting-edge technology. Typically, early stage companies are able to entice high-level advisors by offering equity incentives. While the hope is that the advisor relationships will be long-lasting and very fruitful, the reality (as with all other relationships) is that sometimes issues arise and, as such, it is important for both advisors and companies to have a well-structured, written advisor agreement that governs this relationship.

This article is intended to provide a high-level overview of some of the key issues that advisors and companies need to be aware of when reviewing/preparing an advisor agreement.
1. Advisor's Role and Time Commitment
Advisor agreements should provide a description of the advisory's role with the company. While certain circumstances may call for a very generic high-level description of the advisor's responsibilities, in most cases, providing a somewhat detailed description of the advisor's role and responsibilities based upon the advisor's expertise is highly recommended. Additional detail not only provides legal certainty with regards to the obligations that an advisor must perform, but also serves the important purpose of defining the relationship between the company and the advisor from the outset.

In defining the advisor's responsibilities, one often-overlooked component is the amount of time that the advisor will spend working with the company. Many advisor relationships disintegrate over the company's feeling (whether correct or not) that the advisor is not allocating enough of his or her attention to the company. This issue can be addressed from the outset by providing a description of the amount of time that the advisor will need to spend working with the company over specific periods. A description of the advisor's time commitment can be articulated in many different ways, but it is often stated as a number of hours of service and/or a number of meetings or conference calls in which the advisor will participate, typically over a monthly or quarterly period. The advisor's time commitment should be tailored to the role of the advisor and the amount of equity being granted to the advisor, but it generally ranges from 4-20 hours per month with a commitment to be available on a reasonable "as needed" basis.
2. Compensation
In most cases, advisors are compensated with an equity stake that typically ranges from 0.15% - 1% of the outstanding common stock of the company (on a fully-diluted basis) as of the date of grant. The appropriate level of compensation depends on a wide range of factors, from the stage of the company to the skills that the advisor is bringing to the table. Advisor equity is most commonly subject to vesting on a monthly basis over a two-year vesting period (sometimes with a short "cliff" period upon which the vesting will begin).

It is important to note that the advisor agreement alone is not sufficient to officially grant equity to an advisor. The grant must be approved by the company's Board of Directors and issued pursuant to a valid equity incentive plan that has been approved by the company's Board of Directors and stockholders. Additionally, the company must ensure that it has enough authorized and unissued shares of common stock to cover the equity grant and that it is granting the equity at fair market value as of the time of grant. These formalities are required by law.

Because equity is such a precious resource, companies should be very careful and conscious of the amount of equity they are allotting to their advisors. Giving too much equity away to an advisor, especially one that ends up not being particularly useful to a company, can be painful when it comes to an exit or liquidity event.
3. Confidentiality and Invention Assignment
In the course of their work with a company, an advisor will become privy to much of the inner-workings and confidential information within the company. This confidential information may include financial models, customer information, personnel information, intellectual property and other proprietary information. Companies have a legitimate interest in keeping this type of information private and thus must ensure that the advisor agreement requires the advisor to keep such information confidential during and after the term of the advisor's relationship with the company.

Additionally, the company should ensure that any inventions and ideas that an advisor develops for the company, in the course of the advisor's work with the company, should be the property of the company itself. To ensure that this occurs, the advisor agreement should contain an express provision assigning any such inventions and ideas to the company.
4. Conflict of Interest
Advisors are not employees of the company and are typically actively involved with other businesses. As such, advisor agreements should include an express representation from the advisor that such advisor is not violating the terms of any other contractual obligations (whether other advisor agreements, employment agreements, stockholder agreements or otherwise). In addition, advisor agreements often contain non-compete and non-solicit restrictions that must be adhered to by the advisor during the term of the advisor agreement and for a period thereafter (often one year). These are particularly sensitive provisions that should be addressed at the outset of an advisor engagement.

There is no denying that advisors can play crucial roles in a company's ultimate success. By entering into a formal advisor agreement upfront, companies and advisors can kick off the relationship on solid footing and avoid potential disputes in the future.

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Scannavino Lamb LLP is a boutique law firm based in New York City offering legal and business advice to forward-thinking entrepreneurs, startup companies, and startup investors. Founded by former Big Law lawyers, the firm serves its clients by blending world-class service with entrepreneurial perspective. Check us out at www.scannavinolamb.com.
This publication is for general information purposes only. The information in this publication should not be construed as legal advice or legal opinions, is not a substitute for fact-specific legal counsel, does not necessarily represent the views of the firm or its clients, and is not intended to create a lawyer-client relationship. This publication may constitute attorney advertising in some jurisdictions. © 2017 Scannavino Lamb LLP | All Rights Reserved

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Tips for Startup Advisory Agreements - The Startup - Medium

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Many startup companies look to advisors to provide strategic advice and counsel on company operational matters. In contrast to putting together a Board of Directors, building a team of advisors (sometimes referred to as an Advisory Board or Board of Advisors) is completely optional.

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Use the FAST Agreement to Simplify your Advisory Relationship

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FAST is a new agreement and framework for Founders to engage with strategic advisors.