Storytelling – A Product Manager’s Secret Weapon

Storytelling – A Product Manager’s Secret Weapon
Storytelling – A Product Manager’s Secret Weapon

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Storytelling is the product

Storytelling is the product manager’s secret weapon

The key to successful product management? Storytelling. I would go as far as saying that product management is 80% storytelling with the other 20% going to execution. I would go even further and say that every deliverable a product manager creates is a storytelling opportunity. 

Your stories won’t always

Your stories won’t always be compelling. You have to learn how to write and tell them. This is design and it gets better with iteration. In this short video from Pete Docter from Pixar he shares how even their stories don’t always resonate right out of the gate and that, often, injecting your own personal experiences makes the story much more relatable. (The whole Pixar In A Box video course is amazing.) 

Every problem statement, competitive

Every problem statement, competitive analysis, market sizing exercise, OKR and even user stories, hypotheses and (yep) JIRA tickets are storytelling opportunities. They must be compelling. They need to take the reader on a journey in a way that is meaningful to them. It has to make them want to care about your idea.

The secret lies in

The secret lies in specific storytelling. The first version simply says “we need to fix this.” The second version paints a much more specific and compelling picture with only a few more words. “We have this problem. This is the impact it’s having on the business. If we fix it, here’s the benefit.” 

Let me give you

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re in charge of the authentication flow for your product. You’ve noticed recently that login failures are spiking. You head into iteration planning with your team and hand them the following user story:

As a user of our product

I want to log in

So that I can use the system

What makes a story

What makes a story compelling?

One of my favorite descriptions of storytelling comes from this TED talk from Andrew Stanton. Stanton breaks down storytelling into its core components – situation, complication, solution – while telling one of the best jokes I’ve ever heard (warning: joke is rated R).

 

Just like you would

Just like you would discuss with your team what outcome you’d want to see if your product was successful, ask the same question about your story. What outcome would you expect if your story found its target audience in a compelling way? How will their behavior change? If you don’t see that change when they read your deliverables ask them how they might be improved and iterate your story next time around. 

Now, consider this alternative:Authentication

Now, consider this alternative:

Authentication failures have increased by 73% in the last 6 months. This has reduced active users in the product by 52% on a daily basis which costs the company close to $1MM per day. 

From customer interviews and analytics reports we know that 90% of authentication dropoff happens at the password field. If we can reduce this to 10% we get close to $800k of that daily revenue back.

We are considering solving

We are considering solving this by removing the password field completely and texting/emailing users one time passwords each time they sign in. Our early low-fidelity prototyping of this idea returned nearly 100% success rates. 

What’s the difference between these two stories? Which one do you believe more? Which one do you care about more? Which one do you want to work on? Which one do you want to fund? Why?

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