And what product managers can do to clear the path for the customer. — Sometime ago, a new customer of our division (I’ll call her Sue) pinged me and asked if I had time for a quick chat. I said, “Sure,” and she sent me a calendar invitation with the rather damning subject line “Confused.” Sue and I didn’t work together directly, but I…

On the storytelling framework and the customer journey — I’ve written about stories as frameworks for customer engagement and their specific applications to product management. I also dig deeper into different parts of the story framework; the first is about the heroes and their needs. In this post I focus on three of those elements from the Hero’s Journey: …

Using stories to pitch to the customer, frame customer engagement, and get the product team on the same page — In an earlier entry, I wrote about the inherent qualities that made stories the magic things that they are. Stories are shared forms of human creativity and expression. Stories create empathy on the part of the listener, whether a potential customer or product team member; stories are far more persuasive…

Just in case you product managers need some convincing. — Storytelling is at the heart of product management. Whether referring to assembling the nuts and bolts of product delivery, crafting a product strategy, or selling a product vision, stories are key to both successful product development and customer engagement as a whole. I’d even argue that stories — and no…

They’re heroes of the story, with needs and motivations. — Sometime last year I was conducting a storytelling and product management workshop at work. I had instructed the participants, who were Information Technology managers and officers, to come prepared by thinking of fictional characters. (For an icebreaker, create an anonymous poll and ask, “Which fictional character do you (secretly) identify…

Some sources, and much food for thought, on a short workshop I taught on design thinking and storytelling for product managers. — (A small disclaimer: a lot of thinking out loud is about to follow, with the caveat that I may revise and update this later for something slightly more polished. Sometimes I write more crafted entries (as with my movie / book / game posts on my personal blog), but it…

How a product manager and fiction writer connected the dots. — So this radioactive spider accidentally got loose in a lab and — ahh, who am I kidding. But my interests in the intersection of storytelling and product management do have an origin story of sorts. Most people keep the different spheres of their life completely separate: there’s the day job…