The lost art of story telling

How many times have we seen presentations that are just boring. We struggle to not open our laptops or avoid doodling on our notes. Too many words, too repetitive, too boring. This blog post is not designed to be another "5 key tips to make your presentations better" type of post, but rather to talk about how product managers (who create their fair share of presentations) can make them better. The key to me is to tell a story, folks like stories they don't like boring presentations :)

 By telling a story you accomplish the following:

1.  WIIFM - If you haven't heard of this, it stands for "What's in it for me?" The audience has to feel an emotion, a desire. You are taking up there time, what value are you providing in return. Are you asking them for something? If so, what are you providing them? Think about your audience, not about you or your slides. 
2. Connect the dots - Often times the audience may already have the story made up in their minds and are probably not receptive to your view. We have all had this happen. You are trying to convince a VC with your pitch, but they have already determined that there is no future for your product, business, market, etc. Our brains are wired to automatically fill in the gaps when presented with bits and pieces of a vision or story. Fr xmpl cn y rd ths sntnc? You see how your experience/knowledge allowed you to fill in the gaps? I can assure you my 5 year old, can not fill in those gaps! As you present your story, you have to connect disparate pieces of information together with data and emotion to fill in the gaps/assumptions that your audience may have.
3. Ability to Influence - So you have thought about your audience and helped connect the dots in order to fill in the gaps, what's next. The key to telling a great story isn't just the words...its the audio and visuals. As a product manager who loves data and wants to share it as quickly as possible, it takes time (and restraint) to sit down before you create the slides and think about how do you want to communicate your story. How do you present the conclusion in a way that will resonate with the audience? One thing that I always ask myself when I'm presenting to management is "If I wasn't there could the audience understand the story?" If we can provide them content that your management can understand and present themselves or share with their management, that will only serve to increase your sphere of influence. Data for the sake of data is not your goal, ability to influence is...

 I hope you found these ideas interesting and I'd love to hear your thoughts! Please share or retweet.

The lessons I've learned from Steve Jobs - A tribute

This week, Steve Jobs passed away. I never met him. I never worked for him. But somehow I felt touched by his loss. I wanted to wait a little bit before I wrote this tribute (there has been a lot written since his passing). I wanted to process my thoughts and try and codify what I learned from him. So here they are, some of the lessons from a great visionary and leader, Steve Jobs:

1. Have a vision - Steve knew what he wanted and had a vision. Whether it was with NeXT, Pixar, or Apple, he had a  great sense for what was beautiful. He knew it when he saw it.
2. Pay attention to the details - If there was one thing I love about Apple is there attention to detail. Everything matters. The packaging, the material, the feel of the product, how well it works with everything else. I just felt special using their products.
3. Hold people accountable - Steve was well known as a difficult manager. He would yell and use less than appropriate words in meetings. While many may consider this inappropriate or consider this rough management style, I tend to look at it on the flip side. He had high standards and he held people to them. He didn't let people feel like it was ok to not be your best. It is not ok to not stretch before your means. People will follow you when you lead them to success.
4. Be mindful of how you spend your time - As Steve's health began to get worse, I read a lot about how he would choose how and with whom he spent his time. He knew what was important and he focused his limited time there. He was the master of knowing when to say "No". This is a great lesson for all of us. Since he past away, I have learned to be more mindful of how I spend my time. Am I making my life better? Am I making a difference? Suddenly watching football on Sunday afternoon's doesn't make much sense.

Some of my favorite Steve Jobs Quotation

1. ”My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” 
2. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
3. “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
4. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations"
5. “Do your best at every job. Don’t sleep! Success generates more success so be hungry for it. Hire good people with a passion for excellence.”
6. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

So, Steve I hope that you know that not only did you impact how folks use technology, listen to music, watch movies, but you also impacted how people think and behave. Thank you.