Sticky Situations: A PM Intro to Making your Ideas Less Forgettable - Part I

Through this article, I want to share the key principles behind crafting an evocative and compelling narrative around product-centric presentation and first steps to start and be a better storyteller.

When you hear the word “storytelling”, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? A TED talk with a charismatic person on stage? Or Steve Jobs in a black turtleneck sweater delivering a memorable Apple keynote? Well, you’re not alone. Let’s start this series on storytelling by breaking some misconceptions around this topic.

A story of misconceptions

Storytelling is not just about charisma: while charisma can certainly help in telling compelling stories, it's definitely not a requirement. Anyone can learn to tell stories effectively with practice and preparation. After all, stories that stick were told for centuries, long before keynotes even existed.

Storytelling is not just for extroverts: introverts can also be great storytellers. It's not about being loud or outgoing; it's about sharing information in a way that resonates with your audience. 

Storytelling is not just for marketing and sales: while marketing and sales teams might use storytelling techniques more often, product managers can also benefit from using storytelling to communicate with stakeholders, developers, and users.

So… what is storytelling, and what’s in it for us PMs?

Wait, what is storytelling, actually?

Some ideas are easier to remember than others. After all, we all know a good urban legend or two, that we’ve happily went on spreading. Have you heard about the anti-vomiting pills in McDonald's burgers? Or about the maximum grade for a philosophy exam? Or about any other urban legend?

Chances are that the most recent 4-pages strategy Notion document isn’t as easy to remember. After reading it once, I can bet you’ll have trouble explaining it to colleagues or friends. Unlike urban legends.

Storytelling is what makes ideas stick. Here are a few principles around sticky ideas, highlighted in Made to Stick, a book by Chip Heath & Dan Heath.

Simple - Well, of course… A great example shared in Made to Stick is the Commander’s Intent from the US Army, starting from a quote by Colonel Tom Kolditz: “No plan survives contact with the enemy” (aka “No roadmap survives contact with the CEO”). Instead of putting emphasis on a precise, specific battle plan that becomes useless after 10 minutes into combat, the US army designed the Commander’s Intent. A crisp statement specifying the battle plan’s goal and the desired end-state. “If we do nothing else during tomorrow’s mission, we must _____. The single, most important thing that we must do tomorrow is _____.”

An example of Commander’s Intent in a real-life situation:

We can all appreciate the brevity and clarity of the intent, that should truly facilitate the behaviour of soldiers on the battlefield, no matter what the unexpected factors of the operation are. That (hypothetical) one remaining soldier should better facilitate the seizure of OBJ Tiger!

Simple is about stripping down an idea to its most critical essence. After all, according to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” 

Simple is also about sharing this core, stripped down idea. One tactic for doing so is to get inspiration from proverbs (after all, they’ve survived centuries) - they’re simple, short sentences containing one key idea! 

Another idea is to use already existing concepts. Remember the frenzy of startups describing themselves as “The Airbnb of…”, “The Uber of…” ? Well, that’s simple - and sticky. We all get it. Another example? You’d better describe a pomelo as “basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind” rather than using the canonical definition of it (“the largest citrus fruit with a light yellow to coral pink flesh…”).

Unexpected - Just like the anti-vomiting pill in McDonald's burgers, sticky ideas usually convey surprise and spark interest. Start by getting people’s attention by breaking their guessing mechanism (and without falling into clickbait, ideally). Then, hold interest in starting with the lead and by progressively filling out the knowledge gap. I guess as PMs, we can picture ourselves delivering a presentation, starting with “Conversion rate is not what you think it is” and then progressively disclose knowledge to maintain the audience’s attention.

Concrete - If you can examine something with your senses, it’s concrete. Concrete language helps people, especially novices, understand new concepts. Abstraction is a luxury only experts can afford.

To help people understand and remember, it is essential to make abstraction concrete. How do we transform this “37% conversion rate” data point into something concrete?

But concreteness also brings benefits like collaboration. Collaboration on a Figma prototype is easier than on a fuzzy feature document. 

Credible - Having a credible idea is essential to making people believe in it. If you don’t have the luxury to bring external credibility to your presentation (even if those could be quotes from a Product thought leader), you can work on internal credibility. 

One of my favourite examples is the use of details. Ideas with details are more credible, says the book. When describing a use case or a user persona to engage your design or engineering team, I find it very compelling to add details (that might at first seem unnecessary) around that user’s routine. That makes the user’s pain points instantly more credible, instantly stickier. 

This makes a great transition with the next point!

Emotion - Emotion makes people care. A famous quote is the Mother Teresa principle: “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” People seem to care more about someone’s specific struggle - than statistics around poverty and world hunger. See for yourself, this is how a number of charities work.

Again, this can be applied particularly well to our user pain points and personas, to make everyone care (executives, engineering, design, …). I like the idea of personifying users, adding as many quotes and details as possible, for a great, sticky story.

There’s one more principle for making ideas stick. After all, we haven’t really talked about stories yet. Let’s go through it next week - and through concrete, practical examples for PMs.