Shared Narrative #1

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Greetings!

Welcome to Shared Narrative’s first issue! We are very excited to launch this newsletter which will discuss topics about Product Management, People Ops, and everything in between.

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Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Product Narrative Team

We could see confusion forming in our client’s face when we introduced ourselves as “product narrative”. We get it. It’s a term we made. We are professionals with background in Product Management that also double as writers in our spare time.

Narrative is writing that tells a story; be it fiction or nonfiction. It connects threads, points, and pieces to form a complete idea. It is a tool to inspire the audience. Setting the right narrative will grab the audience attention until the end.

But, narrative is more powerful than that. It serves as an identity. The narrative represents what you stand for. The “you” can be replaced by company, business, or even a product. This can serve as guideline on what to do and what not to do. In the words of Alexander Hamilton, “those who stand for nothing fall for anything”.

In tech company, the product narrative is the inspiring reason as to why they’re creating the product. The product narrative will be the one to bond everyone in the company. The tip here is to make sure they don’t bond over a bad narrative.

Moreover, considering that time and resources are finite, knowing the product narrative will also help prioritization process, especially in terms of features, something that hopefully can resolve the always present tension between Business, Engineering, and Product.

Others were saying . . .

1. Storytelling for Product Managers — “Before a single line of code is written, before a screen is designed, before anything is shipped, you need to clarify what is the story you are telling your customers. It should be convincing. It should inspire. It should be consistent with what your company stands for. And more than anything, it should matter to your customers.”
2. How to Build a Strategic Narrative — “The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator.”
3. The Importance of Narrative — “Whether you’re presenting to a small group of people or a large audience your presentation must have a narrative to effectively get your points across. 2 hours after you’ve left the room the people you met will already have forgotten much of the details. Yet if you’ve painted enough of a picture, if you’ve used enough analogies, if your story is cohesive and has themes then people will remember the general sense of the points you wanted to make.”
4. Why Every Business Needs Powerful Storytelling to Grow — “A business may genuinely have a better product or service than a competitor, but at the end of the day, decision-making is much more emotional than it is logical. The ability to tell a good story is essential and can make or break how well a business differentiates itself in the market as well as makes a profit.”
5. Why Our Brain Craves Storytelling in Marketing — “Numerous studies over the years have proven that our brains are far more engaged by storytelling than the cold, hard facts. When reading straight data, only the language parts of our brains work to decode the meaning. But when we read a story, not only do the language parts of our brains light up, but any other part of the brain that we would use if we were actually experiencing what we’re reading about becomes activated as well.”

Want to find out more . . .

Check out our website to find out why we set up Product Narrative.

Visit our blog to read more articles and writings like this.

Have a great day!

— The Product Narrative Team

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