Storytelling as synthesis is the PM superpower

A lot of being a great product manager is being a great storyteller. And I know a lot of us have already talked about it out there. I think the importance of storytelling is understood, but maybe I would share two things that are specific about it that I think are interesting. One is understanding the power of synthesis.

A lot of being a great product manager is being a great storyteller. I often talk about the power of synthesis - even as an early career PM, you can synthesize what happened in a meeting and distill all these different opinions into a cohesive message.

Describe to me a time when you're part of controversial product decision, and what did you do... if they can set up this conflict and understand why this problem was really important and represent both sides in such that you can understand why that conflict existed in the first place, then they can do it in this even-keeled way, where you realize that they can take on these different perspectives.

One of my favorite interview questions is asking 'describe to me a time when you were part of a controversial product decision.' If they can set up this conflict and represent both sides such that you can understand why that conflict existed, then they can take on different perspectives.

Every story is about a singular moment. I call it five seconds. It can be one second honestly. It's a moment of either transformation, meaning I'm telling you a story about how I once used to be one kind of person and now I'm a new kind of person. Or more common is realization. Which is I used to think something and then some stuff happened and now I think a new thing.

If you know what you're going to say at the end, you know what's the opposite of that, and that's where you start. So essentially, a story is about these two moments in time, a beginning and an end, and they're operating in opposition to each other.