As a mother and an entrepreneur, my mind fills with worry. This is a story about a structured story technique I use to manage worry. It didn’t used to worry like this. I remember that in my 20s I was much more carefree.
Startup CEOs who fail to define this persona can waste millions in sales dollars
Healthcare is on the precipice of transformative change. While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making headway for some time now, a particularly promising subfield - Generative AI, also known as Large Language Models (LLMs), such as OpenAI's GPT-3 or its latest GPT-4, is beginning to leave a profound mark with deep implications for Healthcare. Product Management teams operating in healthcare can leverage these technologies to advance the industry.Healthcare product management is a subset of product management. And as such, there are general principles that guide useful application of Generative AI. Here we will review those first. Then hone in on healthcare more specifically.
How do you build Habits that Stick? Aristotle once said, “We are the sum of our actions, and therefore our habits make all the difference.” I want to build habits that stick. I want to meditate more, exercise more and eat better. So I downloaded a meditation app, joined a gym and cleared my fridge.
Imagine your team on a bus. You tell them to drive to the top of the highest mountain in the land. And they set out to get there. Except in this special bus, the driver doesn’t do all the work. The entire team has to come together to navigate and arrive at the destination together. The bus represents your product management process
Product Manager, Product Owner, Product Analysts, Program Manager, Project Manager... There are many ways that companies, especially software companies, describe the roles known as “Product.” Let’s call all of these roles ‘Product people’ for the purpose of this post. There are senior versions of each of these roles, and you may also move laterally across roles to try something different. For all roles, storytelling is very important. That’s because all roles in the product organization work with a large range of stakeholders. In the product world, being able to utilize storytelling skills is the quickest way to build influence and move up the product ladder. Storytelling is the ability to leverage your industry knowledge and personal experiences to influence and effectively communicate ideas, data, and problem-solving. That’s why I am going to break down some product storytelling career paths you can take.
Product storytelling is complex. A product manager that starts with a simple product and a simple story is quickly surprised at how complex the product story can get as time goes on. Use Kwan's Product Storytelling Framework for B2B vs B2C to manage your product as it evolves.
Engineers love to talk about their stack. The Stack is a set of tools they use to host, test, deploy and maintain their code. Product Managers have a stack of product management tools, too. The Product Stack includes tools that support the process from discovery through planning, launch, and iteration.
Influence without authority is the skill that turns a good product manager into a great product manager. Learning this skill is necessary to set you apart.
Just the other day, in my storytelling class, a student asked: how long should an elevator pitch be? Every startup founder and entrepreneur has an elevator pitch. But they are often found scrambling for just the length and right set of ‘power words’ to deliver a winning pitch. What can be particularly stressful about an elevator pitch is that there is no standard. The pitch length varies. You have 30 minutes worth of stuff to say, but an unknown amount of time to say it. And then the other person’s knowledge is also unknown. That makes it necessary to adjust each time, which can be tricky.
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker In 1997, Steve Jobs rejoined Apple when the company was 90 days away from bankruptcy and spent a whopping $90M on the “Think Different” campaign that displays no products whatsoever. An outsider might call this an insane move. But the late visionary knew that humans thrive on stories. These stories create a robust company culture, which serves as the fertile ground where a strategy truly bears fruit. Accordingly, as much as the campaign was aimed to revive Apple’s brand, it was about making the folks at Apple see themselves as the protagonists set out to save something worth saving.
‘Let me tell you a story…’ A line that has almost, always earned an immediate interest from the audience.
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