Show Your Work: Why Just Setting Strategy Isn’t Enough

The power of showing your working in Product storytelling

Imagine that you’re walking beside me along an ordinary street. I point at a random parked car and claim: “That car has broken down!” Would you believe me? Perhaps you’d be happy to go on trust. But if you didn’t know me, wouldn’t you assume it was parked? 

Now let’s say I tell you that 30 minutes before, I witnessed somebody trying and failing to start the car, and a terrible noise came from the engine. I spoke with this person and they confirmed that the car had broken down. You’d have more reason to believe me.

Sure, that’s because I’ve given you some evidence to work with - but it’s more than that. I’ve taken you with me on the journey that led to my assertion, and now it seems like a pretty sensible conclusion. 

Human nature dictates that when people are presented with a final judgement or an isolated decision, their first instinct is to question it. But if they’re presented with a logical sequence of arguments via a compelling narrative, they’re more likely to agree. Perhaps this is partially because we naturally rate our own insight higher than that of others!

Storytelling in product

One of the fundamental tools we use to win people over to our strategy is telling them our product story. A brilliant rule of storytelling is that even by simply receiving a story, an audience member feels as though they have participated. This goes back to the ancient Greek idea of catharsis, where audiences purge their emotion through viewing theatre. It’s an excellent way to get buy-in.

Showing your working is a powerful ingredient to include in your product story. After all, you’re not just trying to get your team and colleagues to align around your proposal, you also want them to believe it’s a good idea! You can achieve this so much more easily by explaining how you ended up there.

So how do you show your working?

Some frameworks have this built in as part of product strategy definition. Some don’t. But it’s always worth including when you’re trying to get buy-in or trying to remind your team of why you all agreed to go down this path.

Showing your working is a muscle you can exercise and develop over time. And if you’re unsure where to start, here are a few helpful ideas to consider:

Talk about your assumptions

Ideally all your assumptions should be flushed out before you formulate product strategy. Major product decisions should be based on sound evidence rather than unproven hypotheses wherever possible.

But your product strategy is a living, evolving entity - and in the mess of real-world product, we can often end up defining strategy alongside pockets of uncertainty. It’s tempting in this situation to imply you know more than you do. We’ve all been there. But in my experience, there’s an unexpected kind of power in making your uncertainties explicit.

Consider:

• “We believe parents of young children want to book hotels with child-specific facilities, but we’ve not done any research with this group.”

• “At this point, we don’t have clarity on the reasons why users are dropping out of the payment funnel.”

• “Based on past user behaviour, we expect them to pay for this product. But we’ve not tested this in today’s environment.”

Rather than diminishing confidence, this kind of transparency builds it. After all, there is nothing more destructive to a strategy than the discovery it is based on unproven assumptions - not to mention the risk taken if that strategy is costly and ramps up without the necessary validation taking place. 

Talk about your assumptions - especially when you’re showing your shiny brand new strategy. It forces you to confront them and, more importantly, it invites your team and stakeholders to confront them with you. It pushes that strategy out of the theoretical and into reality. You might want to use a framework to help you do this such as Assumption Mapping, or continuously update a central artefact.

Talk about your failures

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” So says Michael Porter. Embracing useful failure is an essential practice of good product management. Failure can teach you about a path you shouldn’t take. Always assess your mistakes for learning opportunities. 

So don’t be shy in talking about your wrong turns, failures and disappointments. This is where you demonstrate your full and pragmatic understanding of the problem space. Can you confidently claim you’re building the best thing you can with the information you have, if you haven’t bumped into some wrong things (issues, limitations, dead-ends, etc.) along the way?

Consider:

• “Our first prototype tested badly for the following reasons.”

• “We thought our most important user group was business partners, but when we interviewed them, most of their needs were being met offline, so we had to rethink the whole proposition.”

• “Anecdotal user feedback indicated that people wanted this feature. But when we rolled it out, nobody used it.”

You don’t need to labour over your failures and assumptions, but acknowledging these vital learning points can add credibility. Your audience will assess them as evidence alongside you. This is especially important when your primary audience includes stakeholders who have pet feature requests or assume they understand user needs thoroughly.

Don’t miss the connection 

The real act of communication here is summing up this story - the connection between your messy journey, from assumptions, to a greater degree of clarity, to the new validated strategy you’re proposing.

This needs to be tight and slick. There’s no point in doing the hard work of pointing out your assumptions and detailing your wrong turns, only to communicate it badly and lose the power it holds. Don’t pile up your evidence and then neglect to connect the dots. 

You need a short, punchy and summative narrative that doesn’t leave people guessing. I’ve definitely had the experience of having an ‘aha!’ moment of finally realising where a strategy has come from. You want this moment to occur when your strategy is first introduced - not months down the line when people have wasted energy over misunderstanding and confusion.

Consider these prompts:

• To begin with, we…

• Our research led us to believe…

• The current market is…

• From the data, we concluded…

• We tested/prototyped this and…

• The competitor landscape suggests…

• We discovered that…

• This didn’t work, because…

• So then we tried…

The act of pulling together this narrative, much like defining your product strategy, will expose your gaps. This is good and helpful. More often than not, it will dictate what should happen next.

Some exercises to try

• Flush out your critical unknowns with Assumption Mapping (see this post for more details)

• Write 3-5 punchy bullet points on how your research led you to pursue your current product strategy - is the data to validate them easily presentable?

• Write down 3 points of failure you’ve experienced in product in the last six months and identify how each amended your approach (this is always a good muscle to exercise)

• Have a look at the Product Breaks archive to see what Product Strategy frameworks can help you show your working better.

Have you experienced the power of showing your working? Let us know in the comments below!

---