The storyteller - One of our many faces of product

A portrait of a man reading from a book

Our world of product is multi-faceted and, as product professionals, we all have different faces we wear on any given day. In this post, let’s look at one of these many faces of product.

Storytelling: The Most Underrated Superpower in Product

“Let me tell you why this matters.”

That one sentence might be the most important thing a product manager can say.

Storytelling in product management isn’t fluff. It’s not just making things “sound good.” It’s the glue that connects effort to purpose, backlog to belief, and features to real-world value.

Storytelling is fundamental to product work. Embracing your inner Storyteller leads to clarity, alignment, and meaningful products.

Why Storytelling Is the Core of Product Work

Every product decision, no matter how small, sits within a larger narrative.

Why are we building this feature?

• Who is it really for?

• What problem are we solving?

• What’s the bigger picture?

When these questions go unanswered, teams drift, priorities blur. But when there’s a clear story, a compelling why, suddenly things click. People rally. Decisions align. Motivation rises.

That’s the job of the Storyteller: to turn ambiguity into a shared sense of purpose.

How the Storyteller Creates Value

Brings Focus Through Clarity

Great storytelling cuts through noise. Instead of a wall of Jira tickets, the team sees a journey. Instead of scattered features, there’s a cohesive vision. Instead of reacting to pressure, the team is moving with intent.

Example:

Instead of saying, “We’re building user tagging,” the Storyteller says,

“We’re helping users organise their content more easily so they can find what matters faster and feel in control.”

That shift in framing changes how the team builds, tests, and prioritises. It moves the work from execution to experience.

Aligns stakeholders with a shared narrative

Data matters. Roadmaps matter. But people don’t follow spreadsheets—they follow stories. A good narrative makes your roadmap something people believe in, not just something they accept.

The Storyteller finds a way to speak to every audience:

• The engineer who wants technical clarity

• The exec who wants strategic outcomes

• The marketer who wants a message to amplify

• The customer who wants to feel understood

You don’t need a thousand slides. Just a clear through-line:

“Here’s the problem. Here’s what we’ve learned. Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s the future we’re building.”

Drives Value-Oriented Thinking

When you lead with story, you lead with why. And when teams build with why in mind, they focus on value rather than the superficial.

It’s easy to ship features. It’s harder to change behaviour. The Storyteller reminds everyone that outcomes, not output are the goal.

Instead of “We need this because a competitor has it,”

you say, “We need this because our users are struggling with X, and we believe this will help them accomplish Y.”

But I’m not that creative!

You don’t need to be on a stage to be a storyteller. In fact, most of the critical moments happen behind the scenes:

• Roadmap presentations

• Launch messaging

• Product vision statements

• Pitching new ideas

• Writing user stories

• Explaining decisions in email or Slack

• Calming stakeholders during uncertainty

Any time you need buy-in, belief, or alignment, your inner Storyteller should take the mic.

Become a Better Storyteller = Tell a Story

You don’t have to be a novelist or TED speaker. You just need to practice a few fundamentals:

• Start with empathy. What does your audience care about?

• Simplify the message. If they can’t repeat it, it’s not clear enough.

• Use structure. A simple arc—problem, insight, action, outcome—goes a long way.

• Add humanity. Real stories beat charts. Show people, not just data.

• Repeat your “why.” Consistency is key. Make the purpose impossible to forget.

Write a tale

Yes, I am going there. You would be surprised at how effective it can be to just let go and write a very small, even tiny, tale. Think about old fairytales or nursery rhymes, they all have some kind of message woven into them.

Take a moment to do the following:

1.        Think of one thing that you are doing that is important

2.        Write a single sentence about why it is important

3.        Now write a few sentences about how <animal/person/character> performed that task to achieve an outcome

4.        For the last sentence, write out how your character feels after having completed the task.

It seems simple but this activity retrains us to frame activity in terms of valuable outcomes.