Voices from the Valley: The Storyteller

This book is a curation of tech workers’ in different roles:

1. The Founder

2. The Technical Writer

3. The Cook

4. The Engineer

5. The Data Scientist

6. The Massage Therapist

7. The Storyteller

The Storyteller section stood out to me the most.

• The people in these roles help the company speak and ensures that it speaks in a single voice. They understand how the company speaks to itself and to the world.

• They craft a strategy for midwifing new products into the world. The goal is to come up with a way to talk about a product so that it would not be misunderstood.

• You have to start with the stakeholders:

  • Who’s going to care about this?

  • Who’s going to be most affected?

  • Whose stakes need to be understood and analyzed and managed?

• When it comes to telling a story, it’s like architecting a screenplay but you don’t get the length of a screenplay obviously. You need to know who your protagonist is. You have to be concise.

• You always start with the truth. It’s the only way. If the truth is you’re launching a new feature to improve advertisers’ ability to run ads on your platform, then you start with that.

• A message needs to be managed. If it isn’t, you’ll have everyone saying a different message.

• The news is design to attract peoples’ attention and keep it.

• Companies act in their own self interests. New consumer features are not driven by people thinking about market share or growth. It’s usually about people trying to create value for users. There are different ways to approach that—

  • 1. You think you know what the world needs and you say “this is how people should interact with each other on the internet” or “this is how companies should do payroll.”

  • 2. There’s the evidence-based approach which involves gathering data about what people want or are frustrated by and then looking at ways to address those concerns.

• Both of these are about creating value. It’s an engineer’s approach to the world. They identify friction in an existing system and try to make them more efficient.

• You need to be building something people want. You need people to get value from it. Otherwise, they won’t use it.

• Humans need stories. They need to create an accounting for themselves, a sense of how it all fits together.

• Missions and mantras have to be lofty because it creates a sense of shared purpose. You want to maximize their opportunity to thinking at the level of the team or the firm as a whole. Without a sense of purpose, things would be harder. You’ve gotta have everyone rowing in the same direction.

One part from The Founder section stood out, too.

• You’re expected to be a thought leader. You’re expected to inject the company with new ideas. It’s an informal role— it’s not reflected in your title. But that’s why management has paid a premium for you. You should materialize what this company needs and assemble a team to work on it.