Tell Better Stories – Donna Lichaw on The Product Experience

Over the course of her career, Donna Lichaw has moved from Design and UX to Product – consulting with teams, giving keynotes and working with leadership groups – but what she’s always focused on is storytelling.  Now a coach  – “I just won’t help people build products, I help them build themselves,” she says – Lichaw joined us to talk about her own journey, what to look for in a coach, and how to tell a better story.
Quotes of the Episode
Once I realised that the company was going to go out of business, I threw caution to the wind and decided I’m going to be an @ssh0!e, and just tell people that I don’t understand what our product is supposed to be doing.
You bring your whole self to work, and the only way that you can properly move forward is if you have complete understanding of what’s going on.
Anything you believe to be true is a hypothesis until you go test it.
Listen if you’d like to learn more about

* Coaching – what to look for and what to expect
* Storytelling – when to use it and how to do it
* How to treat your career as a product – testing things out in short increments

Links mentioned in this episode

* Want to get coached by Donna, or make use of her resources?  Everything is available on her site, including her storymapping toolkit. You can also watch out for anything new via her Twitter.
* Read Donna’s book, The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products That People Love –  US / UK / DE
* Read Gamestorming–  US / UK / DE
* Read The Way of Nowhere: Eight Questions to Release Our Creative Potential –  US / UK / DE

Hosts
The Product Experience is hosted by Lily Smith and Randy Silver.
Lily enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. Lily has spent 13 years in the tech industry working mainly with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She has worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank in Bristol, the Product Managers’ meetup with regular events and talks on Product now with 800+ members and growing. This year Lily will be launching ProductCamp in Bristol and she joins the MTP team as co-host of The Product Experience podcast.
A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy has been working as an interactive produce...