How To Simplify Complex Products For Your Stakeholders
Complexity Does Not Need To Look Complex
You are still on a high from developing that elegant Product idea that would solve all your users’ problems. But the investment is high and you need to convince the higher-ups.
People working with you daily have traveled that bumpy road by your side. But nothing really happens without the people putting in the money.
You know the unsettling feeling when you can sense the agitation and too-quick-decision faces even as you present the piece of beauty you are proud of.
How and what do you present to get those gazes of approvals and smiles on faces? How do you get the resources you want?
I designed a solution for delivering hundreds of interdependent MiniApps to a Marketplace, ensuring they work together in different permutations combinations.
It took me north of six months to Conceive, Construct and Convince.
And, Convince was the hardest.
Radical ideas are not pursued sans suspicion, uncertainty, and a lot of persuasions.
Segregate clearly into “Why”, “What” and “How”
Every idea consists of a clear Why, What, and How. So does your Product.
Segregating all your thoughts and every data point you have and want to convey into these three buckets is important. It will help you control and more important modulate the narrative.
And one of the buckets is not yet full, you still have to do some legwork.
Why Answers questions
Why do users need it?
Why should the company build it?
Why should we invest in this?
It is always a good idea to be armed with
- Three concise qualitative statements
- Key pieces of data signifying the sentiment
People have different propensities towards qualitative and quantitative measurements. Be sure to satisfy both in the right mix.
What is your Idea
The revelation of your Grand idea needs to be grand but concise.
People are judged in a Blink, and Ideas in a Slide
I once made the mistake of detailing my idea. I was wrong to assume that this would help people digest and fully understand me.
By the end of it, I could sense the sighs and impatient comments.
Always begin with the Big Reveal. Pick and chose three minimum, four maximum most important constructs of your idea that you would like your audience to know.
These constructs are minimalistic representations of what your idea brings to the table.
You can also think of them as the teasers to your big idea.
While you can use any tool for this one key slide, I find the idea of Concept maps most interesting.
While you might feel that the few words and one slides fails to do justice to your Big Idea, but worry not.
Each construct, each word acts as a trigger for your audience to ask for more.
While you found that your audience was more interested in the Why ad How at this stage you will find their interest slowly segwaying into the How.
They will ask for more details.
How, is your moment to shine.
How would it look?
How did you come up with this solution? How do you know this is the best solution?
How does this address your user’s problem?
You will find your audience heavily intrigued and invested in your ideas at this moment. And all you have to do is use the right tools for the right question.
Arming with the Right Tools
If your presentation is your hero, Appendix is the sidekick
But never underestimate the importance and value of the sidekick.
If you are presenting a complex solution, chances are that the materials will far exceed the attention span of your audience.
An appendix gives you the freedom to call your presentation a five-slider while still arming you with all the tools to persuade.
Here are the few artifacts we arm ourselves with to elaborate, justify and demonstrate effectively.
User persona and key pain points
Make sure to include a good description of the persona elaborating on specifically the psychographic aspects.
While mentioning pain points be sure to list the top few. Three is always a good number. If there are more you just can not do without, bucketing them into logical groups ensures that information is perceived as concise and yet detailed.
Supporting Data Points
The Why of your slide should already contain the key insights derived from your data in a consumable understandable fashion.
But should one want to deep dive, having a cheat slide with details always helps.
User Experience
The Concept Map is a good representation of what you propose.
A Convinced human mind is often more curious
And
Pictures speak a thousand words
People want to look into your mind. They want to understand how the concept will manifest into the Product.
Arming yourself you the three key User Experiences that demonstrates your idea helps people put a frame to an abstract concept. And often this is the line between acceptance and rejection.
Stack it Right
When presenting complex conceptual products, the two factors that really make a difference are the audience persona and the familiarity with space.
Both of these factors are addressed by stacking the required concepts correctly in the right sequence.
The entire game is played with just the three pieces — the Why, the what, and the How.
For the Audience with leadership, the sequence of Why and What works best. But if this is not just an introduction, rather a deeper dive, the How will be a winning factor.
If you are explaining it to your Engineering team, spending time on the Why makes sense, but not the most critical. So start with the What and elaborate on the How.
In the end, all that matters is what you want your audience to take away.
Do you want them to approve, or brainstorm, or build? Just asking yourself this single question helps you maximize the effectiveness of your time.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
— Murphy’s law
And you need to prepare for it. Combat it with an airtight narrative and power of Persuasion.
Managing Narrative
The audience you need to deliver to varies primarily across three different facets
- Knowledge of Problem
- Knowledge of current solution
- Knowledge of Strategy
It hence becomes our responsibility to educate the audience in the areas they lack.
More importantly, it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of each set of audiences.
The key question then becomes, if you should show them where you are, or the road you have taken or the destination you aim for?
And it is important to show them all three. Just in the right mix.
Senior leadership will care the most about the destination. But it does not matter unless they stand with you on where you are today.
Your Engineering team will care about the status quo and the road you have taken.
Prepare the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Your ideas are overlaid and judged on the perception of you that the audience has.
Your perception, among other things, is determined by your track record, and transparency.
Products (or anything for that matter) with only a plus side rarely exist. There are tradeoffs, possible failure points, and limitations that exist in all products. Transparently and proactively communicating with them is always a good idea.
The audience craves for the pinch of salt in too sweet a deal.
Final Thoughts
Not always do we get the choice to approach Product bottoms-up. Sometimes we have too many pain points to address. That leaves us with the choice of, well obviously, the top-down approach.
Envision, Evaluate, Enhance
The painfully enjoyable journey that you go through is personal to you. Thousands of decisions are taken at each stage.
The process is opaque and almost meaningless to your audience.
Your beautiful idea hence needs all the firepower it could get to fly off.
I have shared with you my journey through my experiences hoping it will help you if you have ever faced the same challenges.
