Need help from a colleague? Paint them a picture.

A friend writes to you for advice:

Can we have a call, as I’d like to know how to do some product management stuff?

And you think — “wow … what a topic”. Where to start? Though you’re a helpful person, you’re busy and you’d need more info.

Imagine that the same person writes this to you instead:

I’m taking more of a leadership role where I help to shape our services for the rest of the business. But the groups I have to work with aren’t very clear where they’re going. There’s a dev group that is quite motivated but they seem to promise things that take longer and longer. There’s a product owner who’s supposed to be more on the business side but spends more time with the dev team. The main business stakeholder has recently changed and instead of focusing on the software is now saying we just need more customers. I actually feel we’re on borrowed time now. I feel that product management frameworks could help. What do you suggest?

Now, you have something to go on.

You might have a lot of questions. You might question the focus on software as opposed to value. You might wonder if there is more to the story. But, you’re engaged, and you want to help.

It was easy for you to see the gaps in the first message, and the improvement in the second, because you’re in the position of the reciever. But do you always write enough context into your own messages? It’s hard. The “curse of knowledge”* makes it hard to imagine being someone who doesn’t know what you know.

What is different about the latter message, precisely? It depicts a scenario. There are characters and there is tension. There is a context. That’s what draws you in and invites you to help.

You might say, “oh, so it’s storytelling”. But it’s not exactly. There is no once-upon-a-time; no beginning, middle, and end; no need to imagine the hard facts of your business animated in Pixar-cuteness.

What else highlights characters and tension with context, without being a complete narrative? A dramatic painting. And what genre paintings could be more dramatic than those which show gritty myths and religious stories with new tools of realism? I’m talking about the Baroque painters such as Caravaggio, Rembrant, and Poussin.

Perhaps this painting feels over-the-top, the style and its theme. For a moment, don’t judge. Just look at the spilling wine in the hands of the woman on the right.

Look at the gaze of the man on the left. At the king, interrupted in his feast. At the hand writing on the wall.

These depict a dramatic moment, some revelation. You don’t have to be a theist to get the drama.

Alright, it’s a nice picture, but how to translate those techniques to writing stuff at work?

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