AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career
Storytelling with Nancy Duarte: How to craft compelling presentations and tell a story that sticks
Jun 1, 2023
01:17:24
AI Summary
Highlights
AI Chapters
Episode notes
Podcast summary created with Snipd AI
Quick takeaways
- Empathy is crucial in presentations as it helps the audience get unstuck or succeed.
- Utilize story structures like the three-act structure to captivate audiences and create impactful presentations.
- Slides should support the one big idea and consider the audience's preferred visual communication style.
Deep dives
Make the Listener the Hero
Empathetically understanding your audience is crucial. Presenters should come alongside the audience and help them get unstuck or provide them with a solution or tool to succeed.
Infuse Presentations with Story
Utilize story structures, such as the three-act structure, to create engaging and impactful presentations. The rise and fall of tension in a story captivates audiences and helps them long for the future state being presented.
Ensure Visual Clarity
Slides should support the one big idea of the presentation. Ensure that each slide makes one clear point, and consider the audience's preferred visual communication style, whether it's dense information or more cinematic visuals.
The Presentation Process
Craft presentations with a thoughtful process, similar to how Pixar makes movies. This involves crafting the narrative, scripting, visualizing key moments, and gaining consensus within the organization for effective presentations.
The Power of Simplifying Presentations
The podcast episode discusses the importance of simplifying presentations and making them more engaging. It shares an example of a CEO who needed help with a presentation for a $100 million budget. Instead of relying on technology and slides, the speaker advises creating a simple and clear mental model that can be visually demonstrated. The importance of eye contact and passion in virtual presentations is also highlighted. The episode emphasizes the need to tailor presentations to the audience and offers tips on calming nerves before speaking.
The Role of Storytelling in Product Management
The episode explores the power of storytelling in product management. It references the example of Airbnb's journey visualization, where key frames of the customer journey were drawn to gain empathy and refine their strategy. The speaker emphasizes the significance of emotional storytelling throughout the product development process. The five-act structure of movements and the concept of being a torchbearer, who guides others towards a vision, are discussed. The episode concludes with the importance of empathy and storytelling in product presentations and reveals a new approach to video content at the speaker's company.
Brought to you by Microsoft Clarity—See how people actually use your product | Lenny’s Job Board—Hire the best product people. Find the best product gigs | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments
—
Nancy Duarte is the CEO of Duarte Inc. and has helped create over 250,000 presentations for influential business leaders across the globe, including Apple, TED, the World Bank, and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. She’s also written six best-selling books, and her TED talk has garnered over 3 million views. She regularly contributes to HBR, MIT-Sloan, and Forbes, and her books are essential reading in leading business schools worldwide. In today’s episode, we discuss:
• Why empathy is at the heart of everything Nancy does
• Why you’re presenting more often than you think
• Tactics for creating interesting presentations and telling better stories
• The concept of a “torchbearer leader” and why it’s important
• Strategies for overcoming stage fright and nerves
• Tips for communicating and presenting remotely
• How Nancy landed Apple as a client and what she learned
—
Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/storytelling-with-nancy-duarte-how
—
Where to find Nancy Duarte:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nancyduarte
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancyduarte/
• Website: https://www.duarte.com/
—
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
—
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Nancy’s background
(03:25) The insane number of presentations Nancy has helped create
(04:52) The most memorable presentation of Nancy’s career, and what it taught her
(07:04) The lasting impact of working with Al Gore
(09:00) How Nancy landed Apple as a client
(11:44) How working with Apple informed future presentations
(16:22) 3 things to remember when creating a deck
(17:33) The importance of empathy
(20:29) Empathy in action
(22:40) Why internal presentations are so high-pressure
(23:09) Signs you’re doing a good job making the audience the hero of the story
(25:38) The structure of great talks
(28:08) Lessons from great historical speeches
(30:02) You’re presenting more often than you think
(32:07) How Nancy uses this story structure in her marriage
(35:00) The framework What is? What could be? What is the ideal bliss?
(36:07) The importance of visuals
(41:12) Slide-making principles (titles, organization, and more)
(45:46) The Minto Pyramid Principle
(48:02) Think and plan before diving into software
(50:00) The Duarte process for crafting presentations
(53:18) How remote work has influenced the way we communicate and present
(55:46) Strategies for overcoming stage fright and nerves
(1:01:10) The concept of “torchbearer leaders” and why it’s important
(1:04:54) The surprising truth about informal vs. formal production quality
(1:07:37) Examples of PMs telling great stories
(1:11:49) Lightning round
—
Referenced:
• Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth: https://algore.com/library/an-inconvenient-truth-dvd
• Apple’s Think Different campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik
• The Secret Structure of Great Talks (Nancy’s TED talk): https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_duarte_the_secret_structure_of_great_talks
• The Structure of Great Talks graphic: https://www.google.com/search?q=nancy+duarte+ted+talk+great+story+up+and+down+like+teeth&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2hoCZmJH_AhVXATQIHb1KC2AQ0pQJegQIBxAB&biw=1512&bih=838&dpr=2#imgrc=5Jei-bDCXe2qQM
• I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4iY1TtS3s
• The Minto Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving: https://www.amazon.com/Minto-Pyramid-Principle-Writing-Thinking
• The Minto Pyramid Principle and the SCR Framework, by Lenny: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/minto-pyramid-principle-scr
• Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols: https://www.amazon.com/Illuminate-Through-Speeches-Stories-Ceremonies
• Marshall Ganz: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/marshall-ganz
• Brian Chesky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianchesky/
• Airbnb’s Snow White storyboards: https://uxdesign.cc/how-airbnb-proved-that-storytelling-is-the-most-important-skill-in-design-15d04ac71039
• The Writer’s Journey: https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Journey-Anniversary-Mythic-Structure
• Business Proposal: https://asianwiki.com/Business_Proposal
• Writer: https://writer.com/
—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
—
Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Get the Snipd
podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode