#81: Unleashing the Power of Visual Storytelling in Product Ownership with Stuart Young

Agile Mentors Podcast

Ever wondered how visuals can transform your role as a product owner? Join Brian as he sits down with visual storyteller Stuart Young to unravel the power of visualization in product ownership. Join them on a journey to discover the art and science behind being a successful product owner.

Overview

Ever wondered how to elevate your product ownership game? In this episode, we delve into the world of visual storytelling with Stuart Young.

Join Brian and Stuart as they discuss the diverse tools, such as story mapping and the product disposition canvas, that can bring your product visions to life.

From storytelling techniques to the neurodiversity lens, we explore the art and science of communication that transcends traditional boundaries. Listen in to uncover the impactful ways visuals can shape your product strategy.

Learn how being more visual can sharpen your skills, foster collaboration, and create a more inclusive and successful product development journey.

Listen Now to Discover:

[00:23] - Today welcomes Stuart Young, a Certified Scrum Trainer and visual storyteller to discuss storytelling through the product lens and more.
[03:32] - Stuart discusses drawing large-scale pictures at conferences and recommends Visual Meetings and Visual Leaders by David Sibbit.
[06:54] - Stuart emphasizes the impact of visual storytelling on individuals, highlighting the universal language and information retention through visuals.
[08:46] - The benefits of visual representation in capturing the flow of ideas and aiding memory.
[10:26] - The importance of varied methods for engaging different learning styles.
[11:41] - Stuart discusses the value of visualization tools such as roadmaps, post-it notes, and story mapping to provide clarity and a clear narrative.
[12:14] - The importance of blending Stuart references Pixar and Ed Catmull's book Creativity, Inc., discussing the importance of blending exciting elements, like storyboarding, in motivating teams and creating a compelling narrative.
[15:13] - Stuart emphasizes the importance of authentic storytelling, even if it doesn't always have a happy ending, he references TEDxHogeschoolUtrecht - Steve Denning - “Leadership Storytelling" for further inspiration.
[15:25] - Brian recommends Simon Sinek's TED talk on "Start With Why" as an example of effective storytelling despite not being visually polished.
[16:09] - Stuart praises Henrik Kniberg's impactful video on product ownership, acknowledging the simplicity of the drawings but highlighting the potency of storytelling. He recommends the Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rhodes for those interested in delving further into storytelling.
[17:08] - The Agile Mentors Podcast is brought to you by Mountain Goat Software and their Certified Scrum Training Classes. For more information, click on the Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule.
[18:38] - Stuart highlights the significance of visual elements in crafting compelling visions and underscores the value of utilizing available templates, from sources like the Gamestorming book.
[20:06] - Stuart discusses the role of visualization in making the intangible tangible, particularly in the tech space.
[21:50] - Brian emphasizes the imprecision of words. He also discusses the value of showing rather than just telling, especially in product requirements, to enhance understanding and avoid delays caused by miscommunications.
[23:34] - Stuart reflects on how visual communication can enhance inclusivity. He shares, “For people with reading and writing difficulties, pictures and symbols are better. The worst, the most abstract form, of course, is the word.”
[25:22] - The role of a visual storyteller as a "human cursor" connecting diverse conceptual thinkers. Stuart recounts an illustration experience, emphasizing the challenge of visualizing details without clear specifications and underscoring the mantra of "process over art" in product ownership.
[28:06] - Stuart underscores the product owner's role in leveraging the unique skills of team members to converge on a shared understanding of what "good" looks like.
[29:19] - Brian references the episode of the show they did on Navigating Neurodiversity and the importance of understanding and accommodating different communication styles within a team. He highlights the need for product owners to be aware of the preferences of their team members and adjust communication methods accordingly.
[30:54] - Stuart introduces the product disposition canvas and shares a personal revelation.
[32:54] - Brian acknowledges the potential superpowers that come with neurodiversity, sharing his own experience of a late-in-life ADHD diagnosis and the benefits of leveraging the unique qualities each team member brings to a team.
[33:36] - Stuart reflects on the importance of recognizing individual strengths and blind spots, emphasizing that everyone has a valuable contribution.
[34:20] - Stuart encourages recognizing individual strengths for collective success.
[35:23] - Listeners can connect with Stuart on LinkedIn and at Agile Nuggets | Agile Tips
[37:38] - Please share this episode with others if you found it useful. Send feedback and suggestions for future episodes to [e-mail]. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode.
[38:21] - If this topic was impactful to you and you want to continue the discussion, join the Agile Mentors Community where we have a topic discussion for each podcast episode. You can get a free year-long membership in the community just by taking any class with Mountain Goat Software.

References and resources mentioned in the show:

Stuart Young on LinkedIn
Agile Nuggets | Agile Tips | Cprime Learning
Scrum in Under 10 Minutes
#76: Navigating Neurodiversity for High-Performing Teams with Susan Fitzell
David Sibbet
Visual Meetings by David Sibbet
Visual Leaders by David Sibbet
Creativity, Inc.
Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde
TEDxHogeschoolUtrecht - Steve Denning - “Leadership Storytelling"
Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action | TED Talk
Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell by Henrik Kniberg
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers
Subscribe to the Agile Mentors Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Certified ScrumMaster Training and Scrum Certification
Certified Scrum Product Owner Training
Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner®
Advanced Certified ScrumMaster®
Mountain Goat Software Certified Scrum and Agile Training Schedule
Join the Agile Mentors Community

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This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He's passionate about making a difference in people's day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Stuart Young, a Certified Scrum Trainer and Visual Storyteller, merges Agile methodologies and design thinking to empower individuals and teams. As a thought leader, he champions Visual Storytelling for engaging stakeholders, addressing customer needs, and expediting learning. Through workshops, Stuart encourages teams to embrace visual methodologies to achieve business success.

Auto-generated Transcript:

Brian (00:00)
Welcome in Agile Mentors. We're back for another episode of the Agile Mentors Podcast. And as always, I'm with you, Brian Milner. Today I have a guest with me that I've been trying to get on for a while. Our schedules have been kind of misaligned a couple of times, but we're really, really fortunate to have him with us. Mr. Stort Young is with us. So welcome in, Stort. I'm glad you're here.

Stu (00:22)
Hello, it's lovely to see you. Yeah, time zone differences and the bit of water between across the pond has stopped us, but we are here. It's lovely to see you.

Brian (00:31)
Just a tiny bit of water between us, tiny. Stuart, for those who aren't familiar with his work, Stuart is a product trainer, a visual storyteller. He's a certified Scrum trainer, as I am. And if you ever attend a conference that Stuart's at, you will know who Stuart is, because he does this wonderful thing at a lot of conferences where he documents

Stu (00:33)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Brian (00:58)
the content of the conference on this giant kind of mural. And it's really amazing to see. I remember feeling like a celebrity at Agile 2023 because my talk, you know, Mike and I's talk ended up on the big board. And I'm like, wow, now I've made it. Stuart captured our talk onto the big board. That just was a great feeling. So, Stuart is a very, you know, tell them, tell them a little bit about visual storyteller. What do you mean by visual storyteller?

Stu (01:28)
Yeah. So apart from sort of looking very tired at conferences and holding lots of pens and being with big bits of paper. I think that it's becoming more and more common in training classes and in the business space, the use of visuals, which is wonderful. I think it's a great thing. We think about different preferences of learning. And I guess the best way to describe it is visual literacy. the days of school, you know, we, we learned to, uh, we learned to navigate a children's book using our visual literacy. So that's really what it's all about. And, um, and when you see me in a conference drawing in sort of large scale pictures, the, the idea is really to, to minute, minute meetings and conferences and talks in pictures to make the information more engaging, try to synthesize the key points. and help with the retention of memory. So that's kind of it. The focus should be communication over decoration, but of course I like to make things look nice.

Brian (02:33)
And they do, they always look amazing. Stuart was also speaking at Agile 2023 and he had a talk that was using this kind of same visual storytelling, but it was storytelling through the product lens. So I know that's what we're gonna be talking about a little bit here throughout the course of our conversation. I mean, loosely, we might dabble in some other areas as well, but... Yeah, I know I encountered this, you know, when I first started going to conferences and started to see this and, you know, I'll share with you Stuart, probably what a lot of other people think when they think about doing this kind of stuff is, boy, I'm a terrible drawer. Like I can't draw at all. You know, my penmanship is horrible. I can read what I write, but you know, lots of other people can't read what I write. unless I'm really careful and taking my time. So I'm sure you get a lot of people when they see this and think about being a visual storyteller and trying to capture notes and story noting things that they kind of have that objection of, well, I just can't do that. How do you respond to that kind of real common objection?

Stu (03:38)
hopefully. Well, you know, the thing is, it's so common and it's really sad. And, you know, it's a cliche and it's obviously, we've all heard the Picasso's quote, we're born artists, but we grow out of it. And I think that's the real problem. And the sad thing is that as adults, we have so many inhibitions that we can't draw. And I think that that's the really the key point to make. And I've mentioned it, my little quote about communication over decoration and process over art. You can get better, you can focus on improving your pen mastery, but the focus should be on trying to communicate information. And there are tricks and tips to do just that. I think that people need to sort of change their mindset that they're not trying to draw a lovely picture that they're gonna frame as a wonderful output, but it's more a case of a facilitative tool. And especially in the sort of space that we're both in. And as I'll talk a little bit more about product ownership, you know, you're the gift of drawing is to bring people on a compelling journey or bring developers closer to end users. It's all about the art of storytelling. So you've got to really just let go of your inhibitions and, and remember that you're there to help people to communicate. There's a lovely, uh, saying, well, not saying it cool. There's a guy called. Dave Sibbitt from Grove Consulting in San Francisco. And he's a guru in the visual facilitation space. A couple of books that I'll bring out here, just by Dave, just so that any of you are keen to learn more. There's a lovely book called Visual Meetings and Visual Leaders by Dave Sibbitt. And he calls himself the human cursor. Not that he's smart, but like a laptop cursor in that you're not there. If you spell something badly or you draw something badly and you get that terrible cold sweat when you're at the flip chart, it's really not about you. It's really about the communication that you're trying to create. So I think that would be my first sort of tip.

Brian (05:53)
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. And, you know, when we think about this, I don't want people to get lost in this. I don't want you to think, well, I don't speak at conferences, so I don't really need to tell a story to a big group of people. Or, you know, I don't routinely hold big meetings in my organization. I know this is something that can even be really impactful just individually, right?

Stu (06:21)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that there's some of the key motivations for using visuals is the way in which we receive information and we can obtain information and it is, it's a universal language, which is really powerful, how we can retain that information and so even if you're thinking things through, you know, I have a lot of people come to me and say, Oh, you know, I don't really draw Stu, but sometimes I'll just scribble in my sketchbook, some ideas and like, I'm sorry to tell you. That is drawing, that is thinking conceptually. So I think that the process of the patterns that we create, in this very volatile and certain world that we live in, some things that are so abstract with the written word that just drawing something out is really important. So I like that you say, it's a really good point that's worth emphasizing on. I think a lot of the benefits of visual storytelling. in the product space is really about that collaboration and great thing about visual storytelling is it's, it's impactful for you as an individual, as much as it is for a group. I think a lot of the focus I have when I'm, I'm training in teaching and facilitating this stuff is all around that collaboration, but you as an individual. you grab a sketchbook and you're drawing out ideas and you're thinking through things, that's the sort of the power play really and it really does help with that sort of retention of ideas. So, you know, doing it on your own, working in a group, I think it's always really useful.

Brian (07:57)
Yeah, I know I've had that happen to me. That was something that I had to try to learn a little bit was just the, I would scribble a bunch of handwritten notes and I'd come back to them later and be like, what is this about? And it's hard to really follow my train of thought going through this. But when I started to draw some things and started to have a little bit more of, oh yeah, this idea flowed to this. And then that, the visual nature of that really allowed that kind of to mimic that chain of consciousness that I was having at the moment, you know, when I encountered it. So that, to me, I know personally that became very helpful, yeah.

Stu (08:32)
Yeah, absolutely. So, so just picking up on what you said there, uh, another motivation that I talk about is that divergent convergent thinking. So just sort of separating the two things out there, which is of course, something very useful and from a product ownership perspective, the divergent thinking, that diversity of thought that comes from the drawings. And, um, without going too geeky on you, um, in the world of business and scrum. know, the world is, it's riddled in what we call ideographs. So if you think about refinement or any of the scrum values, they're all, they're all, when you draw a picture to represent focus, for example, it's a picture that represents an idea or concept. And so it's very difficult to draw some of these things. However, it provides wonderful variety and it provides diversity, because we'd all draw something differently. So that's the first thing that's really nice about drawing is it really offers that opportunity to, to generate ideas. And when you were saying about sort of, well, how do I converge on that? How do I know where I'm going? That's kind of the idea behind the product disposition canvas and not just the canvas I created, but the business model canvas, a good old fashioned SWOT analysis, the value proposition canvas.

Brian (09:45)
Hmm.

Stu (09:53)
any, you know, any of the great templates that we see from some of the great thought leaders in our space, all of these things are providing a level of convergence. So, you know, the drawing itself helps with the convergence, the frameworks and the frames that we use, the templates we use, as well as visual metaphors like the sailboat are all anchoring things and then bringing us back onto the same page.

Brian (10:18)
Yeah, that's something I try to talk about with my Scrum Masters a lot is, when you get to that retrospective, you have to have different methods that you go through. You can't just do the same thing every time because like we're talking about, there's different methods of learning and that activates different parts of people's brains. And if I am more of a visual processor, yeah, having something like Sailboat gets my brain to start to work in a way that's having just start, stop, continue won't, because that's just words on a page and it may not excite me as much. This is great. So I think we have an understanding of this. And by the way, we're gonna link something in our show notes. Stuart and I were talking about this beforehand. Stuart did a very lovely little quick overview of the Scrum framework that he used some of this storytelling process with as he described it. So if you're having trouble visualizing what we're talking about, we gotcha. We'll give you a link for that, and you'll be able to see this. So I want to transition that from just in general understanding, because I think we probably have a good idea of this now, into the product space. And I'm a product owner. I'm working with my stakeholders. I've got a product I'm working at day in, day out. How can?

Stu (11:18)
Thanks.

Brian (11:40)
how can being more visual help me in my, how's that helped me discover more about my product?

Stu (11:48)
Good question, good question. So for me, you know, when it comes to product ownership, there are many qualities and we could just talk forever on this, I'm sure. But one of the qualities I think that really matter is that passion, is that storytelling. And so of course, you can create wonderful stories regardless of visuals, but with the visualization, it really helps get people on the same page. And I think that, you know, without getting carried away with Neulen pens and nice big bits of paper and nice highlighter pens, we don't need to make this any more grander than it needs to be. You know, I think that a roadmap, uh, you know, post-it notes on a wall, story mapping, all of these are methods of, um, visualizing the work. And I think that, that for us, for a product owner, that your focus is on the why and the what. You really want to sort of try and create as much clarity as possible. And I think all of the good tools that we use are providing that clear narrative. And I'll take as an example, story mapping, or customer journey mapping, that general narrative of left to right, we're used to that flow. And so we can tell a story and it provides enough information. And I think what's nice in life, I don't know, I find is...

Brian (13:00)
Yeah.

Stu (13:15)
blending your, the things that excite you. So I'm quite interested by Pixar and if anyone's read Ed Catmull's Creativity, Inc. book, it's fascinating. It's talking really about motivating teams as well as everything else. But you think about storyboards, any of the good things that we've been doing for years, like Walt Disney. I think he coined the, there's a gentleman called Webb Smith. who is the illustrator who, and I think Walt Disney sort of, you know, coined the idea of story mapping and story, sorry, storyboarding from, from web. And it's just really interesting how those storyboards can tell a story and those little gaps between a comic provide you with just enough information to fill in the gaps. So it brings people on that journey, not telling people how to do something. but kind of presenting that picture.

Brian (14:16)
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, yeah, there's a lot, when you start to describe it, you think about, oh yeah, this is not uncommon. There's a lot of places where people use visualizations like this to try to help, like you said, thinking about storyboarding a movie or think about advertising agencies that do little storyboards of what their ad might look like or what their, even their. ad in a magazine might, you know, not television ad, but an ad in a magazine might look like. There's lots of ways that people use visualizations in our world that we probably just don't even recognize because we're just so used to it now.

Stu (14:53)
Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I think that, that when it comes to sort of product ownership, you know, the focus is that, you know, if we go, if we talk about some of the, desirability, viability, and feasibility, and for me, product ownership sits right in the core of that. We're not always thinking about creating new shiny features and that desirability factor, sometimes we've got to think about the total cost of ownership and the efficiencies that we're trying to save for the reduced, the reduced cost. So. some of the experiences I've got is really blending some of these practices, like statistical analysis and measuring the non-value add activities in a process and adding that and combining that with a customer journey with some qualitative information that's quite thought-provoking is a really good blend. And to kind of emphasize that, Steve Denning said he did a TEDx talk quite some time ago around leadership. storytelling and he says that you've got to wake people up out of their complacency and you've got to be authentically, you know, authentically true. And so that's what I'm talking about. It's like you don't always tell a good story. The story's not always got a happy ending, but you want to wake people up to go, all right, we need to make some changes here.

Brian (16:18)
Yeah, yeah, you know, one of the people that, for those people out there who think, oh, I don't draw very well, if you, I'll just give you one person that you can go look at and kind of see someone who doesn't draw very well but uses it very effectively. Anything that you would see from Simon Sinek. Go try to find Simon Sinek's talk on uh, why, uh, you know, starting with why, if you, if you find his initial tech talk on that, he draws or any kind of, there's a lot of talks that he'll do where he draws kind of sloppy, you know, it's, it's kind of all over the place, but you, you don't think about it when you watch it, you're not looking at it going, well, he doesn't draw very well. He's emphasizing his point. And it's really highly affected. I don't know if you agree or if you've seen any of those. What do you think about that?

Stu (17:11)
I absolutely, totally agree. And I'd say the same and he wouldn't, he wouldn't be offended by me saying this, but Henrik Kleyberg, you know, probably one of the most watched videos, product owner in a nutshell, he'd say himself that the drawings are quite limited, quite crude, but the art of storytelling is so powerful. The other thing that we might get chance to talk about is structure. The way in which you structure information is really key. So.

Brian (17:18)
Yeah.

Stu (17:39)
you know, Henrik's drawings were like of the stick men were, were sort of very quick and low fidelity, but the structure in which he created that video really reinforced the message. So the power of storytelling in structure really helps. There's a, if any of you again, want to find out more about the art of storytelling, there's the sketch note handbook by Mike Rhodes, and he talks about structure. being the meat and veg and the fancy drawing being the gravy on top. So, you know, again, that kind of reinforces that message.

Brian (18:15)
I love that. I love that example. Well, connecting back with the product owner then, I wanna kind of get practical a little bit in where this would fit in. So let's, and just thinking about what a product owner does, kind of the typical kind of things. I know you mentioned story mapping and I agree, that's a very visual way of seeing our products. Not drawing as much, although it could be, right? You could have some drawings on those as well, but. Just in the normal course of doing things like coming up with our visions and trying to understand our customers and trying to validate assumptions and everything that a product owner typically does, how does something like this help in those kind of specific things that a product owner would normally do?

Stu (19:02)
Well, a couple of things I just wanted to say before I delve into the depths of all these things is that it's worth, and I know you're on the same page as me on this as a, as a product owner, there are lots of things that, that you just need, I think, to be aware of and cognizant of, of doing, regardless of whether it's you doing it or whether you're saying, look, how can we gain more discovery? How can we get more validation? How can we get more alignment? And again, I'm preaching to the converted, you know, a sprung team. It's that.

Brian (19:30)
Hehehehe

Stu (19:32)
cohesive unit, right? So, but as far as the individual tools that you as a product owner may use or encourage others to do so, talking about visions and things like that, I've always felt like it should be a team sport and the more visual that you can make that, there are so many different templates available out there to create compelling visions. And again, it's very much There's two ends right to storytelling. There's, as I've said from Steve Denning, waking people up from their complacency if something's not so great, or the art of the possible, the postcard from the future. All of these kind of creative things are taking people on this compelling journey. So always would make use of any of the templates available. Like you said, you've got to mix things up, but there's some great, great things from the Game Storming book. I've mentioned so many books, I apologies to whoever's got all these links in.

Brian (20:34)
Yeah, our show our show note person's scrambling trying to find all these things

Stu (20:38)
Right now, go never invite this person back again. Um, um, so yeah, there's lots of different vision, vision things available. And, you know, like all of these tools, two things I'd say is it's more about, not the tool, but more about the collaboration that you get from the tools. And I'd also say, um, tools in your toolbox, not a checklist, right? Um, but touching on the other two things you mentioned there, from a discovery perspective, I really do quite like blending, um, you know, a lot of the design thinking techniques with Agile, right? I'm all about blending everything, but I'm very passionate about customer journey mapping and as is and to be customer journey mapping. And again, as I've just, I used the example earlier, sort of blending qualitative and quantitative data. I'm all about outcome metrics and I'd love to say that data beats opinion, but actually opinion does matter. So. Blending a lot of these visuals with real qualitative information from customers is great. And, and again, thinking about the validation very similarly, you know, what can we do visually that can validate design ideas? A lot of us in the product space, work in the tech space. And I think one of the key things that I say about visualization is making the intangible tangible. And that's the thing, right? You know, a lot of us are working in software or we're working with process. How can you define that you're doing a good job if you're working on an MVE or you're trying to improve something and all you've got is just a bunch of code. You need ways to visualize and say things in a business in business language that people understand. So, you know, all these. All of the above, Brian.

Brian (22:35)
Right, right. Yeah, and you know, I'm just reminded, I remember there was, back way back in the day, there used to be an exercise, I know people would do in classes around, you know, you'd have a description of something and then someone would try to draw it. And there was a couple of rounds of this or there was a couple of different ways of doing it, you know, one team or one round, basically you wrote out the instructions and the people just had to follow them. Uh, and there's, you know, another round or another team that they got to ask questions back and forth, clarifying questions about things, uh, and you know, there's rounds or I may be misremembering this, but I thought there was sons where they could show you the picture and you could say, Oh no, that's not quite right to do this. Um, and one of the, the kind of key, uh, learning points of that was to try to say, you know, at the heart, when we have. requirements, when we have something that we're trying to express, you know, from a product owner standpoint to have a team work on, we're we have a picture in our head. And it's very visual, right? We have a picture in our head of what it is we want. And matching the picture that's in our head, and trying to describe it, you know, I heard of I've used this phrase quite a bit. I don't know where it came from. But words are imprecise. They are right words are just imprecise. They have different meanings. And even when I notice this in my classes, when I give descriptions of exercises, a lot of times people will come back and say, yeah, but you say this and that in instruction, but do you mean this or do you mean that? And that clarification is needed. So yeah, all this is just to say that matching pictures, if it's visual, it's helpful to see it. It's helpful to say, you know, it's not just, let me tell you what I need, but let me show you what I need. And, you know, that oftentimes can clear up those miscommunications that can cause the back and forths and, you know, having delays in a team just because you didn't really try to match the pictures.

Stu (24:46)
The, the, some of those motor key motivations I've said, simplifying complexity, uh, helping people to generate ideas, solve problems, but gain alignment is worth going back a little bit in time here, cause what you've touched there is a really pertinent point, um, before I'm a design graduate, as, as you could probably imagine with my passion, that doesn't really give me any more right to be, to be talking about this specific thing, uh, many important milestones in my life, being a business analyst, project manager before I was.

Brian (24:51)
Yeah.

Stu (25:15)
brought into the world of Agile and also spent time looking at design thinking. But they're 10 years working in social care and frontline services with adults with learning disabilities. And working back then on before the days of Agile for me, activity boards introducing symbol and picture communication to make it more inclusive and make people more involved with reading and writing difficulties. was really powerful. It's quite interesting going into the agile space years later and going, we were doing this then in social, but you touched on a really good point in that there's something that, you know, speech and language therapists talked about then, which was the symbol hierarchy of need, which suggests that there's different kinds of ways in which you can represent an object with different levels of abstraction and, um, without being tokenistic.

Brian (25:48)
Yeah.

Stu (26:09)
for people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, objects of references or, you know, things that miniature objects are better. But for people with reading and writing difficulties, pictures and symbols are better. Then the one at the worst, the most abstract form, of course, is the word. So you're absolutely right. And, you know, as someone back in the day as an illustrator, you'd get someone saying, oh, Stu, draw me a skyscraper and I'd be like, yeah, but, but how anything will be fine. And I'd be like, what, you know, and then, you know, you sure? Yes, yes. I'll draw it and they'll say, we wanted seven windows, you know, this brings me back to another point that, that I think is important to any, anyone out here that wants to use these skills for product ownership is again, another little phrase I like to say, which is again, process over art. I remember forgetting the importance and significance of this, ignoring everything I've told all of you, being commissioned to come in as the live visual storyteller, as this team that are working within a high street bank improving their agile transformation, were telling me about their journey and they wanted me to visualize it to create a storyboard. So there I was with all my specialist pens and the paper. And I'd be, you know, I was paid to be there as this visual storyteller. I even had like a little, like a, like a, uh, electrician's bag, you know, on the side, like a, like a cowboy with my pens in, I mean, like very professional. And, um, I had all these different people telling me about their process and about what it looks like. And it was just, I had that cold sweat, right? You know, I was just, all it was, was a pipe, a bit of paper with, with just. mess was the mess of lines and everything else. And at the end of the day, they looked at it much like that sky skyscraper analogy and said, this is great. You know, this is it's a mess. I saw, I said, I'm sorry. I feel like I failed. Said, no, this is great. You've managed to conceptualize what we're all saying. And that, that night I went home and I had some, maybe some classic music on. And I went all precious and I drew up as a wonderful storyboard. I thought, oh, phew, again, forgetting all the important things.

Brian (28:18)
Aha.

Stu (28:30)
And I brought it in to have a bit of integrity. And I said, right, everyone put a post-it note over anything that needs to change when you couldn't see the picture. And once again, once again, I feel like I'd failed, but not again. They're like, this is great Stu. You've got us on the same page. So again, you are that human cursor and you know, you're there to help with that connections because like you say, we're all conceptual thinkers and we need to join the dots and we're thinking differently, which is a beautiful thing.

Brian (29:00)
Yeah, it just struck me as we were talking about this thing. And maybe this will highlight a difference in personality. And some people might answer this one way or another. But if someone's going to give you directions, would you rather have the directions written out or would you rather have a map? I know for me, I'd rather have the map. To me, I like to see, oh, yeah, you go here and you go there. But when someone starts to rattle off, well, you go about a mile this way, and then you turn left, and then you take the roundabout. I'm lost already. If it's more than two directions, that's it. But if I have the map, yeah, I'm following step by step, and I can visualize where it is I'm trying to go.

Stu (29:41)
I think that that's another really beautiful thing about Scrum, right? And about sort of you as a product owner, trying to maximise value and get, and make the most from those amazing humans that you're working alongside and rubbing shoulders with. And like you say, you know, what are people's preferences? That's the beauty, I think, for me, is that diversity, the diversity of thought, reducing those assumptions and sort of thinking, thinking outside of the box. Um, and embracing that divergence a little bit more. And it's interesting. And Lee, if there's anyone listening, they're thinking, well, I, I can't visualize anything, there's actually something called aphantasia, which is the inability to imagine visual images, uh, which, which I only heard about sort of not so long ago. And I find that fascinating. And there's other people and there's like apparently 2% of the population as opposed to aphantasia. which is the condition of having extremely vivid mental visuals, which is around 10%. So it's just, I just think it's beautiful how people think differently, but you, you know, you as a product owner, bringing this back, I think from a facilitation perspective, you're using the skills of everyone to kind of come together to converge on, on what, what good looks like.

Brian (30:51)
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we, we had an episode of a few episodes back now, but we had an episode on, uh, kind of, uh, neurodiversity. And so speaking about some of the same things you're talking about here. And again, just to reiterate, you know, one of the reasons that's important is because you have differences in people on your team. So it's not necessarily important for you to know every single kind of person that could be out there in the world, but what's important for you to know. is the people on your team and the people you're communicating with. So if you have someone who does have a preference of a certain communication style and they are more visual, then yes, we need to be more visual. If you have people who would rather, you know, are more data-driven and want to see facts, then maybe we need to present things in a different way. Yeah, I saw something recently stored about kind of along the same lines. two people having a conversation and they were talking about how when, the person was questioning the other person saying, when you say the alphabet, when you say A, B, C, D, you're telling me you actually see the letters in your head every time you do it and the woman was like, yes. When I say A, I see a picture of an A in my head. I see the B, I see C, and I can't say it, I can't go through the alphabet without seeing in my head those letters visually. And the man was just stunned by it. He thought, wow, that's so foreign to me. I can't imagine that. I just, it's just, I'm speaking it. It's just words to me. But they're highlighting, right, kind of the differences in their brains. Their brains are wired a little bit differently. And... I just thought that was brilliant. I never heard anyone kind of express it that way, but that was a great way to kind of capture that, you know?

Stu (32:52)
You know, you're bringing it back to the product disposition canvas. And I should probably share that or a link to that. It's basically, um, uh, a vertical and horizontal axis. And you've got structure strategic to tactical, but visionary to implement it. And just sort of aligned to what you were saying there. And for the folks listening, uh, it's called the disposition canvas. Not so I'm using very clever big words, but because if you Google disposition, you look at, you know, uh, the encyclopedia and

Brian (32:58)
Yeah.

Stu (33:22)
dictionary even, it's got two definitions. One is a person's inherent qualities, which is what you're talking about. And the other is around your orientation. So whenever I'm delivering certified product owner classes or any product oriented classes, everyone has a different position, whether they're a glorified product backlog administrator or they're working very strategically, but also the thing that people forget to talk about. is what about you as an individual? Because I'm much more of a visionary than an implementer. And for the first, this is the first crowd that I've shared this with, but you talked about neurodiversity at the age of 44. Yesterday, I had a clinical assessment for ADHD and positive, yeah. So just quite liberating. I wish I'd learned earlier, but you know, it's kind of like all the people that know me are like, And you're telling us something we didn't know, but it's the, the thing about product ownership as well, that people forget, I think is that people assume that everybody, when you talk about scrum mastery, it's all around people and we feel kind of more comfortable talking about, about neurodiversity, all of these things. But product ownership is it's a job. It's, it's an accountability, but it's, you know, you are a, you're, you've got a, you're not a superhero. You're, you're a, a person.

Brian (34:23)
Yeah. Yeah.

Stu (34:50)
mining for truth and sharing your inherent qualities with the team is wonderful. So for me, hyper-focus, creativity, problem solving, big picture thinking, sometimes slightly impulsive, you know, but again, that's the Johari window. It's that openness, that transparency that needs to come through.

Brian (35:03)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, they can be, I'm with you. It's there, you know, by the way, it's same here. Everyone who listens knows I've said it multiple times that, you know, I had late in life diagnosis as well. Um, but you know, it's kind of one of those things where there's superpower to it, you know, there's, there's kind of this superpower that comes along with it, but then there's also things that we don't do as well. And if you want, you know, this is not a neurodivergence thing. This is not an ADHD thing. This is a human being thing, I think, to just say,

Stu (35:16)
Thanks, Steve.

Brian (35:38)
we cannot accept and mine the superpowers of a person without also accepting and helping them with the things that they struggle with, right? Because they're a whole human being and they're someone on our team. So yeah, absolutely. I love that point. I think that's a great point.

Stu (35:59)
And I, this is, and I hope this sort of resonates with everyone listening in. Cause I think we, we are all good at identifying the things we're not good at. And we're never very good and we're blind to the things that we're good at. And so, you know, there's a seat at the table for everyone. And that's why I love talking about product because regardless, if you've ever delivered a service, I've talked about working with adults with disabilities to whatever you've done, worked in a shop, you're, you're trying to like deliver value to someone. Um. And just wanted to share a story, which is product related. I remember having massive imposter syndrome back in the day when I first became a business analyst, because I'm not a number cruncher, um, actually I quite do like numbers these days, especially when it comes to running and cycling, but, um, I didn't feel like I'd found my home and then something, um, those of you that may be dialing in from the listening in from the UK may remember in the news some years ago, there was a thing called the baby P incident. which was a terrible situation, safeguarding situation where a child died due to a lack of connections and joining the dots between social and healthcare providers. No individual was wrong, but the system was wrong. And due to that, working for local authority, I was tasked to work with the safeguarding teams in visualizing their processes. And that was the first time I'd gone from frontline services with a passion for drawing with some post-it notes in hand, visualizing and working with stakeholders to visualize a journey. And I'm like, you know, Visio process mapping galore, but I'm like, oh, I'm home, this is what it's about. So, you know, in everything we do, you know, never under emphasize the way your brain works.

Brian (37:43)
Hmm.

Stu (37:50)
and the qualities that you can bring, but it's that diversity together, that collection, which is the power.

Brian (37:57)
Awesome. That is very well said. Yeah, I really enjoyed this. This has been a great conversation. And I know we may have caught in a few different places, but that's the way conversations are. They get messy sometimes. And I'm all for that. But I like to ask, usually at the end, is there any, people wanna know more where they go to, but I feel like we've sprinkled throughout this, a lot of good...

Stu (38:23)
Hehehe

Brian (38:24)
follow on things that people can go and find out more about. But is there anywhere else that you would say, anything, anywhere people should, if they wanna get in touch with you, can reach out to you.

Stu (38:33)
More than welcome. We create agile nuggets, little agile nuggets of insights from different, different people around the globe. And I draw these little pictures. So I'll share that with you, but more than welcome to reach out. I usually make quite a bit of noise on LinkedIn. So, you know, I'm sure I'll be talking about this or sharing a post or something in the foreseeable future. So that's good with me.

Brian (39:00)
Well, Stuart, I can't thank you enough. Thanks for coming on and making time for us and sharing just your knowledge and wisdom with us.

Stu (39:08)
Thank you so, so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.