June 11, 2025 • 51 mins
Have you ever started a project only to realize you’re building something your leaders never asked for? You’re not alone.
In this episode of Lean by Design, we sit down with Marcelo Calbucci, a veteran of Amazon, Microsoft, and multiple startups, to explore the PRFAQ Framework, Amazon’s secret weapon for aligning strategy and execution.
By drafting a mock press release and FAQ before a single line of code is written, teams force themselves to clarify vision, spot roadblocks, and reach consensus across departments. The real magic comes from the collaborative review and no bullet‑filled slides, just a tight narrative that surfaces gaps in logic and focuses on solving genuine customer problems.
Whether you’re battling scope creep as a product manager or aiming for alignment as an executive, this conversation will equip you with a powerful tool to kick off your next project with crystal‑clear purpose. Tune in and learn to work backward for forward momentum.
Learn more about the PRFAQ at https://www.theprfaq.com/
Connect with Marcelo at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcelocalbucci | https://x.com/calbucci
Ready to assess your organization’s efficiency? Connect with us at leanbydesign@sigmalabconsulting.com to uncover high-impact improvement opportunities. 🚀
Learn more about us by visiting: https://sigmalabconsulting.com/
Want our thoughts on a specific topic? Looking to sponsor this podcast to continue to generate content? Or maybe you have an idea and want to be on our show. Fill out our Interest Form and share your thoughts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Lean
by Design podcast.
I'm your host, oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, lawrence
Wong.
We are very excited to have aguest with us today, marcelo
Calpucci, who is the author,product tech leader.
Founder author of the PRFAQFramework.
He's been a product technologyexecutive over the last 25 years
(00:22):
, including places like Amazon,microsoft and many other
startups, so we're excited tohave him on board, and today we
brought him on because we wantto talk about this really
critical challenge that seems tobe stemming from executive
level projects that are you know, the execution just may not
(00:43):
quite be there.
So what we find is that toomany projects begin without
really defining what thatsuccess marker is going to look
like.
Marcelo, thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Folks, we're excited to dig intothis, and you know, I think,
that yourself, myself andLawrence, we've all been in this
situation where we are handed aproject or a side quest that
(01:09):
may have value coming fromleadership, yet the goals are
vague, the strategies aretypically ill-informed.
We can see this often withdecision makers that may be too
far from the ground level, theymay be too far removed from the
operations, and what happens?
You get dead ends.
In some cases, you may completeor reach a milestone where you
(01:33):
find out it was nothing like itwas supposed to be, based on the
leadership that sent this taskdown.
So I want to explore more aboutthe PRFAQ framework and what is
this framework solving forthese projects.
Can you tell us a little bitabout the framework?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah.
So let's take a step back here.
I love the way you set this upright.
So what often happens is evenan executive as myself, or like
if you're a manager or anindividual contributor you are
asked for an output, not anoutcome.
That's the number one mistakethat a lot of people go through
(02:12):
when they are working on aproject.
They're just saying, like, dothis thing because we want this
other thing.
Right, and that's not enoughfor you to have the context or
to understand what value are youcreating.
Why are we doing all this stuff?
And at Amazon about 20 years ago, there was a lot of problems
going on with the organizationright, because the company was
(02:34):
growing fast and many projectswere running parallel.
People start to lose trackabout why are we doing this
again, like, how does thisconnect to the bigger strategy?
So Amazon created the PR FAQframework, which stands for
press release and frequentlyasked questions, and Jeff Bezos
was directly involved in thecreation of this right.
(02:54):
So it was to support his needand the need of the team working
on a project so they couldcommunicate better.
Right, and what this frameworkis?
It's a vision and strategyframework for you to discover,
debate and decide For any kindof project.
It could be a new product, anew business, a program, even a
(03:17):
policy or a process within theorganization.
You can use the PR FAQ and it'salso known as the working
backwards.
The reason it's called likethat is because the first page
of the PR FAQ, which is thepress release, is a hypothetical
press release about a futurestate of your product.
So you write as if you alreadydone the work.
(03:40):
Right?
So you write a PR press releaseas today we are launching this
product that solves this problemfor these customers.
This is how our solution works.
But nothing has been done yet,right?
So you're setting a state ofthe world how you want it to be,
and then you work backwardsfrom that on the FAQ section,
(04:00):
saying, like, how are we goingto get there?
Right?
So the FAQ is in the format offrequently asked questions,
answering questions about theviability, the feasibility, what
research has been done, who'sthe customer, what problem they
have, what is in the markettoday.
So everything is including theFAQ.
So this is a six page documentand on Amazon, and what I wrote
(04:22):
on my book is like use that asthe centerpiece for the
discussion, right?
Like?
So the team can go back andforth and like, refine the idea
and figure out how to make itbetter, like what we don't know,
what we need to do moreresearch on what we can take a
leap of faith.
All those things are like outin the open.
And the beautiful aspect of thePRPQ, at least for my opinion,
(04:45):
is not the document itself, itis the review and the process
where you get differentperspectives, right From an
engineer, from a designer orfrom a salesperson or from
marketing, even from executives,right.
So often executives are leftout of that phase of ideation
and they are just presenting theta-da you know presentation at
(05:08):
the end, but they're like, waita second.
This doesn't align with thestrategy that I was thinking,
because no one like incorporatedthe feedback from executives.
So the PR review is veryvaluable, you know, for all the
team to collaborate into findinga better strategy and vision
for what we should be doing.
I love that explanation.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I mean, one of the very first things that you
mentioned was that what happensoften is that we get asked for
an output and not an outcome,and I think we talked about this
a little bit in our initialconversation prior to the
podcast that talked about, forexample, features rather than
what you're actually solving.
What are you actually trying todo?
And sometimes it causes a pausebecause it's a different way of
(05:52):
thinking about your end state.
What is so powerful now that isforcing you to create a project
, to fix something?
And it's not the features thatyou find at the end, it is the
underlying root causes, theunderlying issues behind all of
the things that will eventuallylead to having features or or,
(06:13):
in this case, what that outputwould look like.
Because, as we talked aboutbefore, it's almost.
It's almost like going in andgoing to the doctor and saying I
need you to pull my tooth.
Well, maybe your outcome isthat you want your tooth pulled,
but you're having a toothachebecause of something else that's
happening that has nothing todo with needing to extract a
tooth in there.
You know, so it's.
(06:34):
It's interesting because whenyou ask for an output, you're
essentially jumping into I needyou to execute this.
Why is it that we feel socomfortable jumping into
execution without a realstrategy?
And then, who is responsiblefor filling in that gap?
(06:56):
Who is the one that needs tosay okay, this is what they said
, but what they really want issomething that solves X.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
How do we get over that?
I think it's human nature.
I think we love to do thingsright, Like we love to solve
problems.
We like to jump and likeexecute, particularly like good
professionals.
Right, they're like hey, wehave this problem.
The first thing they do is likelet's solve it right, Not let's
(07:31):
think about it, let's take astep back.
Is it even worth solving thisproblem, or is this the right
problem to solve?
So in many settings, at leastin the tech world that I work at
, like everyone is like go, go,go, do, do, do.
Right, there was not a lot ofthinking, not a lot of
strategizing.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So's what I, what I think it is you know there's
something to be said abouttaking on an initiative that's
going to fix a problem.
You know there's excitementthere's, and from our
experiences, these things arenot quick fixes.
If they were quick fixes theyprobably wouldn't be as big of a
(08:05):
problem as they are there'susually.
You know at the end whether youhave a product or a process.
You know whatever in place, youneed to adopt that thing, and
it's not just you who'sparticipating, it's also the
stakeholders around you.
So you know, I think, that whenyou are jumping into execution,
(08:26):
you make a very valid pointlet's fix it.
I have this problem in my ownpersonal life.
When there's any issue in thehouse, my first thing is okay,
oster's going to fix the problem.
And that's not always thesolution.
Sometimes I just need to listento my wife for you know half an
hour and figure out togetherwhat we're going to do, have a
(08:47):
strategy towards fixingsomething, because we're so
accustomed to finding not thedisease, not the illness, but
the symptom that's making usthink that, oh, if we apply this
, it will stop that.
But again, those are symptoms.
Those are not the real issueand the real problem.
(09:08):
And what I love about the PRFAQframework is that you create
your desired future state rightat the top, saying this is where
we aim to go.
That's the North Star.
What does it look like when youdon't have that North Star?
What does it look like when youdon't have that North Star?
What does it look like when youhaven't thought about that
(09:28):
future state?
Are there signs that teams orprojects that show up to show
that they never had that futurestate?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Before you answer that question, I think,
culturally, like what you saidbefore, as humans we just like
to do things, we like checklists, we like direction, we like to
follow rules, and so if you'rein a culture where that is the
norm, then you don't reallyquestion these initiatives and
people just go right along.
But I think, even talking toOscar about maybe perhaps using
(09:57):
this for some of the stuff thatwe're doing in our own business,
that it unlocks your creativityand dreaming about what this is
going to be, what it's going tobe like for your customers, but
also for your internal team,and so it removes some of the
constraints where you're goingto have to add them back later
on, but at least in this initialphase it allows everybody to
get out, whatever their thoughtsare.
That shift in thinking allowsyou to think about problems in a
(10:19):
completely different way, andit's a change for people to
think that way.
And you must see teams thatdon't think about it this way,
and there are some clear signsof maybe they operate using just
project charters and it's justlike this document.
That's very boring and you haveall these rules, and so you
know look to Oscar's questionwhat are some of those signs
(10:40):
that you see when people are notthinking in that same
philosophy as a PR FAQ.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, yeah, you're spot on, Lawrence.
What happens is a lot of timespeople don't do enough divergent
thinking right.
And divergent thinking is awhole category of things that
include, like design thinking,brainstorm, SWOT analysis, like
let your brain like think ofmany things, think of many
(11:06):
aspects of the problem.
Also think of many solutions.
One of the problems that oftenoccur is like people find a
solution for a problem andexecute on it right and like
doesn't challenge that Is thisthe best problem for us to solve
?
Is this the best solution forthat problem, and should we
execute this against every otherpriority that we have on our
(11:29):
business, right?
So the way that manifestsitself that you notice very
commonly is when teams start toget quite misaligned right, when
you see people going inslightly different directions.
That doesn't feel that harmful,but as the project evolves,
there starts to have a lot ofconflict, a lot of dysfunction,
(11:51):
like a lot of heated exchangesabout people saying, no, it's
not have a lot of conflict, alot of dysfunction, like a lot
of heated exchanges about peoplesaying, no, it's not this, it's
that right, it's not thisdirection, it's that direction.
And, like you said, Oscar, it'sthe lack of a North Star right.
Like imagine you and your wifego on vacation but you do not
have a conversation of whereyou're going, you know how long
it's going to be and those kindof things.
Like it's going to be awkward.
(12:13):
Like you're driving and she isthinking we are going this place
and you're thinking we're goingthat place, and they're like,
wait a second, I wasn't preparedfor that.
So teams have the same problem,right?
If they start a project andthey really don't understand the
end state, like the outcomethat they want to have is going
to be much harder for them,they're going to go all over the
place and bounce around.
(12:34):
So I say like the symptoms of,you know, lack of vision and
strategy early on are usuallymisalignment, too many meetings,
too many emails back and forth,because people cannot do the
work that they think they needto do independently.
They depend on so many otherpeople.
Because there was that lack ofinitial alignment and also what
(12:55):
happens is a lot of misfires,right?
So the project moves in adirection.
Then like, oh no, that was notit.
Take it back, execute the rightdirection.
So it makes the project movesmuch slower we're talking two,
three times slower than itneeded to be if there was that
initial alignment.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You know, as you were giving that example, it was
making me think of when you'rein the process of planning a
vacation with a loved one orwith a family or a group of
friends.
Whatever the case may be, thereare certain things you got to do
.
You're going to take off ofwork, going to figure out who's
going to feed the dog and thecat and all of these things that
are irrelevant to where you'reactually going, and then finding
(13:36):
out that, let's say, forexample, we were going to go to
Sunshine and Beaches and mycounterpart thought that we were
going up north to see NorthernLights or something somewhere
cold.
Well now, we're definitely notprepared for the same space.
You know something that itseems so fundamental.
But I think that this is agreat point to tack on to what
(13:59):
Lawrence was saying earlier whenyou realize that a
documentation that's developedlike this, that allows multiple
perspectives, gives you reallythis open canvas for how to get
there, Because when you're onlythinking in the mindset or the
framework of one or two mainparties within this issue and
you're ignoring all of thestakeholder feedback and the
(14:22):
various experiences, I mean weare in an industry that we are
so blessed to have people thathave not had the experience that
we have and, in the same lineof thinking, we have not had the
experience that they have had,and so it's really important, I
think, to take advantage of thatto say you know what are the
different perspectives, Becauseyou're exactly right, these
(14:43):
misfires what do they look like?
Well, in some cases we hadsomebody from research and they
went back and told their manager, who then it went up to the
chief of research and nowthere's a whole perception of
what the project is that isincorrect and is now creating
(15:03):
emails that are coming in.
I got a random meeting that cameup that somebody wants to talk
to me.
How did this happen?
We only met two weeks ago.
We shouldn't even be havingthis conversation with
leadership.
We're weeks, if not months,away from the delivery of the
solution.
It's because we were notaligned.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yes, and that happens often, oscar, when you have a
slide deck culture like you usePowerPoint to do things right.
Because what happens with thePowerPoint strategy is it
doesn't have enough there thatyou can just hand off the
PowerPoint to someone withouttelling them anything and they
(15:41):
fully understanding what is thestrategy.
Right, the PR FAQ forces andnarratives so that anyone
reading that document willunderstand it.
They might not even agree withit, but they will understand it.
So there is a lot lessmisalignment about that.
They might say, like that's notthe direction we should go,
that's not our North Star, butat least they can say that when
(16:02):
they look at a PowerPoint thatis a bunch of bullet points, a
few diagrams, you know they'regoing to interpolate or project
what they are imagining, whatthe North Star is right and what
is the strategy to get there.
So when they go and tellsomeone else right, this is
already two degrees ofseparation from the original
(16:24):
person things get reallydiffused, right, like you're
talking about almost a differentproject project, and it gets
worse and worse and worse as theinformation passed along to
more people.
The PR vehicle doesn't have thisproblem.
There was a document.
Everyone can read the samedocument and start from the same
context and same information.
Right, so it's it's way morepowerful and that's what helped
(16:45):
Amazon quite a bit, because ithelps them execute in isolation.
Quote right, like a team can dotheir job in isolation because
everyone that's going to beinvolved already bought into the
strategy and the vision andthey know exactly what it's
going to do, so that team canmove really fast.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Just to add actually to query do you recall how large
Amazon was when they decided tocome up with this framework or
at least make this framework apart of the organization?
I would imagine there's so muchpower in here, as you mentioned,
that it gives the ability to goagainst a North Star versus in
some PowerPoint-centricindustries, really like ours.
(17:24):
Try to tell a story throughPowerPoint and tell me that
people are doing that everysingle time.
They do slide presentations andI would call you a liar,
because that's not true.
You come in there and it almostis delivered that every slide
is by itself Reference its ownNorth Star.
The way that the PRFAQ linesthings out really shows you
(17:46):
whether you agree or not.
This is the direction.
This is what this is going tolook like.
At the end, you can argue thatthat is not where we need to go,
which is great.
We can talk about that and thenwork out that FAQ part
afterwards, but it gives you ananchor and I think that's what
misses from a lot of these.
That's where you know, when wetalk about, where the root cause
(18:08):
for these things are.
We have high level decisionmakers that are super
intelligent, where you know thatmisalignment and that you know.
I love that you mentioned in aPR FAQ.
You include your leadershipbecause you want them to also be
bought in.
This is what we're looking forat the very end of the road Not
(18:28):
a feature, not a software.
For at the very end of the roadNot a feature, not a software.
This is the way we want life tobe.
When we're done with thisproject, do we put all the blame
on the one that asked us for aproject?
How do we bridge that?
How do we undo thatmisalignment from the beginning?
Speaker 3 (18:45):
I think the easy answer is to blame it on
somebody and for them to beshort-sighted.
And a lot of ego is involved inthese large companies, and I
think people have a lot to provewhen you have such a large
initiative.
But I think it's this likechicken or the egg thing, where
you're misaligned because youhaven't gotten the feedback yet,
and so we have to get thefeedback in order to be aligned,
(19:06):
and so I think it all comesdown to the tools that people
use to really communicate thisinformation, right?
So, whether it's a PowerPointor some rigid document like a
project charter, it's not veryopen for soliciting feedback,
and I think the beauty of thePRFAQ is that you can customize
the questions to really matchwhat those two segments are,
(19:26):
whether you're reaching out tocustomers externally or you're
looking at your internal teamsto figure out, okay, what are
the problem areas that you'retrying to really focus on as we
think about developing thisservice or product.
I'm just curious how you see Imean, you've worked with a lot
of high-level executives that Iwould imagine have a lot of ego
(19:48):
but then at the other end of it,that is not the sole blame,
right?
I think there's othercomponents to the system, as I
will call it.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, exactly, there is not a single person that is
culpable of this problem.
It's a systemic problem on theorganization right?
An organization that doesn'tembrace feedback and doesn't
embrace questioning or is notcurious to know why we're doing
this, what exactly are weexecuting and what is the impact
for the business?
What is the impact for thecustomer?
They're going to suffer thisproblem no matter what right,
(20:18):
regardless of PR FAQ orPowerPoint.
But a PR FAQ, like you said,like it is part of the process
to get reviews.
So what I often say is there isno buy-in on a PR FAQ.
There is way in, like peopleare part of the process of
defining the vision and thestrategy so that you know you
(20:40):
find the best version of itright.
And the interesting thing is,sometimes there is no great
version of it and you decide notto do it right.
So the PR FQ itself saves youtens of millions of dollars or
tens of months from going in atthat end, because, as the team
debated and discussed andgathered more information and
(21:02):
put on the document, theyrealized this is not a good
opportunity, like it's not worthpursuing.
Maybe it's not big enough,maybe the product doesn't exist,
maybe the solution is notfeasible or not viable, it's too
costly, but like, that wasdecided early on, before people
committed to it and startexecuting.
So what I say is usually PR FAQ.
You do a PR FAQ before youstart a project.
(21:25):
The PR FAQ is the instrumentthat's going to help you decide
if you should pursue anopportunity or not.
Right, that's going to help youdecide if you should pursue an
opportunity or not.
Right, and you have to take theangle from.
You know different perspectives, different people looking at it
, giving their opinion.
It's not a plan, it's not aroadmap.
Like you're not going to put,like all the list of things that
you're going to do and whenyou're going to do it and all
(21:46):
the team that's going to do that.
It's more what would thestrategy be to achieve that
outcome?
Right, so people can critiquethe strategy.
And one of the beautiful things,for example, is two things.
Actually, pr figures don'tinclude any names, like there
was not.
The name of the author doesn'tappear on the document, because
we are not discussing, you know,the importance of this person.
(22:09):
We're discussing the merit ofthe idea, right?
So focus on the idea, focus onthe vision, focus on the
strategy.
That's a very important aspectof PR thinking.
The second thing is, for example, if you're doing a software,
like, you don't includescreenshots or wireframes or
mocks or anything like that,because you don't want people
(22:30):
critiquing details.
Or, in many projects likebranding, for example, don't
include anything related tobranding.
That comes later, like once youdecide these projects worth
pursuing, then you can work onthose specifics.
Right, what is the branding?
What is the user experience?
What is the why?
What is the product renderingthat we're going to build
(22:51):
experience?
What is the why?
What is the product renderingthat we're going to build Like?
Whatever other details of theexecution don't belong in a PR
FAQ.
The PR FAQ is really strategyand vision, so you focus on that
area, so you can have aconversation that is very high
level.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah, and it sounds like your traditional tools like
PowerPoint and all these otherdifferent mechanisms as a
project charter, like thepurpose is more output focused,
whereas I think the PR FAQ, thepurpose is more outcome focused.
Right, and so you're morefocused on what is when we build
this thing, what is it going tobe for everybody versus okay,
(23:25):
what are the A, B and C of theproduct feature, and it's really
rigid in that way.
I think there's a lot ofdifferent use cases now that I'm
more thinking about it and it'snot really specific to a
product and you can apply it todifferent initiatives.
But I'm interested to hear whatis the line between whether you
do it or don't do it and thenwhat are the small mechanics
(23:48):
around the process itself.
How long would this typicallytake and how many people do you
get feedback to weigh in on?
Right, Because you can have waytoo many cooks in the kitchen
that everybody has something tosay and that gets out of hand
and you want to elicit opinion,but at the same time, you don't
want a thousand people weighingin and you're reading all of
(24:08):
these different comments aboutwhat you're about to do.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, that depends on the culture of the organization
, right?
And I think the other twoelements that go into that is
what is the scope of thisproject and what is the blast
radio of this project?
What happens if it goes badly?
Right, so in many projects,maybe nothing happens if it goes
badly.
It's just a new opportunitythat we're going to explore.
(24:33):
So it might be a smallopportunity, so it might not be
worth a PR FAQ.
A typical PR FAQ is going totake two to four weeks to go
through the full rounds ofreviews and feedback and
everything else, and so you haveto right size that to the type
of project.
If you're doing a project thatis four weeks long, maybe a PR
FAQ is not appropriate, unlessit's four weeks long, but it can
(24:56):
bankrupt the company.
So then, like, yes, you want tospend a lot of time talking
about that one.
Even though the project feelssmall, the blast rate is very
large.
On the other hand, if theproject is like three months or
more, you probably want to spendtwo weeks talking about vision
and strategy to make sure thatthe team is going to execute the
(25:16):
right.
Yeah, that's a good way to putit.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I was just going to say.
There's so many little nuggetsthat I'm pulling out here just
to reiterate, from being focusedon the strategy and vision.
And as soon as you said don'tadd details, it honestly took me
back to PowerPoints, whereyou're going for a response from
leadership, you're going forinsight, and they have the nerve
(25:42):
to take up the time by sayingwhy doesn't this chart look the
same as the other ones, or theother project or the other, like
just things that are notbringing value at all.
That we are focused on becausethere is detail.
We are detail oriented in thistype of technical whitear work,
computers, et cetera,engineering.
There's so much detail that welook into that we find it even
(26:03):
harder to review things withouthaving the nitty-gritty detail.
But the beauty of this is thatit provides the freedom for you
to do that in a safe space, aavoid of functions and people's
names, and just literally thisis where we want to all get to.
Now let's talk about what makessense to do that.
(26:26):
We're not talking anybody'sname the culture, the blast
radius I love that, somethingthat I have not done that myself
.
That, I think, is a criticalpoint.
If this doesn't work, how badis it going to hurt?
What are we going to cause ineffect, from the work that we're
doing now?
Are we going to dismantlethings or is it a small blip
(26:48):
that we can patch a bandaid onand try something else?
So I'm vibing right now withall of this.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, and one of the FAQs that is not uncommon to
include on a PR FAQ is what arethe risks, right?
So you're going to have one ortwo paragraphs there that are
going to talk about the risksand as you review the document
with more people, people aregoing to say wait a second,
there is a legal risk here,there is a compliance risk here.
So you include that on thatparagraph.
You make it simple, like youdon't want to explain the full
(27:17):
extent of the law and what isthe problem, just a strategic
level.
You want to have that sentenceinclude that.
So the next group of peoplereviewing it are going to read
that and it's like, oh okay,this is included.
So I need to think about thisother engineering risk or, you
know, customer go-to-market riskor other aspects.
So you're including, like,different angles on the FAQ
(27:39):
section so that at the end itbecomes such a better idea, a
better document, than what westarted with.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
I was going to add too.
I know you mentioned that thetypical length is six pages, and
so is that based on yourexperience with doing a lot of
these PRFAQs, Because I wouldimagine that if you don't have
limits around how long this isgoing to be, it can really you
can go crazy 30 page document.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
no one will ever look at.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Exactly.
You can have too much, but thenyou can also have too little.
Right, you want enough detailin there where somebody is
reading it, and I guess you know.
One question is how do youdetermine the length?
And then I think the other partof it is how do you treat this
later on throughout thelifecycle of that particular
product or process?
I think in a lot of our spacesthere's a lifecycle around it,
so it's not just a thing that'slike you etch in stone and then
(28:28):
we never touch it again.
It's probably something thatshould get revisited if there
are additional features in thefuture.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Like how do you, how does that work with the PR FAQ?
Yeah, I'm going to make it easyfor you.
The document is six pages long.
It's not seven, it's not five,it's six and it's a tried and
it's a battle tested systemdeveloped by Amazon.
So Amazon try many differentformats and the six is the
optimum length, because whatthey do and what everyone doing
(29:02):
a PR FQ should do, is everyreview meeting you start with
reading the document for 20minutes, so 95% of the people
can read the document in 20minutes or less, usually six
pages.
You can read in document in 20minutes or less, usually six
pages.
You can read it in 15 to 18minutes and then you have 40
(29:23):
minutes to have conversationsabout the document.
If you do a document that isfive pages instead of six,
that's okay, but seven is notokay, right?
Because then it takes longer,it takes away, it takes the
focus away from it and what itdoes is like when you have six
pages only, it forces you to bevery clear and very succinct and
very concise about what youwant to talk about and what
(29:46):
doesn't have to be there, allright.
So what I tell in the book islike if something is on the
document.
That's going to not going toimprove the conversation, the
discussion or the strategicchoices.
Just remove it.
Like put in another document.
Like put in a PRD or an OKRdocument or an execution plan or
implementation plan.
(30:06):
Like there are other documentsfor that?
Right.
On the PRPQ, you only includethe things that are going to be
valuable to discuss vision andstrategy.
That's it right.
And even on the vision andstrategy things, there are
certain aspects of strategy thatmight not be that important.
For example, you can say, likeyou know, the cloud provider
that we're going to use to buildthis technology on is part of
(30:29):
our strategic decision.
Is it really, like, does itmatter?
Like if we're going to do thisproject or not, if you're going
to use Google or AWS or Azure?
Like, probably not.
Like don't include it right,unless it is strategic.
When would it be strategic?
Well, because we're doing aproject with Microsoft, so we
probably don't want to use AWS,so you want to include that on
(30:51):
the document?
Then right.
So you have to, as the authorof the document, to start
thinking like is the?
Speaker 3 (31:04):
information should be here for other people to
discuss and debate, if notincluding some other document.
Right, and then the other pieceabout the lifecycle like it
probably takes some duration oftime to develop the thing and
then, like everybody goes offinto the woods and then they do
all their thing and then maybethere's some changes that need
to be done.
How do you usually handle thosetypes of changes later on in
the lifecycle of the document?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, I prefer to treat the PR FAQ as a historical
document, right?
Instead of a live document.
Like, you use the document, youmake your decision and you lock
it down into like go toeveryone, right.
And of course, a few things aregoing to diverge from the
original document, as youdiscover.
As long as they don't divergetoo much on the strategic or
(31:42):
vision side, like, you don'thave to worry about it.
If there is a divergence on likewell, we were doing that, now
we're doing this then youprobably need a new PR FAQ.
Right, it's a new project, it'sa different thing.
But you shouldn't be keepingupdating it, because if you keep
updating it, you're telling theentire team needs to review it
again and again and again,because otherwise they're going
(32:02):
to be working from a differentstarting point or a different
destination.
So use that as, once and onceeveryone is on board and the
project is approved, you're alsogoing to use when new employees
join your team or yourorganization, so they start from
like here's why we're doingwhat we're doing.
You hand them off with a peerFAQ.
They're like in 20 minutes theyget it right, they know where
(32:25):
you're going.
Again, they might not agreewith it, but they know where the
team is going right, and that'sso valuable in so many
organizations.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Are there instances, I guess, within a given project
or a product that's beingconstructed, where the duration
for that instruction might be toa length where your PR FAQ may
not quite you know.
Is it good for six months?
Is it good for five years?
I suppose that there's going tobe some differences depending
on the organization, the culture, how quickly they roll up
(32:56):
projects.
But wondering if there'sanything that you've seen, yeah,
yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Actually, a PR FAQ is for your next launch, right?
So what you're doing is you'redescribing what we're going to
do six months from now, ninemonths from now or 12 months
from now whatever.
That is right.
So the press release actuallysays in December, we're going to
launch the thing for theholiday season, yada, yada.
So that PR FAQ is worth forthat length of time.
(33:24):
Right, it's not the full visionof what you want to achieve.
You might have a much biggervision that is five years long
or 10 years long or whateverthey might be, but the problem
with those very long visionstatements or documents is that
they are not concrete enough foryou to execute against, right?
The PR FAQ is like here is thenext stepping stone that we are
(33:46):
building, you know, towards thebigger vision.
So one of the questions that Irecommend people include on the
PR FAQ is what is the biggervision?
Right?
So what you're painting isyou're painting the next step on
that vision, and then you havean FAQ that explains what is the
bigger vision that we're tryingto achieve.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know, when I think about this, marcelo and
Lawrence, it really does createsort of these micro visions for
projects that you're conducting.
I think we often get tied intolike a bigger vision for like an
organization and we stay withthat and try to bridge that
long-term strategy to theactivities you're supposed to be
(34:30):
doing now or in the next sixmonths.
And it's very hard to do thatand there's only few people that
I can think of that have theability to say I can take this
leader's vision from this veryjargony, sort of floaty language
that doesn't have any specifics.
And I can see this frameworkreally providing just such a
(34:52):
fundamental component of anyproject or product launch is
getting people aligned in thebeginning and not in the middle.
And, with that being said, I'msure you've been called in at
(35:14):
some point.
Where you're, they're in themiddle of something and this
group is over here and thatone's over there and we come
back together and they thoughtwe meant this.
How has this framework broughtthem back to go toward that
North Star?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yes, that is actually a use case for PR FAQ.
So what I recommend people dois like do the PR FAQ process
before you start a project.
If you haven't done it, it'sokay to do one halfway through
it.
If you feel like the team isnot aligned right and you're
seeing like things are movingslowly and all that, so like
(35:50):
take a step back, let's writethe PR FAQ for what we're doing.
Let's make sure that everyone'son the same page.
Let people critique, comment,review, revise so that get
incorporated.
And then you get a lockdown onlike okay, we have clarity now,
right, so now we can continue onthat project.
I would say the only timeline ofa project that you should not
(36:12):
do a PR FAQ is at the end of theproject, because a PR FAQ has a
press release and frequentlyasked questions.
People are like oh, it's amarketing tool, so we can use
the press release to announcethe product.
It's not for that.
Like you can write a pressrelease and a FAQ if you want to
launch your product, but the PRFAQ is a strategy and product
(36:33):
decision tool, right, so it'svery early on or before even you
start a project.
So that is a good example.
But the other thing that Ithink it's important mentioning
as well, oscar, is PR FAQ alsowork for personal projects, like
if you're thinking aboutlaunching a new podcast, writing
a book, or like doing you knowa side gig, whatever.
(36:54):
Like, the PR FAQ helps you getthe clarity of, like, who you're
serving, what problem you'reserving, what you don't know
about this yet, what you don'tknow about their problem how are
they solving their problemtoday?
Like all that is very helpful.
Like, I wrote a PR FAQ for myown book, right, because I
wanted to understand, like, whois going to read this book, why
(37:16):
they're going to read this book,how this book is going to solve
their problem and how they aresolving this problem today,
right?
So let me get clarity on that.
And it was such an enlighteningmoment for me I didn't review
it with anyone.
It was just like me writingthis by myself and like getting
more clarity and the bookchanged because of it, right?
(37:38):
So my original idea was oneabout writing a book for PR FAQ
for founders.
As I start writing a PR FAQ forthis book, I realized founders
was not really my market.
My market is innovators, anyonewho's trying to change
something, like build somethingnew or change something that
(37:59):
exists.
These are the people that aregoing to need to write for, and
that insight only came to mebecause I wrote the PR FAQ.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I was just going to say.
It's amazing when you hear theterm putting pen to paper.
But when you actually do thesethings, you can ask these
questions in your head and youcan sort of have this
understanding that you know,yeah, it's sort of there.
Yeah, you know I'm going to beputting this out to certain
people or this is to solvecertain problems.
But when you have to actuallysit there and craft a document
(38:28):
that is empty and to say, okay,now put your pen where your
mouth is right now, where yourhead is, wherever you know, and
illustrate that you have thevision wherever you know, and
(39:00):
illustrate that you have thevision that you understand what
with.
Well, how could we use this forthings that we're trying to do,
for things that we want toconvey later, for ideas that we
have that aren't quite fullybaked, that can help us ask
those questions?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Very powerful.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
And there's some science to that, what you're
saying, oscar.
By the way, when I wrote thebook, I decided to read a lot
about the science of reading andwriting, like what happens to
our brain when you're writingand reading content and there is
fascinating cognitive sciencebehind it.
So when you write down yourthoughts, what happens is you
(39:43):
start challenging the story thatyou made on your head about it.
So it creates a cognitivedissonance if the story is not
coherent.
So it's very hard for someoneto write a paragraph that is not
coherent.
It's very easy for us to thinkabout things that are not
coherent In our minds.
We create the scenarios and wego like, oh, we could do this
and do that.
And like, oh, it's such a greatidea, let's go do that.
It's all in your head, right.
But when you write it down,like it triggers a different
(40:08):
part of your brain thatactivates in your brain like
writing and reading that at thesame time challenges you right,
immediately, puts you in acritical thinking state because
it goes like wait a second, thisis not gonna work, this is not
going to work, this is not theright way.
So you go and you refine andyou find the gaps on your
thinking, you find whatstatements you made that are not
necessarily true.
That's why writing is sopowerful, and you lose a lot of
(40:31):
that when you use PowerPoint,because you don't have to write
full paragraphs, you just need abullet point.
It's very easy to be incoherentwith three bullet points
because you don't have to havethe full story, so you don't
need that coherence among thosebullet points.
Your brain is filling up thegap.
So and we already told, thebrain is not very good at that.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
And I remember laughing over here, man, yeah, I
was going to say like there wassomebody once said don't
believe everything you think,and this is exactly the point
that you're making, and I knowyou mentioned that.
One of the questions that youdo ask as part of the PRFAQ is
like, what is the bigger vision?
And I don't want you todisclose too much that's inside
your book, because people shouldbuy it and read it for
(41:15):
themselves.
But are there a few questionsthat you've you know over the
years of doing this that youreally recommend people
definitely include in their peerFAQ and there's probably
questions more tailored towards,obviously, companies building
products and services.
But there's also maybe somequestions on the personal side
that like, as you're thinkingthrough your change that you
want to have in your life, likewhat, what kind of questions are
you put in there from from yourexperience?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
I would say the most important questions that you
need to spend the most timefocusing on are problems-related
questions, customer problemsquestions, right, because
problems should be facts, itshouldn't be opinions, it
shouldn't be hypotheses, right?
You want to know that, likethis group of people or this
customers, or you know, thisteam has this problem, because
(42:03):
if you don't believe on thatproblem, if you don't have
enough data about it, how canyou solve it?
Like, if the problem doesn'treally exist, if it is not
urgent, if it is not severeenough, if they are already
happy with the solution thatthey have?
Like, what exactly are youdoing?
Right?
So you spend a lot of time onthose questions.
I'm not going to say like theyare the most important, they are
(42:25):
the only ones that you shouldinclude in your PR FAQ, but you
should spend quite a bit of timeon them, right?
Like, go deep into the problem,go deep into the mind and the
needs of the customers.
That desires whatever you'redoing.
Like it could be an internalteam.
It could be the employee of theorganization that you're
working on.
If you are like an internalteam serving them, like HR or IT
(42:45):
or legal or accounting, but itcould be your external customers
as well, b2b or B2C, like you.
Really want to understand thembetter.
They understand themselves.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
I love the nod that you know your focus on the
problems is a way for you tohave facts embedded into this PR
FAQ.
Yeah, it's very simple for usto make an assumption of a
problem because of a symptomthat we've experienced, or
(43:16):
perhaps the execution of thatprocess was wrong.
It doesn't mean that you have abad process, that you need to
fix it.
It might mean something else,like we need to train people to
deliver this a certain way.
Or, to your point, that theissue that is manifested, that
is not the problem.
You need to go deeper, find out.
(43:37):
Oh, look at that, there's anissue within the system, within
the backend of, within the backend of this website, or whatever
the case may be.
But that's such a key piece torecognize that even early on
with your problems, with yoursituations, you have facts that
you need to embody and rememberthat your future vision, the
(44:00):
goal, is to relieve theseproblems in that future vision
and I think, a conversation foranother day.
But there are instances wherethe vision starts to cater back
towards leadership, et cetera,without alleviating the problems
that were existing in the firstplace.
Because you start diggingaround, the onion starts to get,
(44:23):
you know, the layers start tocome out and then you go oh well
, this would be a great time todo X, nothing to do with the
problem, we're solving it.
So I think it's a greatperspective and something that
I'm going to take, and I knowthat Lawrence is going to take
as well.
So, before we wrap up, this hasbeen great and we could
(44:44):
probably talk for another hour.
What would you tell leaders whoare finding that their strategy
is not quite connecting to thereality of their execution, of
their teams?
How can they use theirframework?
How can they think differentlybefore launching new projects?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
I know it's going to sound self-serving, but what the
PR FAQ really does, it puts you, it forces you to think through
a lot of that to fill the gaps.
It's not a very structuredtemplate framework.
There is business model, canvasand other frameworks that are
very, very structured, like putthis information here, this word
(45:25):
there.
Pr FAQ is not like that.
But as you go writing your PRFAQ you feel forced to figure
stuff out right, otherwise youcan't complete it.
So you're going to have tofigure out what are the facts
about the problem, what are thefacts about the customer, what
is the facts about the market?
And have to figure out what arethe facts about the problem,
what are the facts about thecustomer, what is the facts
about the market?
(45:46):
And then what are ourhypotheses about the solution,
what are the hypotheses abouthow to solve this, the
feasibility of this projectright, the value for our
business.
So you incorporate all thatopens your mind and the team's
mind to exactly what is possiblehere and what's not.
And not all PR FAQs are going tolead to a green light right To
let's go ahead and execute.
(46:06):
You should expect that 50% ofyour PR FAQs, if you're using it
frequently, are no-goes becauseyour printing wasn't big enough
, the timing wasn't right, wecouldn't figure out the right
problem.
So that's a good outcome aswell for the PR FAQ.
Like you, didn't waste timegoing on that end, so just
starting on the PR FAQ is agreat way to solve a lot of the
(46:29):
strategy problems that youmentioned.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
I like your interesting choice of words that
you use for using it to likeforce you to kind of think about
these questions and answer them.
I think, as I was describing itto Oscar, I was telling him it's
a mechanism for us to dreamabout what it is that we'd like
to build and how it's going toimpact your customers and how we
would actually approach itinternally.
And that piece about allowingyou to think creatively, I think
(46:52):
is the real differentiatorbetween all these different
tools like you said, thebusiness canvas and there's the
SWOT matrix that you can drawand all these traditional tools
that we've learned in businessschool.
But I think this is somethingthat is very new to us because
even going through businessschool, we never came across
something like this.
And this just seems like commonsense now that we've talked
(47:14):
about this for an hour, thatwe're like why haven't we done
this before?
And it just seems that there'sa lot of different use cases for
this, and I just want to thankyou for your time and being able
to share this with us, and I'msure our audience is going to
find a ton of value fromlearning about the framework and
how they're going to use it inthe future as well.
You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Marcello Calvucci, author of the PRFAQ Framework.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Marcello, how can folks get in contact with you?
How can they find out moreabout the book?
Yeah, the easiest way is go toGoogle.
Search for PRFAQ book.
The book website is going to beone of the links there and from
the book website you're goingto find my contact information,
including my email address, andlots of articles and resources
about the book.
There is examples of PRFAQtemplates, tons of articles and
tips about the book.
There is examples of PR FAQtemplates, tons of articles and
(48:03):
tips on how to do it better.
So a lot out there.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Well, we're looking forward to digging more into the
PR FAQ framework.
I know that we're going to bepulling that in and seeing what
it can do for us as well.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
So once again.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Marcelo, thank you so much for taking the time to
meet with us and I look forwardto the next time we get to
connect.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Thank you, folks.
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Lean
by Design podcast.
I'm your host, oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, lawrence
Wong.
We are very excited to have aguest with us today, marcelo
Calpucci, who is the author,product tech leader.
Founder author of the PRFAQFramework.
He's been a product technologyexecutive over the last 25 years
(00:22):
, including places like Amazon,microsoft and many other
startups, so we're excited tohave him on board, and today we
brought him on because we wantto talk about this really
critical challenge that seems tobe stemming from executive
level projects that are you know, the execution just may not
(00:43):
quite be there.
So what we find is that toomany projects begin without
really defining what thatsuccess marker is going to look
like.
Marcelo, thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Folks, we're excited to dig intothis, and you know, I think,
that yourself, myself andLawrence, we've all been in this
situation where we are handed aproject or a side quest that
(01:09):
may have value coming fromleadership, yet the goals are
vague, the strategies aretypically ill-informed.
We can see this often withdecision makers that may be too
far from the ground level, theymay be too far removed from the
operations, and what happens?
You get dead ends.
In some cases, you may completeor reach a milestone where you
(01:33):
find out it was nothing like itwas supposed to be, based on the
leadership that sent this taskdown.
So I want to explore more aboutthe PRFAQ framework and what is
this framework solving forthese projects.
Can you tell us a little bitabout the framework?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah.
So let's take a step back here.
I love the way you set this upright.
So what often happens is evenan executive as myself, or like
if you're a manager or anindividual contributor you are
asked for an output, not anoutcome.
That's the number one mistakethat a lot of people go through
(02:12):
when they are working on aproject.
They're just saying, like, dothis thing because we want this
other thing.
Right, and that's not enoughfor you to have the context or
to understand what value are youcreating.
Why are we doing all this stuff?
And at Amazon about 20 years ago, there was a lot of problems
going on with the organizationright, because the company was
(02:34):
growing fast and many projectswere running parallel.
People start to lose trackabout why are we doing this
again, like, how does thisconnect to the bigger strategy?
So Amazon created the PR FAQframework, which stands for
press release and frequentlyasked questions, and Jeff Bezos
was directly involved in thecreation of this right.
(02:54):
So it was to support his needand the need of the team working
on a project so they couldcommunicate better.
Right, and what this frameworkis?
It's a vision and strategyframework for you to discover,
debate and decide For any kindof project.
It could be a new product, anew business, a program, even a
(03:17):
policy or a process within theorganization.
You can use the PR FAQ and it'salso known as the working
backwards.
The reason it's called likethat is because the first page
of the PR FAQ, which is thepress release, is a hypothetical
press release about a futurestate of your product.
So you write as if you alreadydone the work.
(03:40):
Right?
So you write a PR press releaseas today we are launching this
product that solves this problemfor these customers.
This is how our solution works.
But nothing has been done yet,right?
So you're setting a state ofthe world how you want it to be,
and then you work backwardsfrom that on the FAQ section,
(04:00):
saying, like, how are we goingto get there?
Right?
So the FAQ is in the format offrequently asked questions,
answering questions about theviability, the feasibility, what
research has been done, who'sthe customer, what problem they
have, what is in the markettoday.
So everything is including theFAQ.
So this is a six page documentand on Amazon, and what I wrote
(04:22):
on my book is like use that asthe centerpiece for the
discussion, right?
Like?
So the team can go back andforth and like, refine the idea
and figure out how to make itbetter, like what we don't know,
what we need to do moreresearch on what we can take a
leap of faith.
All those things are like outin the open.
And the beautiful aspect of thePRPQ, at least for my opinion,
(04:45):
is not the document itself, itis the review and the process
where you get differentperspectives, right From an
engineer, from a designer orfrom a salesperson or from
marketing, even from executives,right.
So often executives are leftout of that phase of ideation
and they are just presenting theta-da you know presentation at
(05:08):
the end, but they're like, waita second.
This doesn't align with thestrategy that I was thinking,
because no one like incorporatedthe feedback from executives.
So the PR review is veryvaluable, you know, for all the
team to collaborate into findinga better strategy and vision
for what we should be doing.
I love that explanation.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I mean, one of the very first things that you
mentioned was that what happensoften is that we get asked for
an output and not an outcome,and I think we talked about this
a little bit in our initialconversation prior to the
podcast that talked about, forexample, features rather than
what you're actually solving.
What are you actually trying todo?
And sometimes it causes a pausebecause it's a different way of
(05:52):
thinking about your end state.
What is so powerful now that isforcing you to create a project
, to fix something?
And it's not the features thatyou find at the end, it is the
underlying root causes, theunderlying issues behind all of
the things that will eventuallylead to having features or or,
(06:13):
in this case, what that outputwould look like.
Because, as we talked aboutbefore, it's almost.
It's almost like going in andgoing to the doctor and saying I
need you to pull my tooth.
Well, maybe your outcome isthat you want your tooth pulled,
but you're having a toothachebecause of something else that's
happening that has nothing todo with needing to extract a
tooth in there.
You know, so it's.
(06:34):
It's interesting because whenyou ask for an output, you're
essentially jumping into I needyou to execute this.
Why is it that we feel socomfortable jumping into
execution without a realstrategy?
And then, who is responsiblefor filling in that gap?
(06:56):
Who is the one that needs tosay okay, this is what they said
, but what they really want issomething that solves X.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
How do we get over that?
I think it's human nature.
I think we love to do thingsright, Like we love to solve
problems.
We like to jump and likeexecute, particularly like good
professionals.
Right, they're like hey, wehave this problem.
The first thing they do is likelet's solve it right, Not let's
(07:31):
think about it, let's take astep back.
Is it even worth solving thisproblem, or is this the right
problem to solve?
So in many settings, at leastin the tech world that I work at
, like everyone is like go, go,go, do, do, do.
Right, there was not a lot ofthinking, not a lot of
strategizing.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
So's what I, what I think it is you know there's
something to be said abouttaking on an initiative that's
going to fix a problem.
You know there's excitementthere's, and from our
experiences, these things arenot quick fixes.
If they were quick fixes theyprobably wouldn't be as big of a
(08:05):
problem as they are there'susually.
You know at the end whether youhave a product or a process.
You know whatever in place, youneed to adopt that thing, and
it's not just you who'sparticipating, it's also the
stakeholders around you.
So you know, I think, that whenyou are jumping into execution,
(08:26):
you make a very valid pointlet's fix it.
I have this problem in my ownpersonal life.
When there's any issue in thehouse, my first thing is okay,
oster's going to fix the problem.
And that's not always thesolution.
Sometimes I just need to listento my wife for you know half an
hour and figure out togetherwhat we're going to do, have a
(08:47):
strategy towards fixingsomething, because we're so
accustomed to finding not thedisease, not the illness, but
the symptom that's making usthink that, oh, if we apply this
, it will stop that.
But again, those are symptoms.
Those are not the real issueand the real problem.
(09:08):
And what I love about the PRFAQframework is that you create
your desired future state rightat the top, saying this is where
we aim to go.
That's the North Star.
What does it look like when youdon't have that North Star?
What does it look like when youdon't have that North Star?
What does it look like when youhaven't thought about that
(09:28):
future state?
Are there signs that teams orprojects that show up to show
that they never had that futurestate?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Before you answer that question, I think,
culturally, like what you saidbefore, as humans we just like
to do things, we like checklists, we like direction, we like to
follow rules, and so if you'rein a culture where that is the
norm, then you don't reallyquestion these initiatives and
people just go right along.
But I think, even talking toOscar about maybe perhaps using
(09:57):
this for some of the stuff thatwe're doing in our own business,
that it unlocks your creativityand dreaming about what this is
going to be, what it's going tobe like for your customers, but
also for your internal team,and so it removes some of the
constraints where you're goingto have to add them back later
on, but at least in this initialphase it allows everybody to
get out, whatever their thoughtsare.
That shift in thinking allowsyou to think about problems in a
(10:19):
completely different way, andit's a change for people to
think that way.
And you must see teams thatdon't think about it this way,
and there are some clear signsof maybe they operate using just
project charters and it's justlike this document.
That's very boring and you haveall these rules, and so you
know look to Oscar's questionwhat are some of those signs
(10:40):
that you see when people are notthinking in that same
philosophy as a PR FAQ.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, yeah, you're spot on, Lawrence.
What happens is a lot of timespeople don't do enough divergent
thinking right.
And divergent thinking is awhole category of things that
include, like design thinking,brainstorm, SWOT analysis, like
let your brain like think ofmany things, think of many
(11:06):
aspects of the problem.
Also think of many solutions.
One of the problems that oftenoccur is like people find a
solution for a problem andexecute on it right and like
doesn't challenge that Is thisthe best problem for us to solve
?
Is this the best solution forthat problem, and should we
execute this against every otherpriority that we have on our
(11:29):
business, right?
So the way that manifestsitself that you notice very
commonly is when teams start toget quite misaligned right, when
you see people going inslightly different directions.
That doesn't feel that harmful,but as the project evolves,
there starts to have a lot ofconflict, a lot of dysfunction,
(11:51):
like a lot of heated exchangesabout people saying, no, it's
not have a lot of conflict, alot of dysfunction, like a lot
of heated exchanges about peoplesaying, no, it's not this, it's
that right, it's not thisdirection, it's that direction.
And, like you said, Oscar, it'sthe lack of a North Star right.
Like imagine you and your wifego on vacation but you do not
have a conversation of whereyou're going, you know how long
it's going to be and those kindof things.
Like it's going to be awkward.
(12:13):
Like you're driving and she isthinking we are going this place
and you're thinking we're goingthat place, and they're like,
wait a second, I wasn't preparedfor that.
So teams have the same problem,right?
If they start a project andthey really don't understand the
end state, like the outcomethat they want to have is going
to be much harder for them,they're going to go all over the
place and bounce around.
(12:34):
So I say like the symptoms of,you know, lack of vision and
strategy early on are usuallymisalignment, too many meetings,
too many emails back and forth,because people cannot do the
work that they think they needto do independently.
They depend on so many otherpeople.
Because there was that lack ofinitial alignment and also what
(12:55):
happens is a lot of misfires,right?
So the project moves in adirection.
Then like, oh no, that was notit.
Take it back, execute the rightdirection.
So it makes the project movesmuch slower we're talking two,
three times slower than itneeded to be if there was that
initial alignment.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You know, as you were giving that example, it was
making me think of when you'rein the process of planning a
vacation with a loved one orwith a family or a group of
friends.
Whatever the case may be, thereare certain things you got to do
.
You're going to take off ofwork, going to figure out who's
going to feed the dog and thecat and all of these things that
are irrelevant to where you'reactually going, and then finding
(13:36):
out that, let's say, forexample, we were going to go to
Sunshine and Beaches and mycounterpart thought that we were
going up north to see NorthernLights or something somewhere
cold.
Well now, we're definitely notprepared for the same space.
You know something that itseems so fundamental.
But I think that this is agreat point to tack on to what
(13:59):
Lawrence was saying earlier whenyou realize that a
documentation that's developedlike this, that allows multiple
perspectives, gives you reallythis open canvas for how to get
there, Because when you're onlythinking in the mindset or the
framework of one or two mainparties within this issue and
you're ignoring all of thestakeholder feedback and the
(14:22):
various experiences, I mean weare in an industry that we are
so blessed to have people thathave not had the experience that
we have and, in the same lineof thinking, we have not had the
experience that they have had,and so it's really important, I
think, to take advantage of thatto say you know what are the
different perspectives, Becauseyou're exactly right, these
(14:43):
misfires what do they look like?
Well, in some cases we hadsomebody from research and they
went back and told their manager, who then it went up to the
chief of research and nowthere's a whole perception of
what the project is that isincorrect and is now creating
(15:03):
emails that are coming in.
I got a random meeting that cameup that somebody wants to talk
to me.
How did this happen?
We only met two weeks ago.
We shouldn't even be havingthis conversation with
leadership.
We're weeks, if not months,away from the delivery of the
solution.
It's because we were notaligned.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yes, and that happens often, oscar, when you have a
slide deck culture like you usePowerPoint to do things right.
Because what happens with thePowerPoint strategy is it
doesn't have enough there thatyou can just hand off the
PowerPoint to someone withouttelling them anything and they
(15:41):
fully understanding what is thestrategy.
Right, the PR FAQ forces andnarratives so that anyone
reading that document willunderstand it.
They might not even agree withit, but they will understand it.
So there is a lot lessmisalignment about that.
They might say, like that's notthe direction we should go,
that's not our North Star, butat least they can say that when
(16:02):
they look at a PowerPoint thatis a bunch of bullet points, a
few diagrams, you know they'regoing to interpolate or project
what they are imagining, whatthe North Star is right and what
is the strategy to get there.
So when they go and tellsomeone else right, this is
already two degrees ofseparation from the original
(16:24):
person things get reallydiffused, right, like you're
talking about almost a differentproject project, and it gets
worse and worse and worse as theinformation passed along to
more people.
The PR vehicle doesn't have thisproblem.
There was a document.
Everyone can read the samedocument and start from the same
context and same information.
Right, so it's it's way morepowerful and that's what helped
(16:45):
Amazon quite a bit, because ithelps them execute in isolation.
Quote right, like a team can dotheir job in isolation because
everyone that's going to beinvolved already bought into the
strategy and the vision andthey know exactly what it's
going to do, so that team canmove really fast.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Just to add actually to query do you recall how large
Amazon was when they decided tocome up with this framework or
at least make this framework apart of the organization?
I would imagine there's so muchpower in here, as you mentioned,
that it gives the ability to goagainst a North Star versus in
some PowerPoint-centricindustries, really like ours.
(17:24):
Try to tell a story throughPowerPoint and tell me that
people are doing that everysingle time.
They do slide presentations andI would call you a liar,
because that's not true.
You come in there and it almostis delivered that every slide
is by itself Reference its ownNorth Star.
The way that the PRFAQ linesthings out really shows you
(17:46):
whether you agree or not.
This is the direction.
This is what this is going tolook like.
At the end, you can argue thatthat is not where we need to go,
which is great.
We can talk about that and thenwork out that FAQ part
afterwards, but it gives you ananchor and I think that's what
misses from a lot of these.
That's where you know, when wetalk about, where the root cause
(18:08):
for these things are.
We have high level decisionmakers that are super
intelligent, where you know thatmisalignment and that you know.
I love that you mentioned in aPR FAQ.
You include your leadershipbecause you want them to also be
bought in.
This is what we're looking forat the very end of the road Not
(18:28):
a feature, not a software.
For at the very end of the roadNot a feature, not a software.
This is the way we want life tobe.
When we're done with thisproject, do we put all the blame
on the one that asked us for aproject?
How do we bridge that?
How do we undo thatmisalignment from the beginning?
Speaker 3 (18:45):
I think the easy answer is to blame it on
somebody and for them to beshort-sighted.
And a lot of ego is involved inthese large companies, and I
think people have a lot to provewhen you have such a large
initiative.
But I think it's this likechicken or the egg thing, where
you're misaligned because youhaven't gotten the feedback yet,
and so we have to get thefeedback in order to be aligned,
(19:06):
and so I think it all comesdown to the tools that people
use to really communicate thisinformation, right?
So, whether it's a PowerPointor some rigid document like a
project charter, it's not veryopen for soliciting feedback,
and I think the beauty of thePRFAQ is that you can customize
the questions to really matchwhat those two segments are,
(19:26):
whether you're reaching out tocustomers externally or you're
looking at your internal teamsto figure out, okay, what are
the problem areas that you'retrying to really focus on as we
think about developing thisservice or product.
I'm just curious how you see Imean, you've worked with a lot
of high-level executives that Iwould imagine have a lot of ego
(19:48):
but then at the other end of it,that is not the sole blame,
right?
I think there's othercomponents to the system, as I
will call it.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, exactly, there is not a single person that is
culpable of this problem.
It's a systemic problem on theorganization right?
An organization that doesn'tembrace feedback and doesn't
embrace questioning or is notcurious to know why we're doing
this, what exactly are weexecuting and what is the impact
for the business?
What is the impact for thecustomer?
They're going to suffer thisproblem no matter what right,
(20:18):
regardless of PR FAQ orPowerPoint.
But a PR FAQ, like you said,like it is part of the process
to get reviews.
So what I often say is there isno buy-in on a PR FAQ.
There is way in, like peopleare part of the process of
defining the vision and thestrategy so that you know you
(20:40):
find the best version of itright.
And the interesting thing is,sometimes there is no great
version of it and you decide notto do it right.
So the PR FQ itself saves youtens of millions of dollars or
tens of months from going in atthat end, because, as the team
debated and discussed andgathered more information and
(21:02):
put on the document, theyrealized this is not a good
opportunity, like it's not worthpursuing.
Maybe it's not big enough,maybe the product doesn't exist,
maybe the solution is notfeasible or not viable, it's too
costly, but like, that wasdecided early on, before people
committed to it and startexecuting.
So what I say is usually PR FAQ.
You do a PR FAQ before youstart a project.
(21:25):
The PR FAQ is the instrumentthat's going to help you decide
if you should pursue anopportunity or not.
Right, that's going to help youdecide if you should pursue an
opportunity or not.
Right, and you have to take theangle from.
You know different perspectives, different people looking at it
, giving their opinion.
It's not a plan, it's not aroadmap.
Like you're not going to put,like all the list of things that
you're going to do and whenyou're going to do it and all
(21:46):
the team that's going to do that.
It's more what would thestrategy be to achieve that
outcome?
Right, so people can critiquethe strategy.
And one of the beautiful things,for example, is two things.
Actually, pr figures don'tinclude any names, like there
was not.
The name of the author doesn'tappear on the document, because
we are not discussing, you know,the importance of this person.
(22:09):
We're discussing the merit ofthe idea, right?
So focus on the idea, focus onthe vision, focus on the
strategy.
That's a very important aspectof PR thinking.
The second thing is, for example, if you're doing a software,
like, you don't includescreenshots or wireframes or
mocks or anything like that,because you don't want people
(22:30):
critiquing details.
Or, in many projects likebranding, for example, don't
include anything related tobranding.
That comes later, like once youdecide these projects worth
pursuing, then you can work onthose specifics.
Right, what is the branding?
What is the user experience?
What is the why?
What is the product renderingthat we're going to build
(22:51):
experience?
What is the why?
What is the product renderingthat we're going to build Like?
Whatever other details of theexecution don't belong in a PR
FAQ.
The PR FAQ is really strategyand vision, so you focus on that
area, so you can have aconversation that is very high
level.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Yeah, and it sounds like your traditional tools like
PowerPoint and all these otherdifferent mechanisms as a
project charter, like thepurpose is more output focused,
whereas I think the PR FAQ, thepurpose is more outcome focused.
Right, and so you're morefocused on what is when we build
this thing, what is it going tobe for everybody versus okay,
(23:25):
what are the A, B and C of theproduct feature, and it's really
rigid in that way.
I think there's a lot ofdifferent use cases now that I'm
more thinking about it and it'snot really specific to a
product and you can apply it todifferent initiatives.
But I'm interested to hear whatis the line between whether you
do it or don't do it and thenwhat are the small mechanics
(23:48):
around the process itself.
How long would this typicallytake and how many people do you
get feedback to weigh in on?
Right, Because you can have waytoo many cooks in the kitchen
that everybody has something tosay and that gets out of hand
and you want to elicit opinion,but at the same time, you don't
want a thousand people weighingin and you're reading all of
(24:08):
these different comments aboutwhat you're about to do.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, that depends on the culture of the organization
, right?
And I think the other twoelements that go into that is
what is the scope of thisproject and what is the blast
radio of this project?
What happens if it goes badly?
Right, so in many projects,maybe nothing happens if it goes
badly.
It's just a new opportunitythat we're going to explore.
(24:33):
So it might be a smallopportunity, so it might not be
worth a PR FAQ.
A typical PR FAQ is going totake two to four weeks to go
through the full rounds ofreviews and feedback and
everything else, and so you haveto right size that to the type
of project.
If you're doing a project thatis four weeks long, maybe a PR
FAQ is not appropriate, unlessit's four weeks long, but it can
(24:56):
bankrupt the company.
So then, like, yes, you want tospend a lot of time talking
about that one.
Even though the project feelssmall, the blast rate is very
large.
On the other hand, if theproject is like three months or
more, you probably want to spendtwo weeks talking about vision
and strategy to make sure thatthe team is going to execute the
(25:16):
right.
Yeah, that's a good way to putit.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
I was just going to say.
There's so many little nuggetsthat I'm pulling out here just
to reiterate, from being focusedon the strategy and vision.
And as soon as you said don'tadd details, it honestly took me
back to PowerPoints, whereyou're going for a response from
leadership, you're going forinsight, and they have the nerve
(25:42):
to take up the time by sayingwhy doesn't this chart look the
same as the other ones, or theother project or the other, like
just things that are notbringing value at all.
That we are focused on becausethere is detail.
We are detail oriented in thistype of technical whitear work,
computers, et cetera,engineering.
There's so much detail that welook into that we find it even
(26:03):
harder to review things withouthaving the nitty-gritty detail.
But the beauty of this is thatit provides the freedom for you
to do that in a safe space, aavoid of functions and people's
names, and just literally thisis where we want to all get to.
Now let's talk about what makessense to do that.
(26:26):
We're not talking anybody'sname the culture, the blast
radius I love that, somethingthat I have not done that myself
.
That, I think, is a criticalpoint.
If this doesn't work, how badis it going to hurt?
What are we going to cause ineffect, from the work that we're
doing now?
Are we going to dismantlethings or is it a small blip
(26:48):
that we can patch a bandaid onand try something else?
So I'm vibing right now withall of this.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, and one of the FAQs that is not uncommon to
include on a PR FAQ is what arethe risks, right?
So you're going to have one ortwo paragraphs there that are
going to talk about the risksand as you review the document
with more people, people aregoing to say wait a second,
there is a legal risk here,there is a compliance risk here.
So you include that on thatparagraph.
You make it simple, like youdon't want to explain the full
(27:17):
extent of the law and what isthe problem, just a strategic
level.
You want to have that sentenceinclude that.
So the next group of peoplereviewing it are going to read
that and it's like, oh okay,this is included.
So I need to think about thisother engineering risk or, you
know, customer go-to-market riskor other aspects.
So you're including, like,different angles on the FAQ
(27:39):
section so that at the end itbecomes such a better idea, a
better document, than what westarted with.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
I was going to add too.
I know you mentioned that thetypical length is six pages, and
so is that based on yourexperience with doing a lot of
these PRFAQs, Because I wouldimagine that if you don't have
limits around how long this isgoing to be, it can really you
can go crazy 30 page document.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
no one will ever look at.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Exactly.
You can have too much, but thenyou can also have too little.
Right, you want enough detailin there where somebody is
reading it, and I guess you know.
One question is how do youdetermine the length?
And then I think the other partof it is how do you treat this
later on throughout thelifecycle of that particular
product or process?
I think in a lot of our spacesthere's a lifecycle around it,
so it's not just a thing that'slike you etch in stone and then
(28:28):
we never touch it again.
It's probably something thatshould get revisited if there
are additional features in thefuture.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Like how do you, how does that work with the PR FAQ?
Yeah, I'm going to make it easyfor you.
The document is six pages long.
It's not seven, it's not five,it's six and it's a tried and
it's a battle tested systemdeveloped by Amazon.
So Amazon try many differentformats and the six is the
optimum length, because whatthey do and what everyone doing
(29:02):
a PR FQ should do, is everyreview meeting you start with
reading the document for 20minutes, so 95% of the people
can read the document in 20minutes or less, usually six
pages.
You can read in document in 20minutes or less, usually six
pages.
You can read it in 15 to 18minutes and then you have 40
(29:23):
minutes to have conversationsabout the document.
If you do a document that isfive pages instead of six,
that's okay, but seven is notokay, right?
Because then it takes longer,it takes away, it takes the
focus away from it and what itdoes is like when you have six
pages only, it forces you to bevery clear and very succinct and
very concise about what youwant to talk about and what
(29:46):
doesn't have to be there, allright.
So what I tell in the book islike if something is on the
document.
That's going to not going toimprove the conversation, the
discussion or the strategicchoices.
Just remove it.
Like put in another document.
Like put in a PRD or an OKRdocument or an execution plan or
implementation plan.
(30:06):
Like there are other documentsfor that?
Right.
On the PRPQ, you only includethe things that are going to be
valuable to discuss vision andstrategy.
That's it right.
And even on the vision andstrategy things, there are
certain aspects of strategy thatmight not be that important.
For example, you can say, likeyou know, the cloud provider
that we're going to use to buildthis technology on is part of
(30:29):
our strategic decision.
Is it really, like, does itmatter?
Like if we're going to do thisproject or not, if you're going
to use Google or AWS or Azure?
Like, probably not.
Like don't include it right,unless it is strategic.
When would it be strategic?
Well, because we're doing aproject with Microsoft, so we
probably don't want to use AWS,so you want to include that on
(30:51):
the document?
Then right.
So you have to, as the authorof the document, to start
thinking like is the?
Speaker 3 (31:04):
information should be here for other people to
discuss and debate, if notincluding some other document.
Right, and then the other pieceabout the lifecycle like it
probably takes some duration oftime to develop the thing and
then, like everybody goes offinto the woods and then they do
all their thing and then maybethere's some changes that need
to be done.
How do you usually handle thosetypes of changes later on in
the lifecycle of the document?
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah, I prefer to treat the PR FAQ as a historical
document, right?
Instead of a live document.
Like, you use the document, youmake your decision and you lock
it down into like go toeveryone, right.
And of course, a few things aregoing to diverge from the
original document, as youdiscover.
As long as they don't divergetoo much on the strategic or
(31:42):
vision side, like, you don'thave to worry about it.
If there is a divergence on likewell, we were doing that, now
we're doing this then youprobably need a new PR FAQ.
Right, it's a new project, it'sa different thing.
But you shouldn't be keepingupdating it, because if you keep
updating it, you're telling theentire team needs to review it
again and again and again,because otherwise they're going
(32:02):
to be working from a differentstarting point or a different
destination.
So use that as, once and onceeveryone is on board and the
project is approved, you're alsogoing to use when new employees
join your team or yourorganization, so they start from
like here's why we're doingwhat we're doing.
You hand them off with a peerFAQ.
They're like in 20 minutes theyget it right, they know where
(32:25):
you're going.
Again, they might not agreewith it, but they know where the
team is going right, and that'sso valuable in so many
organizations.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Are there instances, I guess, within a given project
or a product that's beingconstructed, where the duration
for that instruction might be toa length where your PR FAQ may
not quite you know.
Is it good for six months?
Is it good for five years?
I suppose that there's going tobe some differences depending
on the organization, the culture, how quickly they roll up
(32:56):
projects.
But wondering if there'sanything that you've seen, yeah,
yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Actually, a PR FAQ is for your next launch, right?
So what you're doing is you'redescribing what we're going to
do six months from now, ninemonths from now or 12 months
from now whatever.
That is right.
So the press release actuallysays in December, we're going to
launch the thing for theholiday season, yada, yada.
So that PR FAQ is worth forthat length of time.
(33:24):
Right, it's not the full visionof what you want to achieve.
You might have a much biggervision that is five years long
or 10 years long or whateverthey might be, but the problem
with those very long visionstatements or documents is that
they are not concrete enough foryou to execute against, right?
The PR FAQ is like here is thenext stepping stone that we are
(33:46):
building, you know, towards thebigger vision.
So one of the questions that Irecommend people include on the
PR FAQ is what is the biggervision?
Right?
So what you're painting isyou're painting the next step on
that vision, and then you havean FAQ that explains what is the
bigger vision that we're tryingto achieve.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You know, when I think about this, marcelo and
Lawrence, it really does createsort of these micro visions for
projects that you're conducting.
I think we often get tied intolike a bigger vision for like an
organization and we stay withthat and try to bridge that
long-term strategy to theactivities you're supposed to be
(34:30):
doing now or in the next sixmonths.
And it's very hard to do thatand there's only few people that
I can think of that have theability to say I can take this
leader's vision from this veryjargony, sort of floaty language
that doesn't have any specifics.
And I can see this frameworkreally providing just such a
(34:52):
fundamental component of anyproject or product launch is
getting people aligned in thebeginning and not in the middle.
And, with that being said, I'msure you've been called in at
(35:14):
some point.
Where you're, they're in themiddle of something and this
group is over here and thatone's over there and we come
back together and they thoughtwe meant this.
How has this framework broughtthem back to go toward that
North Star?
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yes, that is actually a use case for PR FAQ.
So what I recommend people dois like do the PR FAQ process
before you start a project.
If you haven't done it, it'sokay to do one halfway through
it.
If you feel like the team isnot aligned right and you're
seeing like things are movingslowly and all that, so like
(35:50):
take a step back, let's writethe PR FAQ for what we're doing.
Let's make sure that everyone'son the same page.
Let people critique, comment,review, revise so that get
incorporated.
And then you get a lockdown onlike okay, we have clarity now,
right, so now we can continue onthat project.
I would say the only timeline ofa project that you should not
(36:12):
do a PR FAQ is at the end of theproject, because a PR FAQ has a
press release and frequentlyasked questions.
People are like oh, it's amarketing tool, so we can use
the press release to announcethe product.
It's not for that.
Like you can write a pressrelease and a FAQ if you want to
launch your product, but the PRFAQ is a strategy and product
(36:33):
decision tool, right, so it'svery early on or before even you
start a project.
So that is a good example.
But the other thing that Ithink it's important mentioning
as well, oscar, is PR FAQ alsowork for personal projects, like
if you're thinking aboutlaunching a new podcast, writing
a book, or like doing you knowa side gig, whatever.
(36:54):
Like, the PR FAQ helps you getthe clarity of, like, who you're
serving, what problem you'reserving, what you don't know
about this yet, what you don'tknow about their problem how are
they solving their problemtoday?
Like all that is very helpful.
Like, I wrote a PR FAQ for myown book, right, because I
wanted to understand, like, whois going to read this book, why
(37:16):
they're going to read this book,how this book is going to solve
their problem and how they aresolving this problem today,
right?
So let me get clarity on that.
And it was such an enlighteningmoment for me I didn't review
it with anyone.
It was just like me writingthis by myself and like getting
more clarity and the bookchanged because of it, right?
(37:38):
So my original idea was oneabout writing a book for PR FAQ
for founders.
As I start writing a PR FAQ forthis book, I realized founders
was not really my market.
My market is innovators, anyonewho's trying to change
something, like build somethingnew or change something that
(37:59):
exists.
These are the people that aregoing to need to write for, and
that insight only came to mebecause I wrote the PR FAQ.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
I was just going to say.
It's amazing when you hear theterm putting pen to paper.
But when you actually do thesethings, you can ask these
questions in your head and youcan sort of have this
understanding that you know,yeah, it's sort of there.
Yeah, you know I'm going to beputting this out to certain
people or this is to solvecertain problems.
But when you have to actuallysit there and craft a document
(38:28):
that is empty and to say, okay,now put your pen where your
mouth is right now, where yourhead is, wherever you know, and
illustrate that you have thevision wherever you know, and
(39:00):
illustrate that you have thevision that you understand what
with.
Well, how could we use this forthings that we're trying to do,
for things that we want toconvey later, for ideas that we
have that aren't quite fullybaked, that can help us ask
those questions?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Very powerful.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
And there's some science to that, what you're
saying, oscar.
By the way, when I wrote thebook, I decided to read a lot
about the science of reading andwriting, like what happens to
our brain when you're writingand reading content and there is
fascinating cognitive sciencebehind it.
So when you write down yourthoughts, what happens is you
(39:43):
start challenging the story thatyou made on your head about it.
So it creates a cognitivedissonance if the story is not
coherent.
So it's very hard for someoneto write a paragraph that is not
coherent.
It's very easy for us to thinkabout things that are not
coherent In our minds.
We create the scenarios and wego like, oh, we could do this
and do that.
And like, oh, it's such a greatidea, let's go do that.
It's all in your head, right.
But when you write it down,like it triggers a different
(40:08):
part of your brain thatactivates in your brain like
writing and reading that at thesame time challenges you right,
immediately, puts you in acritical thinking state because
it goes like wait a second, thisis not gonna work, this is not
going to work, this is not theright way.
So you go and you refine andyou find the gaps on your
thinking, you find whatstatements you made that are not
necessarily true.
That's why writing is sopowerful, and you lose a lot of
(40:31):
that when you use PowerPoint,because you don't have to write
full paragraphs, you just need abullet point.
It's very easy to be incoherentwith three bullet points
because you don't have to havethe full story, so you don't
need that coherence among thosebullet points.
Your brain is filling up thegap.
So and we already told, thebrain is not very good at that.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
And I remember laughing over here, man, yeah, I
was going to say like there wassomebody once said don't
believe everything you think,and this is exactly the point
that you're making, and I knowyou mentioned that.
One of the questions that youdo ask as part of the PRFAQ is
like, what is the bigger vision?
And I don't want you todisclose too much that's inside
your book, because people shouldbuy it and read it for
(41:15):
themselves.
But are there a few questionsthat you've you know over the
years of doing this that youreally recommend people
definitely include in their peerFAQ and there's probably
questions more tailored towards,obviously, companies building
products and services.
But there's also maybe somequestions on the personal side
that like, as you're thinkingthrough your change that you
want to have in your life, likewhat, what kind of questions are
you put in there from from yourexperience?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
I would say the most important questions that you
need to spend the most timefocusing on are problems-related
questions, customer problemsquestions, right, because
problems should be facts, itshouldn't be opinions, it
shouldn't be hypotheses, right?
You want to know that, likethis group of people or this
customers, or you know, thisteam has this problem, because
(42:03):
if you don't believe on thatproblem, if you don't have
enough data about it, how canyou solve it?
Like, if the problem doesn'treally exist, if it is not
urgent, if it is not severeenough, if they are already
happy with the solution thatthey have?
Like, what exactly are youdoing?
Right?
So you spend a lot of time onthose questions.
I'm not going to say like theyare the most important, they are
(42:25):
the only ones that you shouldinclude in your PR FAQ, but you
should spend quite a bit of timeon them, right?
Like, go deep into the problem,go deep into the mind and the
needs of the customers.
That desires whatever you'redoing.
Like it could be an internalteam.
It could be the employee of theorganization that you're
working on.
If you are like an internalteam serving them, like HR or IT
(42:45):
or legal or accounting, but itcould be your external customers
as well, b2b or B2C, like you.
Really want to understand thembetter.
They understand themselves.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
I love the nod that you know your focus on the
problems is a way for you tohave facts embedded into this PR
FAQ.
Yeah, it's very simple for usto make an assumption of a
problem because of a symptomthat we've experienced, or
(43:16):
perhaps the execution of thatprocess was wrong.
It doesn't mean that you have abad process, that you need to
fix it.
It might mean something else,like we need to train people to
deliver this a certain way.
Or, to your point, that theissue that is manifested, that
is not the problem.
You need to go deeper, find out.
(43:37):
Oh, look at that, there's anissue within the system, within
the backend of, within the backend of this website, or whatever
the case may be.
But that's such a key piece torecognize that even early on
with your problems, with yoursituations, you have facts that
you need to embody and rememberthat your future vision, the
(44:00):
goal, is to relieve theseproblems in that future vision
and I think, a conversation foranother day.
But there are instances wherethe vision starts to cater back
towards leadership, et cetera,without alleviating the problems
that were existing in the firstplace.
Because you start diggingaround, the onion starts to get,
(44:23):
you know, the layers start tocome out and then you go oh well
, this would be a great time todo X, nothing to do with the
problem, we're solving it.
So I think it's a greatperspective and something that
I'm going to take, and I knowthat Lawrence is going to take
as well.
So, before we wrap up, this hasbeen great and we could
(44:44):
probably talk for another hour.
What would you tell leaders whoare finding that their strategy
is not quite connecting to thereality of their execution, of
their teams?
How can they use theirframework?
How can they think differentlybefore launching new projects?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
I know it's going to sound self-serving, but what the
PR FAQ really does, it puts you, it forces you to think through
a lot of that to fill the gaps.
It's not a very structuredtemplate framework.
There is business model, canvasand other frameworks that are
very, very structured, like putthis information here, this word
(45:25):
there.
Pr FAQ is not like that.
But as you go writing your PRFAQ you feel forced to figure
stuff out right, otherwise youcan't complete it.
So you're going to have tofigure out what are the facts
about the problem, what are thefacts about the customer, what
is the facts about the market?
And have to figure out what arethe facts about the problem,
what are the facts about thecustomer, what is the facts
about the market?
(45:46):
And then what are ourhypotheses about the solution,
what are the hypotheses abouthow to solve this, the
feasibility of this projectright, the value for our
business.
So you incorporate all thatopens your mind and the team's
mind to exactly what is possiblehere and what's not.
And not all PR FAQs are going tolead to a green light right To
let's go ahead and execute.
(46:06):
You should expect that 50% ofyour PR FAQs, if you're using it
frequently, are no-goes becauseyour printing wasn't big enough
, the timing wasn't right, wecouldn't figure out the right
problem.
So that's a good outcome aswell for the PR FAQ.
Like you, didn't waste timegoing on that end, so just
starting on the PR FAQ is agreat way to solve a lot of the
(46:29):
strategy problems that youmentioned.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
I like your interesting choice of words that
you use for using it to likeforce you to kind of think about
these questions and answer them.
I think, as I was describing itto Oscar, I was telling him it's
a mechanism for us to dreamabout what it is that we'd like
to build and how it's going toimpact your customers and how we
would actually approach itinternally.
And that piece about allowingyou to think creatively, I think
(46:52):
is the real differentiatorbetween all these different
tools like you said, thebusiness canvas and there's the
SWOT matrix that you can drawand all these traditional tools
that we've learned in businessschool.
But I think this is somethingthat is very new to us because
even going through businessschool, we never came across
something like this.
And this just seems like commonsense now that we've talked
(47:14):
about this for an hour, thatwe're like why haven't we done
this before?
And it just seems that there'sa lot of different use cases for
this, and I just want to thankyou for your time and being able
to share this with us, and I'msure our audience is going to
find a ton of value fromlearning about the framework and
how they're going to use it inthe future as well.
You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
Marcello Calvucci, author of the PRFAQ Framework.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Marcello, how can folks get in contact with you?
How can they find out moreabout the book?
Yeah, the easiest way is go toGoogle.
Search for PRFAQ book.
The book website is going to beone of the links there and from
the book website you're goingto find my contact information,
including my email address, andlots of articles and resources
about the book.
There is examples of PRFAQtemplates, tons of articles and
tips about the book.
There is examples of PR FAQtemplates, tons of articles and
(48:03):
tips on how to do it better.
So a lot out there.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Well, we're looking forward to digging more into the
PR FAQ framework.
I know that we're going to bepulling that in and seeing what
it can do for us as well.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
So once again.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
Marcelo, thank you so much for taking the time to
meet with us and I look forwardto the next time we get to
connect.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Thank you, folks.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.