#4–The Hero’s Journey–Product Management

Star Wars is a perfect example of the Hero’s Journey structure and George Lucas made it that way without even realizing it. Human truths run deep.

SCENE // Luke stands in a small, spartan hovel cluttered with desert junk. Obi-Wan is with him and they’ve just watched Leia’s hologram deliver an emergency transmission:

OBI-WAN: You must learn the ways of the Force if you're to come with me to Alderaan.

LUKE: Alderaan? I'm not going to Alderaan. I've got to go home. It's late.

OBI-WAN: I need your help, Luke. She needs your help. I'm getting too old for this sort of thing.

LUKE: I can't get involved! I've got work to do! It's not that I like the Empire. I hate it! But there's nothing I can do about it right now.

OBI-WAN: That's your uncle talking.

LUKE: Look, I can take you as far as Anchorhead. You can get a transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you're going.

OBI-WAN: You must do what you feel is right, of course.

This scene in Star Wars: A New Hope shows the first two stages of The Hero’s Journey: 1. The Call to Adventure, and 2. The Refusal of the Call.

There are 12 stages to the journey but briefly it goes something like this:

A hero reluctantly ventures forth from his comfortable world, forces are there encountered, and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this adventure with lessons to bestow on his fellow man.

Hollywood didn’t come up with this format yet almost every movie uses it. Why?

Since the beginning of civilization, people from every continent, ethnicity, and religion have been telling stories with the same 12 stage structure. Joseph Campbell was the first to see this pattern – he called it the “mono-myth” or Hero’s Journey and talked about it in his book “Hero With a Thousand Faces”.

How could people who had no contact with one another have come up with the same story? The only explanation is that it’s deeply ingrained in all of us and has been forever.

As Product Managers we should be very interested in these universal truths.

Each of us is on our own hero's journey whether we realize it or not. The nature of life is being thrown into a problem we're ill-equipped to handle, overcoming it, and sharing what we’ve learned with others.

To build products that connect with millions of people around the world requires the ability to connect with what’s deeply important to them. Create something that helps people along their hero's journey and it will be successful.

Sidenote: George Lucas and Joseph Campbell became friends but only after he had created the first three Star Wars films. Lucas had inadvertently used this archetypal hero’s journey without even knowing it, showing that we are all unconsciously affected by these truths.