Introducing the best product management books: All things product and company building

Why does it matter? 

Over the past six years, I've been collecting my all-time favorite reads that have had a significant impact on my career. These 10 gems offer actionable insights, high signal-to-noise content on product, product-led growth, self-discipline, and more.

After some inspiration from fellow readers, I've taken the time to clean up the list, and here it is for you to explore. Happy reading!

Remember that reading is just one part of it and it is just the beginning.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, by Eric Ries

"The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries introduces a methodology for building successful businesses in a rapidly changing world, emphasizing rapid experimentation, continuous learning, and customer feedback.

There's a strong corellation between entrepreneurs and product managers. The PM mindset is all about user focus, interaction, measure and product-led growth.

Key Learning

• 🛠️ Embrace the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop: Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) quickly, gather real customer feedback, and use data to iterate and improve the product.

• 📊 Prioritize validated learning over vanity metrics: Focus on actionable data and experiments to test assumptions about the successful product's value and product-market fit

• 🔄 Be flexible and pivot when needed: Respond to new information by making strategic changes to the product or business model. Persevere when feedback validates the vision.

The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback, by Dan Olsen

"The Lean Product Playbook" is a practical guide by Dan Olsen that outlines a step-by-step approach to creating successful and successful products using Lean principles, emphasizing continuous learning, customer feedback, and iterative improvement. A bible for tech companies, I heard...

Key Learning

• 🏗️ Embrace the Build-Measure-Learn loop: Rapidly build Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to test assumptions, measure performance, and learn from customer feedback for iterative improvement.

• 🎯 Focus on Customer Needs: Prioritize finding the right problems to solve for target customers before building solutions, ensuring the product delivers genuine value and product-led growth.

• 🔄 Embrace Iterative Development: Use MVPs to validate hypotheses, gather feedback, and make data-driven decisions to guide disruptive product strategy effectively.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, by Nir Eyal

"Hooked" is a book by Nir Eyal that introduces the Hook Model, a four-step framework for creating habit-forming products, emphasizing the significance of understanding human behavior and incorporating ethical considerations into product design.

Key Learning

• 🎯 Understand the Hook Model: Familiarize yourself with the four steps - Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment - to create habit-forming products.

• 🧠 Tap into user psychology: Explore the intrinsic motivations that drive human behavior and emotions to create resonating experiences.

• 🚀 Build ethically: Consider the potential for addiction and negative consequences, ensuring responsible and successful product design that adds genuine value to users' lives.

Dare to Lead, by Brené Brown

"Dare to Lead" by Brené Brown is a book that challenges traditional leadership paradigms and promotes leading with courage, vulnerability, and authenticity to build trust and connection within organizations.

Product leaders lead product teams and need to show leadership and communication is critical. This book was eye-opening for me.

Key Learning

• 💪 Embrace Vulnerability: Leaders should be open and vulnerable with their teams, fostering trust and creativity.

• 🤝 Cultivate Empathy: Empathetic leaders listen to their product people and create a compassionate work culture.

• 🚀 Embrace Daring Leadership: Take bold actions aligned with values, address tough conversations, and embrace uncertainty while leading with integrity.

The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You, by Julie Zhuo

"The Making of a Manager" by Julie Zhuo is a practical guide that provides valuable advice for new managers transitioning from individual contributor roles to leadership positions, covering aspects like mindset shift, team building, and effective communication.

Key Learning

• 🚀 Embrace a mindset shift: Focus on empowering others and guiding the team to achieve collective success rather than doing all the work yourself.

• 🤝 Build effective teams: Assemble diverse individuals, delegate tasks, set clear expectations, and provide necessary support for team members to thrive.

• 🗣️ Develop communication and feedback skills: Be an active listener, communicate ideas clearly, and provide constructive feedback to help individuals grow and improve their performance.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, by Geoffrey A. Moore and Regis McKenna

"Crossing the Chasm" is a seminal book providing insights into marketing high-tech products to mainstream customers, introducing the concept of the chasm between early adopters and the mainstream market and offering strategies for successful market adoption. This book is the bible for many Silicon-Valley based tech companies and beyond.

Key Learning

• 🎯 Target a specific niche within the mainstream market for successful adoption.

• 📦 Offer a complete "whole product solution" with additional features, support, and partnerships.

• 🚀 Understand the technology adoption lifecycle to navigate the transition from early adopters to mainstream customers.

Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, by Marty Cagan

"Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love" by Marty Cagan is a comprehensive guide for product managers, designers, and entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of a customer-centric approach to building successful technology products with real-world examples.

Key Learning

• 👥 Customer-Centric Mindset: Conduct in-depth user research, customer interviews, and data analysis to understand and empathize with customers' problems and desires.

• 🎯 Strong Product Vision and Strategy: Define a clear product vision that aligns with company goals and focuses on solving real customer problems. > Product roadmaps

• 🔄 Iterative agile Development: Embrace an iterative approach, gather user feedback, prototype, and test products to create user-centric solutions that evolve with changing market demands.

Key Learning Summary to Keep

Oh one more thing….Each PM is unique, what would you like to see more of next time?

Just one thing to do…Let’s get to work TODAY!