Book recommendations for Product Managers

This is the ‘course’ of books I was going to buy for my team at South Pole. I received a tremendous amount of value from my managers’ book recommendations in the past and so I wanted to pass it forward. I’ve written more about the problem I’m trying to solve and why I think this is a good idea at the end of the article, but I’ll cut to the chase, these are the books: 

Show your work - Austin Kleon

This is a very small, and very easy read that is a great place to start before reading the rest of the list. Its 10 short chapters discuss methods and benefits of being open, collaborative, and continuously sharing your work, hence ‘Show your work’.  

This is a good first book on any product management book course because it encourages discussion, and reflection. You can get through it in a few hours and, at least whenever I re-read it, I feel inspired all over again to share and to do things in the open, both of which are things that I think product managers need to do to be successful.

So far the success rate of this book with people I have gifted, lent, or recommended it to is all six people giving it five stars. Like the rest of this list its not aimed at product managers specifically, this one is for artists and creatives but you can apply its teachings to just about anything. 

Strengthsfinder 2.0 from Gallup - Don Clifton

This book looks bigger than it is. It’s a perfect first or second book for the course because it gets the reader to look inward before outward. The book contains something similar to a personality test that is used to identify your specific strengths as an individual contributor. 

I like this book for product managers but would recommend it to just about anyone. It encourages and provides a method for you to focus on your strengths; the idea being that you’re going to be good at certain things, and weak at others, instead of spending time getting to ‘good enough’ at your weaknesses, identify your strengths, work on them, and become exceptional. 

This one was useful for me as a manager specifically because it meant I got an idea of my team’s strengths (and opinions of themselves) so I could more confidently assign them to things as issues arose and advise them in certain directions. A good one for a group discussion. 

Black box thinking - Matthew Syed

Now we get into ‘real’ books. I read this one years ago at University and have re-read it several times since. More than anything else it’s about critical thinking and the importance of feedback. It has pages of well researched, practical examples from across industries that highlight the benefits of continuous feedback, discovery, iteration, and the problems that arise from closed, arrogant thinking.  

This one is good for product managers because it takes ‘classic’ product ideas (which of course are not special to product managers) and discusses their use in numerous industries and scenarios. I found that reading this book gave me the perspective I needed to be able to bend and apply these practices to multiple scenarios instead of getting stuck when the example doesn’t fit. 

I’ve recommended this one to 4 people so far, all loved it, one of them was my mum who stole my copy. 

Company of one - Paul Jarvis

This book’s target audience is freelancers, small business owners, and or people within large organisations who run smaller organisations or crack teams. Its focus is around an idea that I love; ‘bigger does not mean better, better means better’ and about creating focus for what is important for your users, not what is important for growth or getting rich. 

I found this book made me question the way things are done in a healthy way. If you ask why enough times in a lot of businesses you’ll get the answer ‘to maximise profit’ or ‘to maximise growth’. And while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, this book encourages you to think about how there are more important things. 

There’s a lot more to it than that of course but I won’t be able to do a good job of laying it out here, you should just read it. I’ve recommended this book to 2 people now, both loved it for the same reasons as I did. 

Rebel ideas - Matthew Syed

Matthew Syed is the only author with a repeat entry on this list because he is excellent, obviously. ‘Rebel ideas’ first and foremost is about the importance and power of diversity. Diversity in thought, in people, in approach, in experience, in everything. 

I think this is a good read for just about everyone in the modern western world. It discusses the issues with not being able to adapt or collect different perspectives. Most interesting problems in life are complex, but even the simple ones that you think are well understood change significantly just by looking at them through a different lens. 

The idea behind this book is that if you want to find the best solution, one that is inclusive and comprehensive, you need a variety of experiences and perspectives in the room. 

This book is particularly important for product managers because you can’t afford to be exclusive. When you’re working with so many stakeholders and trying to balance expectations while facilitating proper development it’s easy to go down a single path or solicit feedback from the same people. This book demonstrates that not only is a diversity of viewpoints valuable, but imperative to long term success. 

Predictably irrational - Dan Ariely

This is an old book but the most recent addition to my list. I was recommended it in March of this year (since then I’ve read 8 non-fiction books that didn’t make this list) and found it very insightful. There is some overlap with black box thinking but this one gets closer to psychology. 

I think this one is particularly good for product managers because it encourages you to think the hard way. Its many well researched and experimented chapters reveal human behaviours that on the face of it seem strange and irrational. 

It's very easy in product development to keep saying yes and do what’s obvious, it takes something I can’t define well right now to be able to think against against the current and question what seems intuitive. I found this book helps me to do that. 

Shoutouts 

People Powered - Jonno Bacon

This one is a shout out because it’s not going to be relevant to the majority of product people, but for businesses or people who work in, with, for, or on communities, this is a great book. 

It’s a practical guide to building, maintaining, and properly making use of a community around a product. A lot of the advice in here I’ve been able to practise first hand and I have spoken to several people who are in the business of ‘community’ who recommend it too. 

Build - Tony Fadell

This is the closest thing in this list to a ‘product management’ specific book, but really I think more than anything it's about standards. There are six parts to this book that each talk about building yourself, your career, a product, a business, a team, and becoming a leader. 

In each part there is a lot of blah blah but what makes it stand out is the author drawing on their extensive network and personal experience to relay how to do better. The inside cover describes it as an advice encyclopaedia, and I agree with this. This book is the closest thing you’re likely to get to thoughtful answers to your questions from a very successful tech product person.

This one is only a shout out because while it is excellent, I think the others are just more important. The others on this list should improve your way of thinking and your ability; they should teach you how to fish, whereas ‘build’ feels more like buying the fish. 

Context for this article

When I became a manager I thought a lot about the good and bad managerial experiences I’ve had in the past. I came up with a long list of what not to do, and a short list of good experiences. Giving and discussing good books was one of the things I found enormously helpful and was inspired by two previous managers. 

The problem with non-fiction books

The struggle I have with non-fiction in general is that they are typically very bad. I read a lot of them but I rarely finish any, life is just too short to read something you don’t like. Most non-fiction is not well written, generic, and unnecessarily repetitive.

I have an inkling for how much work goes into writing a book so I understand a lot of energy even goes into the bad ones, but a good tell for the best ones is when you can see that a lot of work, and probably a lot of people, were involved in writing them. They’re not only well written but well referenced and make complex things simple. Unfortunately, these are few and far between. 

Then there’s the issue of finding non-fiction books that are specifically useful for your profession, or for the skills you’re looking to develop. In Product Management there are several books people swear by that you would think are biblical. But at least in my experience, they mostly re-hash each other and make the same 4 points that can be found in other books that are better written anyway. 

In favour of reading around

This list only contains one book that is even remotely about ‘product’, and it only gets a shout out. This is because to be good at product management you need a lot of soft skills and you need to be able to adapt to different circumstances. Soft skills and adaptability are not unique to product management, they’re skills and abilities that have been well researched and well honed for decades in different professions long before a product manager was even a thing. 

This is not to say there aren’t hard skills or good practices for product people, I’ve written about those before myself, but the hard stuff that you should be learning isn’t specific to ‘product management’. Books that try to apply these skills to a ‘product management’ context miss a lot of the nuisances because the ‘helpful’ circumstances are always going to be different from the readers actual experience and so waste time and words rather than talking about how the skill can be applied to numerous circumstances.

Summary

If you read a lot of non-fiction don’t waste your time on the bad stuff, if you’re looking for good stuff ask people for recommendations, and if you’re looking for ones that will help you improve as a product person and you trust my recommendation, read the ones I wrote about here.