BOOK REVIEWS
Top 4 Product Management Books for Improving Your Soft Skills
As 2020 is finally drawing to an end, I thought it’d be fun to compile a list of my favourite product books that I’ve read for this year. In my transition to being a product manager this year, I’ve read a lot of great and not-so-great books. While it’s often suggested to read Inspired or Cracking the PM Interview for Product Managers (especially if you are just starting out in your career), I also wanted to share some hidden gems that will help you in improving your communication skills and product sense. Here they are in no particular order:
Good Strategy Bad Strategy — The Difference and Why it Matters
It is said that a great PM should also be a strategic PM. But what is strategy exactly and how do we formulate one for our products? In Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Rumelt does an excellent job on diving deep into what strategy is and what it is not. In this day and age, we often see a lot of grand statements about developing vision and growth targets, but this is not strategy.
In fact, every good strategy starts with a diagnosis of the obstacles ahead, an approach for dealing with the obstacles and a collection of steps to tackle these challenges. Great strategy is inherently about choice and prioritization, as it focuses resources on certain areas to magnify strengths to win.
Reading this book helped me recognize bad strategy and how to formulate my own good strategies. Fair warning — the book is long (over 400 pages!), but the examples and musings are well argued and worth the read.
StoryWorthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
We know that great product managers are also great communicators, which means they should be great storytellers. By telling stories, you are more memorable, engaging, and likely to gain support from your audience. Areas where you might use this skill include interviewing for that first/next PM role, working with clients to sell your company/product as well as getting buy-in from stakeholders. And did you know that every story can be dissected to a 5 second moment where something fundamental has changed? Finding that 5 second moment in your presentation will help you build a more compelling narrative to connect with your audience. Remember — storytelling is not writing because it is something that happens in real time — as a presenter, you are taking your audience on a journey when you tell a story and you will feel more confident in your storytelling skills by reading this book.
Competiting Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice
I found this book thanks to my Women in Product book club, and I think this is one of the best books for someone to cultivate their problem seeking lens and product sense, which are crucial in a good product manager. In this book, Christensen introduces the famous Milkshake problem, and looks at what are some of the reasons why people want to buy a milkshake? He then touches on the popular jobs-to-be-done framework and how customers ‘hire’ products for things that needs to be accomplished in their life. Ultimately, as a product manager, your job is to tease out what these problems are for your customers and work on finding the right solution(s). The book is well written, short and is a must-read for anyone who wants to develop or enhance their product sense.
Principles of Product Management: How to Land a PM Job and Launch Your Product Career
There’s a lot of books out there that talk about PM interviews and what it takes to be a PM but not a lot of them are based on personal experiences. I really like how this particular book talked about Yang’s own experiences transitioning to product: it gives you a glimpse of a product manager’s day-to-day life as well as qualities of a great product manager. If you’re an aspiring product manager or someone interested in learning more about product management, I think this book gives a great summary of what product management is and what to expect as a product manager. Yang also includes some great interviews with some product leaders on their own journey that’s 100% worth reading as well as tips for succeeding in your first PM job.
I think one of the most important qualities of a good PM is that they are curious and willing to learn, so I hope this list of books was helpful for your own learning journey. I’m always on the prowl for good business books so drop me a line on Twitter if you have any suggestions or if you’ve read any of the books I mentioned. Good luck on your PM journey, wherever you might be and here’s to a better 2021 for all of us! 🥳
