Reading Recommendations
People often ask me about how to get into product management and strengthening product skills.
My #1 piece of advice is practice, practice, practice. You don’t need to have the role of a product manager to start thinking like one and building the skills and experience.
Find a problem or opportunity you care about or find intriguing whether at home or work, and to start to validate potential solutions.
Below are a few resources that have influenced my thinking and helped me up level my product and leadership skills.
Multipliers
Liz Wizeman’s Multipliers is my favorite leadership book that has given me and my team a lot of shared language in giving each other feedback around the kind of leaders we want to be.
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is a refreshing lens into how to think about strategy and what makes a good one at it’s core.
Crucial Conversations
I deeply value directness and the inclination to lean into conflict productively. I find Crucial Conversations to have tactical tools to give teams a shared understanding of how to have high stakes conversations effectively.
Lean Analytics
Data literacy is critical to being able to build good hypotheses around how to solve customer problems. I find Lean Analytics to be a helpful primer for anyone new to product analytics or seeking a foundational refresher.
The Five Dysfunctions of Teams
Lenconi’s leadership fable establishes a useful guide to building healthy teams where trust, conflict, commitment, and accountability enable results.