What book have you found to be the most helpful in your growth in product management? At what stage were you in your career? What were your key learnings from the book?
Sort by:
Continuous Discovery Habits, Teresa Torres.
I read it as an experienced Product Manager, but I believe it would be beneficial for early Product Managers too. It offers a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery. However, even if you work for an organisation that can't currently support continuous discovery, there is still plenty to learn from this book. My key learnings were finding methods/ways to be more confident that I'm delivering both customer and business value.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Without a doubt, Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value by Teresa Torres is an essential read. About a year and a half into my role as a Product Manager for AI, I came across this book and found it really valuable. It provided me with actionable frameworks to maintain ongoing customer discovery, helping me align user needs with business goals. The insights on continuous learning and iteration were particularly useful in refining our AI-driven products, ensuring they consistently delivered both customer satisfaction and measurable business impact.
Crucial Conversations - Understandable and actionable insights for talking with other people when the stakes are high -- e.g., when there are opposing opinions, high stakes, and strong emotions.
I read this as a Director of Product Management. My main takeaways were to watch for warning signs that a conversation has moved away from two-way dialogue (e.g., moved to silence or outright anger) so you can make it "safe" again by evidencing that I care about the person / respect their opinion. And the key insight of being candid and respectful - these often feel irreconcilable but that does not need to be the case
When I started as a PM, Steve Blank's "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" was the most helpful guide I had. Steve emphasizes getting out of the building, engaging with real users early, and validating assumptions before scaling. He also taught me not to be too obsessed over the features (which I used to be a lot in the beginning) but rather focus on whether you're truly solving a pressing problem for a well-defined customer base.