Season 2 - Newsletter 10 --> Micro-edition | Three books no one knows about that will turn you into a great product manager

Friends,

While the updates have slowed down a tad bit, I’m happy to say that it’s because I’ve been working on ProductHustleStack.co 2nd big iteration. It’s been great to capture the feedback from V1 and try to really address it in V2. Also this week, I wanted to recommend a couple of product management books not enough people know about.

As always we appreciate you sharing this newsletter if you think it could help a peer of yours improve their product skillset.

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Photo by Shiromani Kant on Unsplash

Q: Which books in Product Management are some of the most underrated or unknown?

The classics when it comes to Product Management books are Inspired by Marty Sagan and Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri. But a couple of books I’ve had the pleasure of reading and rereading are to meet not just right up there, but relatively unknown by my fellow product managers. So without any further delay here are my 3 books you need to pick up right away if you want to get great at the craft of product management. They are:

1. Competing Against Luck by Clay Christensen - yes, I’ve previously recommended it, and yes depending on which circle of folks you hang around with its a decently known book. Having said that, I have yet to hear it uttered by many of my peers even though they speak with passion about Jobs To Be Done. So it’s worth reinforcing that to really understand what a user need is, what the solution space is and what are true alternatives to your product, picking up this book to understand Jobs To Be Done is a basic requirement. After reading, you will look at needs more holistically and see what is truly competing with your solution.

2. Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard P. Rumelt - What is so incredibly valuable about this book is how quickly and easily it helps define what good strategy is, that is its built on a diagnosis of what the problem space or challenge is, a set of guiding policies meant to help overcome the difficulty and coherent action design to achieve the policy’s goal. In other words, to address a challenge, good strategy would tell you which space to play in and how to play in it. It also clearly describes how bad strategy can be easily spotted as it often consist of fluff, fails to identify a problem, speaks of goals and is made up of tactics. This book even provides framework for creating your strategy named the strategy kernel.

3. Loonshots by Safi Bahcall - It’s hard to describe the order Loonshots brought to innovation. In this book, Safi distinguishes two kinds of improbably outcomes (ie.loonshots). The first is what he labels a P-type. This is a product or technology that was widely dismissed but becomes triumphant. Think the original telephone. The other type of innovation is dubbed S-type, these having to do with strategy or business models. Facebook and Google were hardly the first social network and search engine respectively, but both organizations succeeded largely because of their business models.

After reading these 3 books you will gain not just a better appreciation for the process of product creation and innovation, but also start to have the tools at your disposal to be a much better product practitioner.

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One last thing!

So if you have made it this far, I wanted this week to reward you by inviting you to visit the alpha producthustlestack v2. Please visit here and fill out this survey. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

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Thanks for reading Product Hustle Stack Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.