If you are a leader in a technology startup or a leader/IC in PM, design, engineering, growth, analytics or marketing, then this list is of value to you.
Over the last 3 years, I have read a focused list of recommended books (especially by leaders in the product world). And, based on what I have read, I am presenting to you these 74 books that made a difference in my thinking, capabilities, how I operate and so on.
Why Books? I have a bias for books. Many of these authors also write recurring blogs, newsletters, have podcasts and so on. But, books are unique. Every author packages the best of what they know or have learnt in the most tight, crisp format going through multiple rounds of edits before a book is released. The rigour in their process is what makes books have the best ROI.
You will find a lot of strategy books as well as books that directly relate to product development and product (EPD) teams. There are also books on design, mathematics/algos and for an individual's operating model. There are some incredible personal experiences jotted too which I highly recommend.
I will also annually add to the list as my reading list expands this year.
- By: Hamilton Helmer
- My takeaway: You can read it once every year. You can pick any failed venture/product and do a post-mortem of why it failed through the lens of this book (learning the value of building and sustaining moats)
- By: Susan Weinschenk
- My takeaway: Using human psychology in design - explained in a very actionable manner
- By: Yu-Kai Chou
- My takeaway: The author's real world gamification and human-centred design to come up with the very interesting and useful Octalysis Framework
- By: Rory Sutherland
- My takeaway: Understanding the irrational side of human to come up with behaviour science+branding combo to for your product/business to succeed
- By: Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths
- My takeaway: Just the most amazing text on how computer algos create magic in real life context
- By: Jonathan Hensley
- My takeaway: Just like the title, the book is all about how aligned individuals, teams and organisations can succeed and how dis-aligned teams fall into disarray and faliure
- By: Frank Slootman
- My takeaway: Frank Slootman's mantra of what it takes to build a high performance team drawn from this experiences of building multiple billion dollar companies
- By: Tony Fadell
- My takeaway: A great friend as you navigate every fork/decision in your career drawn from Tony Fadell's own experiences as an intrapreneur and entrepreneur
- By: Ben Foster, Rajesh Nerlikar
- My takeaway: An actionable guide to what it takes to drive an enduring, vision-driven company (and product)
- By: Tiago Forte
- My takeaway: Simple ways to remain super-organised (while I still struggle here, there has been a massive transformation before and after)
- By: Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, David Duncan
- My takeaway: Getting to the foundations of the Jobs-to-be-done(JTBD) framework
- By: Teresa Torres
- My takeaway: A detailed guide on driving Product Discovery in any kind of product org
- By: Jackie Bavaro, Gayle Laakmann McDowell
- My takeaway: Based on whether you are a product manager or leader, this book helps explain frameworks to succeed in a PM career
- By: Geoffrey A. Moore
- My takeaway: What it takes to continue growing and scaling a technology company throughout its lifecycle
- By: Chip Heath, Dan Heath
- My takeaway: The WRAP framework of decision making - loved "W - Widen Your Options" the most as it reminded us of how we taught something similar (creativity/divergent thinking) to kids at my first startup
- By: Tony Hsieh
- My takeaway: Just the seminal guide on what the most excellent customer centric company looks like (I have gifted this book the most)
- By: Bruce Patton, Douglas Stone, and Sheila Heen
- My takeaway: Pro-tips and guidance on managing misunderstandings and disagreements in the best ways I have read
- By: Steve Krug
- My takeaway: The first book on UX design that I read with the biggest usability takeaway being 'don't make me think'; still highly relevant
- By: Marty Cagan with Chris Jones
- My takeaway: Like Alignment, this book focused a lot on how product success is about an aligned, working together group of ordinary individuals in an empowered setup - a strong guide especially for product and organisational leaders
- By: Melissa Perri
- My takeaway: Melissa Perri takes on one of the most commons sins of developing products - focus on output over outcomes; powerful message delivered in a very simple manner
- By: Greg McKeown
- My takeaway: My wife gifted me this book to read on understanding that instead of spending my efforts all over the place, I need to focus on things that have the highest impact and that matter the most to me (been a learning journey since)
- By: Amy Jo Kim
- My takeaway: Engaging users/customers through a strong user experience - a concept well learnt through insights from the world of top notch game development
- By: Eric Berne
- My takeaway: Stopping ego getting in the way of life (strong impact on me) as well as trying to stop being manipulative subconsciously (which apparently we all do)
- By: Richard Rumelt
- My takeaway: This books tells very clearly what bad strategy looks like and how to identify it
- By: Derek Sivers
- My takeaway: Everything that we do in life should be passed through the binary of whether it is a 'hell yeah' or 'no' - saves time and effort
- By: Nir Eyal
- My takeaway: Seminal guide to understanding how the best products drive us into the habit loop - just a must-read for anyone even thinking about 'user experience'
- By: Marty Cagan
- My takeaway: The first book I read in PM (probably the first book most PMs early in their career read) - so covers the complete foundation in itself
- By: Caroline Criado Perez
- My takeaway: In a world designed for men, this book is a strong reminder that we are not building products for only 50% of the world; hard hitting!
- By: Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden
- My takeaway: How to rapidly build and iterate user experience in a agile (focus on the word, not the complex mass the term has become) manner
- By: Bob Moesta
- My takeaway: Key skills that entrepreneurs and core leadership teams need to build innovative products and businesses
- By: Mickey W. Mantle, Ron Lichty
- My takeaway: A very detailed guide to managing technology people and teams and getting them to operate at the highest level - loads of actionable guidance that I use firsthand
- By: John Doerr
- My takeaway: Everything that one needs to know about OKRs is here in this book
- By: Madhavan Ramanujam, Georg Tacke
- My takeaway: The most well structured text to understand and experiment with customer 'Willingness to Pay (WTP)' especially for early startups/product lines
- By: Chris Voss
- My takeaway: Real, useful and actionable strategies in negotiation (also hits you once you read, how simple it really is!)
- By: April Dunford
- My takeaway: A step by step actionable guide to product positioning - you may not need everything based on your product's market and scale but useful for all types and ages of products
- By: David Sumpter
- My takeaway: Another fascinating read of algorithms and how much value (positive/negative) they already drive in our lives - very insightful and eye opening on real/false risks of data, algorithms and AI through great case studies referenced
- By: Dan Ariely
- My takeaway: The book focuses on the irrational side of humans and the fact that it can be deciphered and understood; lots of experiments that Dan Ariely himself ran form the basis of the principles discussed here - lots of very useful nuggets on behavioural economics for practical application
- By: Ray Dalio
- My takeaway: A very hard hitting book capturing principles Ray Dalio lives by - it will really make you think and pause reading each of Dalio's principles. Make notes and keep revisiting for consistent inspiration
- By: Martin Eriksson, Richard Banfield, Nate Walkingshaw
- My takeaway: If you are a product leader early in your journey, this book has a lot of packed wisdom to navigate that journey to becoming an established product leader
- By: Bruce McCarthy, C. Todd Lombardo, Evan Ryan, Michael Connors
- My takeaway: If you are someone who has a say in how the product roadmap of your organisation should be structured, you have to read this book
- By: Wes Bush
- My takeaway: The definitive guide to understanding being 'product-led' as a company
- By: Ramli John
- My takeaway: How to build a self-serve onboarding motion for any company at any stage of the journey
- By: Kim Scott
- My takeaway: Learning to be direct but kind - one of the hardest things to do at the workplace
- By: Verlyn Klinkenborg
- My takeaway: There are no rules to writing and write SHORT SENTENCES!
- By: Jake Knapp
- My takeaway: A tried and tested 5-day framework to taking any problem/project/idea to prototype and decision; very useful to iterate (you will be surprised how doable this is!)
- By: Matt Wallaert
- My takeaway: Similar to 'Build What Matters', Start at the End focuses on framing a strong behavioural goal/outcome and working backward systematically from it to achieve intended goal
- By: Matthew Dicks
- My takeaway: Why storytelling matters in everything we do and how to tell a solid story
- By: Petra Wille
- My takeaway: Being an effective coach to one's own team (great lessons, strategies!)
- By: Gabriel Weinberg, Lauren McCann
- My takeaway: You can pick your pet mental models from this book and apply in any situation in your life; the pet mental models can keep evolving as you evolve
- By: General Stanley A. McChrystal with Chris Fussell, Tantum Collins, David Silverman
- My takeaway: How to build small, agile, adaptable teams that can handle the complexities of the modern company - deviating from traditional team structures and hierarchies
- By: Rolf Dobelli
- My takeaway:
- By: Olivia Fox Cabane
- My takeaway: A workshop to understand how to bring charisma in yourself (which is a trait that can be learnt over time, not something innate)
- By: Andrew Chen
- My takeaway: An in-depth understanding of scaling modern businesses using network effects at different stages of growth; and really indepth! If you work in product/growth, I bet once you read this book, you will keep coming back at different times
- By: Fumitake Koga, Ichiro Kishimi
- My takeaway: Another fundamental problem I suffer from is the desire to be liked by all and that driving many of my actions. Disregarding the need to be recongised and appreciated by others is critical to stop living in constant worry of whether you are being accepted or not (and, this is immaterial to a happy life)
- By: Erin Meyer
- My takeaway: Very useful and handy read if you work with colleagues from other parts of your country or the world; I do and I learnt a lot about how diverse cultures can be. Plus it is hilarious many times!
- By: Don Norman
- My takeaway: The bible of design (remember, design is communication between the user and the object; now go and read if you have not yet read this one)
- By: Patrick Lencioni
- My takeaway: Learning the most recognised tendencies of dysfunctional teams (in a storified format). You will be able to see some manifestation of your team here as you read.
- By: Ben Horowitz
- My takeaway: Some evergreen lessons on running a startup or a team; I use a lot of lessons from here in my work life (something I trained myself to do over the years since I first read the book)
- By: Dan Olsen
- My takeaway: Actionable guide to building great products iteratively, rapidly and efficiently
- By: Eric Ries
- My takeaway: The original text on being capital efficient, efficient and iterative in building enduring companies especially in the early days of a startup
- By: Julie Zhuo
- My takeaway: I got the basics on everything that I needed to know in my career as a product leader in a very well framed manner (great starting point for ant product leader)
- By: Camille Fournier
- My takeaway: Although more focused on engineering leaders, what I took from the book is that being a technology leader means you have to manage technology and people at the same time and it requires some serious skills and multi-tasking capabilities to be successful
- By: Scott Belsky
- My takeaway: Along with Build, probably another book that acts as a great guide on deciding when at forks/decision points in an organisation's journey (especially that crazy middle part which devours most young companies) with Scott Belsky's own experiences at Behance at the book's core
- By: Rob Fitzpatrick
- My takeaway: If you could read only one piece of text on how to interview customers/users, this would be it!
- By: Greg McKeown
- My takeaway: Assholes in the workplace are like dementors (reference from Harry Potter) sucking life out of any organisation; need strong Patronus charms to keep them away from ruining an org (harder said than done though)
- By: Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
- My takeaway: The most gripping business story book on digital transformation of a traditionally functioning technology company (with a focus around devops)
- By: William Lidwell
- My takeaway: The most actionable user experience design reference book out there (almost like the dictionary of design principles)
- By: Bill Walsh along with Craig Walsh Steve Jamison,
- My takeaway: It has to be the fact that staying true to my values in life is critical despite it showing signs of short term losses - this always wins in the long term. There are many more lessons packed in the book but this one stuck to me the most.
- By: Daniel Kahnemann
- My takeaway: If you have the time and patience, this is THE book to read on behavioural economics. Also, thinking slow is a skill for us to build in making better decisions consistently as we are at lower risk of being manipulated
- By: Annie Duke
- My takeaway: Life is like poker and everything we do is a bet and applying this thinking to decision making is not optional (more knowledge on human irrationality as well)
- By: Joan Magretta
- My takeaway: The absolute fundamentals of organisational success - big or small; Michael Porter's thinking was way ahead of his time and is highly relevant for today's modern organisations
- By: Marshall Goldsmith
- My takeaway: Just as the name suggests, the focus of the entire book is to remind oneself that being adaptable and evolving skills and mindsets is critical for success in all scenarios as our life progresses
- My takeaway: Building the most relevant and resilient skills and mindsets for the turbulent world we live in
- By: Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
- My takeaway: The most incredible literature on understanding Amazon's success through its history - if nothing else, it will inspire you immensely
PS: The links I have shared are Amazon India associate links. In case I end up making any money through Amazon, I will donate the entire amount and an equivalent amount from my side to an Animal Charity.
Product @ Trumio Inc || Ex Head @ Robotics Club || Startups || IIT (BHU), Varanasi
6 个月Priyadeep Sinha Your incredible selection of books in this post blows me away! 80% of my entire book collection is represented here. The rest of them are waiting in my Amazon cart. I'm curious why "Delivering Happiness" is your top-gifted book. I'll be picking it up next.
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1 年I loved The Messy Middle and a fwe others on here - eager to dive in. Thanks for this!
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1 年I would love to know your top picks from the list! ??
?? Founder, RajGupta.io | CEO, Business World Travel | CEO, Staffwiz ?? Scaling Businesses with ? Smarter Teams, ? Systems & ?? Travel Solutions
1 年Priyadeep, your curated list of top books for product managers and tech leaders is a goldmine of knowledge. As the landscape evolves, staying informed is crucial, and your recommendations offer a great starting point. Thanks for sharing this valuable resource!
Co-Founder of SHIELD MEDIA, Licensed Real Estate Broker, Digital Marketing Specialist, Email Me: [email protected] - "Grow your business by dominating the inbox, social media, and search engines."
1 年I'm always looking for good book recommendations, thanks for sharing! ??