The Product Manager’s Essential Reading List for 2016

Still loading...

	A	B	C
1
2	Title & URL	Author	Abstract

3	A science fiction classic. Behold, the Metaverse.		Understanding Media (aka ‘The medium is the message’) by Marshall McLuhan
4	Algorithms of the Intelligent Web	Haralambos Marmanis and Dmitry Babenko	This is one of the best starter books for those looking for an approachable introduction to the mysterious topic of “ranking”. Really useful read to start building intuition about how dynamic content and data systems operate. New version coming out in March 2016.
5	An Essay on Typography	Eric Gill	Although a somewhat controversial figure in life, Eric Gill’s impact on typography is hard to deny. Not only did he sculpt Prospero and Ariel which adorn the headquarters of my former employer, the BBC — he designed Gill Sans, one of the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Typography can communicate much about a product’s personality and promise, so lessons from a master are worth hearing.
6	Creativity, Inc.	Ed Catmull	One of the founders of Pixar shows how to build a culture of creativity and create space for people to excel — both through general principles, and vignettes from his experiences at Pixar and Disney Animation.
7	Freakonomics	Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner	The seminal pop-economics book. In a subject which has a reputation for dryness, Freakonomics cuts through by using the principles of economics (markets, supply and demand, incentives etc) to explain why things are the way they are, and how they could be different.
8	Getting Past NO	William Ury	The negotiation bible.
9	How To Measure Anything	Douglas W. Hubbard	Helped me realize that there are ways to quantify and value even the seemingly unmeasurable. It also sets up the important principle that measurement isn’t necessarily about certainty, but rather decreasing uncertainty — something I think about in every discussion about metrics and goals. Essential skills for data-inspired product management.
10	It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy	Michael Abrashoff	How a captain turned around the USS Benfold to become one of the highest performing ships in the navy. Written by the man himself. Leadership style is very applicable to less hierarchical organizations so a lot can be taken from this book.
11	Made to Stick	Chip and Dan Heath	How to go to market with the right message. The book continues the idea of “stickiness” popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.
12	Predictably Irrational	Dan Ariely	A study of how we make decisions. Equally useful in understanding our own thinking and the thinking of the people we work with — but also in understanding the customer or end-user we’re building products to serve.
13	Snow Crash	Neal Stephenson	A science fiction classic. Behold, the Metaverse.
14	Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard	Chip and Dan Heath	Philosophical and tactical lessons and insight on how to drive organizational change.
15	The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People	Stephen R. Covey	Sounds like a low-budget listicle, but over 25 years and with over 25 million copies sold, its definitely more than that. Trusted by leaders across business, politics and beyond.
16	The Death and Life of Great American Cities	Jane Jacobs	Great examples of how urban planners build spaces and city blocks based on core human behaviors/interactions that also seem to hold true when we interact online.
17	The Design of Everyday Things	Donald Norman	A seminal design classic — reminds you how much the little details matter. You’ll never look at a push/pull door in the same way again.
18	The Hard Thing About Hard Things	Ben Horowitz	Lessons from the front line of running a company. While some PMs mis-characterize (in my opinion) themselves as the CEO of their product, there’s lots of direct and indirect lessons about being a great PM — particularly around leadership and working with groups of people. Pacy, witty and full of real anecdotes.
19	The Innovator’s Dilemma	Clayton Christensen	A book on how big companies become irrelevant. Many examples from the steel and computer chip industries but the book applies to all industries and is timeless. The gem in this book is to know “what is the ‘job’ your company is trying to do”.
20	The Martian	Andy Weir	Solve a problem, then solve another one.
21	The Score Takes Care of Itself	Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison & Craig Walsh	Focus on the pre-requisites to achieving your goal and be relentless in your preparation in order to increase your probability of winning. Establish a Standard of Performance and stick with it.
22	The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces	William H. Whyte	William Whyte was hired by the city of New York to figure out what makes a good public space. He filmed thousands of hours of footage and came up with some pretty crazy insights. Sounds unconnected, but the best products are built around how people naturally want to react with their environment.
23	The Timeless Way of Building	Christopher Alexander	How to build good physical spaces, based on facts about human nature that never change. And the meta-lesson: how to make “pattern languages” for designing many different instances of a thing.
24	The Tipping Point	Malcolm Gladwell	How social dynamics can make or break products and teams.
25	Thunder Below	Eugene Fluckey	Fluckey transformed submarine warfare as the captain of the USS Barb in the Pacific during WWII. Impact-driven mission with high stakes? Check. Diverse and highly skilled team of ~100 in close quarters for months on end? Check. Flaky technology? Check. Constrained resources and a limited number of opportunities for test/launch/feedback before success or failure is declared? Check. Need for constant innovation in tactics and strategy in a dynamic environment? Check.
26	What Every BODY Is Saying	Joe Navarro	An ex-FBI agent’s take on how to look at body language, and how to adjust your approach for working with different people based on the unconscious signals we send out.
27	Where Wizards Stay Up Late	Katie Hafner	A history of the creation of the Internet. Super-interesting and useful to understand how these systems — on which our entire industry relies — were built.
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100