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Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
@shreyas
Jul 4, 2020 • 15 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
There are many books for Product Managers📚

And many book lists too.

Here’s my list. What I hope makes it different:
• Books with very high signal-to-noise ratio
• Books that'll 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 enhance PM skills
• Books that are unlikely to be in typical 📚lists for PMs

👇🏾
July 2020 Product Management book recommendations:

1. Super Thinking

2. The War of Art

3. 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

4. Alchemy

5. The Cartoon Guide to Statistics

6. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Image
Why?
1. Mental models for better decisions
2. PM is a creative job, need to break creative blocks
3. For improving design intuition
4. Role of psychology in building & mktg products
5. Refresher of stats concepts PMs need
6. IMO the most important book for PMs (read 2 or 3 times)
Will update this thread 1-2 times every month with more book recommendations.
More July 2020 book recommendations for product people:

1. Understanding Michael Porter

2. Practical Empathy

3. The Charisma Myth

4. 7 Powers

5. Getting Things Done

6. The Art of Thinking Clearly Image
Why?
1. The definitive, accessible guide to strategy
2. Empathy is essential for strong Product Sense
3. For effective & authentic communication
4. To understand & leverage 7 strategic powers
5. Useful for improving self-execution
6. To understand our own biases & think clearly
As a reminder, these recos are for Product Managers AND other folks who spend most of their time thinking about what products to build, how to build them & how to get adoption.

Here's what (I hope) makes these recos different:
Regarding "𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 enhancing PM skills", here's a reference product management skills map.

The book recos I'll post in this thread should help directly enhance the skills listed in the leaf nodes here, one-by-one. Image
If you're curious where the👆🏾skills map came from, you can check out this short thread on Product Management skills, from entry level PM to CPO.

That's all for today.

Next set of 📚 recos will be posted in August 🗓️

Happy reading!
Aug 2020 book recommendations for product people:

1. Are Your Lights On?

2. Peopleware

3. The Systems Bible

4. Games People Play

This month’s books are a nod to the Lindy Effect: these books are fairly old & we might reasonably expect them to stay relevant for a while longer Image
A couple of reference links.

The Lindy effect:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_eff…

How to choose your next book by @farnamstreet:
fs.blog/2013/08/choose…
Why?

1. Excellent principles for problem solving. Covers creative execution, a key part of High Agency

2. Insightful look at the human aspects of software dev. Part I is gold

3. Grok systems, errors & problem solving

4. Analyze interpersonal transactions, incl those at work
October 2020 book recommendations for product people:

1. smile.amazon.com/Adrenaline-Jun…

2. smile.amazon.com/Art-Game-Desig…

3. smile.amazon.com/Score-Takes-Ca…

4. smile.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-… Image
Why?

1. Collaboration patterns & anti-patterns, useful & relevant for every function & every level

2. An analysis of games, which are often the best-designed products one can find

3. Lots of useful lessons on empowerment & leadership

4. Practical guide for developing strategy

• • •

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More from @shreyas

Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
Mar 30, 2023
Product life in midsized & large companies starts making a lot more sense when you understand that a large % of middle & upper management thinks their main job is to (i) try & decipher what the CEO wants done (ii) align their org with it (iii) propose a plan that the CEO approves
This is instead of *often* telling the CEO what actually needs to be done, in a way that is grounded in (a) deep insight into customers & market (b) creative product & GTM solutions

Many in middle & upper management will of course blame incentives set by the company for this.
And they are not wrong. But it is worth evaluating how much of one’s career (and life) one wants to spend in aligning perfectly with incentives set by another party.

20% or 50% or 70% or 90% or 99% or 100%?

What is your answer?
Read 6 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
Mar 7, 2023
Those who don’t understand the great value of instinct call it luck.
Useful to understand
Also useful to understand
Read 4 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
Mar 3, 2023
Everything we create, everything we do, it all starts with our thinking

Clear thinking drastically improves odds of success in all departments of career & life

While clear thinking is quite rare, it can be developed with practice

Advanced principles for clear thinking:

(1/12)
1) Essence first. Not story. Not analogy

Most people get seduced by great analogies & exciting stories.

Clear thinkers don’t *form* their thinking via analogies. They identify the essence of the issue, in their specific context. Then, they use analogies as one of their inputs.
2) WAYRTTD

“What Are You _Really_ Trying To Do” is a simple but powerful tool to make you pause & identify your real goal

Most people move too quickly to How & When to do a given task. But the task isn’t the goal

Clear thinkers have built a habit of asking themselves WAYRTTD.
Read 19 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
Feb 23, 2023
Apple Pie Position:
A statement that instantly elevates the person who is saying it and is simultaneously hard for anyone else to push back on, and so everyone avoids the personal risk and just nods “yes”, even though its actual value in this specific situation might be… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Okay, so now that you understand Apple Pie, here’s your crash course on dealing with Apple Pie:

1) The greatest thing about Apple Pie Positions is that you now have a name to assign to a complex behavior (and it is a cute name, which helps a lot). Once you share this idea with… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
One other important thing:

Note that Apple Pie Positions are, by definition, specific to the context. This means that the same sentence can be either the right thing to focus on, or it can be an Apple Pie Position. The way you determine which is which is through good judgment.
Read 5 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
Feb 17, 2023
Which book would sell more copies?

Business (auto)biography 1:
Failure 1, Failure 2, Hit rock bottom, Success 1, Failure 3, Wild success

Business (auto)biography 2:
Mild success, Major success, Mild failure, Mild challenges, Wild success

(Wild success being the same in both)
Now, imagine you must choose to live one of these lives.

Which one would you choose?

(note: you *must* choose one of these, you have no other option)

(think & be honest to yourself)

(this is a thought experiment for you only, so pick one, don’t reply with “it depends”)
After you’ve answered both questions (and seen the both poll results), share what if anything one might conclude from this.

You can make it finely granular (e.g. what you conclude about yourself) or coarsely granular (e.g. what you conclude about society/media/critical thinking)
Read 4 tweets
Shreyas Doshi Profile picture
Feb 13, 2023
Failure is the absolute worst way to learn something and sadly so many people spend their entire lives under the illusion that failure is the best way to learn anything.
Read 7 tweets

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