My Product Management Wisdom Toolkit
“What are your top quality knowledge sources for product management? Please share your secrets with a beginner Product Manager 🙏”
The above question was posted in a private Israeli Product Management Facebook group with 10k+ members.
I was looking for an excuse to procrastinate on something that I didn’t feel like doing, so I started writing a reply. The reply became a post. Got a bunch of engagement. I’ve decided to translate it to English and expand a bit with specific stuff that helped me in recent years.
Here goes.
In a word, Twitter.
Here’s a sample tweet thread to give you a taste of what Twitter has to offer regarding product management.
In many words:
Here’s how I use these mediums to consume Product Management wisdom + tweets & links I’ve shared with friends/colleagues.
A. Twitter
B. Podcasts
C. Newsletters
D. Books
A. Twitter
I recommend following 2–3 Product people on Twitter.
Read the replies to find more people that write about stuff that interests you. Follow them. Repeat.
People that write about their work on Twitter usually stick to a specific niche within a subject. It’s easy to discern who tweets to sell workshops, and who tweets to contribute wisdom.
Use Twitter’s Lists feature. Create a List and add people who tweet exclusively about subjects that interest you. I have 5 on my “Product Management” list.
A few recommendations to get you started:
Shreyas Doshi @shreyas (Product Manager at Stripe) is currently the best on Twitter. By far. There are weeks’ worth of quality content in his pinned tweet alone:
My most shared Shreyas bits:
- Why smart companies become stupid: the Preventable Problem Paradox — This post prompted me to follow Shreyas. Shreyas writes about the subconscious short-term value people get from a dysfunctional system. Helped me identify some dynamics in my company culture. Contributed to a more empathetic mindset in my discussions with leaders. Discussions where I m̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ attempted to address their short-term concerns.
- PM Career Skills Map — If you‘re writing a resume for a PdM role at any level, take a look at this thread. Hiring managers should be able to link your resume bullets to most of the skills mentioned in this thread.
- Product Strategy — There are so many takes about strategy. This thread is a good rabbit hole to dig into. Shreyas keeps adding more tweets to this thread. It’s becoming a curation. Shreyas writes: “prioritization is a first cousin of product strategy”. Love this. IMO, product strategy is probably more “the parent” of product prioritization. And there are many orphans out there. An explicitly defined prioritization method based on an implicitly defined strategy is often a recipe for low quality mid/long-term decisions.
John Cutler @johncutlefish writes a lot about product team collaboration. As part of his job at Amplitude, (I believe) he advises Product teams on how to tap into their true potential.
My most shared Cutler bits:
- Decision Autonomy — These 2 images helped me identify my team’s true autonomy level. Gave me context for how decisions are made in my company. Inspired me to think of how to raise the autonomy level of my team (with varying degree of success..). More on this subject in this post by Cutler and this deeply thought out Tweet thread.
- Great One-Pagers — The “common sections” bullets are good prompts to go through. Especially when you are about to brainstorm or communicate a customer journey problem/solution. Whether internally or externally.
- Building faster than we can learn — I actually used the below tweet as a slide in a deck. Was presenting to customer-facing people. Used it to take ownership and apologize for the dynamics of the product development team. A dynamic where we weren’t tapping into the wisdom of the customer-facing organization. Helped with rebuilding a bit of the lost trust as I asked for their help with the “learn” part of the tweet.
- John also has a good blog post on the above on his Substack: Shipping Faster Than You Learn
- 50 Short Product Lessons — These lessons are somewhere between a long tweet thread and a blog post. I recommend setting a recurring daily reminder to read one lesson a day and no more. Give yourself time to digest the info.
Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan was a Product Manager at Airbnb. The quality level of his content is superb. He runs a paid Slack community that consists of a few thousand Product Managers. I assume it helps him keep his finger on the pulse while writing full time. Also enables him to publish “community wisdom” posts like these:
My most shared Lenny bits:
- How To Get Into Product Management (And Thrive) — Relevant for experienced PdMs and non-PdMs as well. Any person that wants to become a leader in an org can benefit from some of the links here.
Article is packed. Worth a skim through. - Product Management Templates — One of the best curations I’ve seen of product templates. I recommend reading the “Additional Goodness” section as well. Good list of one-pager templates, though most of them are solution space heavy. John Cutler’s above one-pager is problem space heavy, so for one-pagers, I’d start with his.
- A nuance for using templates — What’s nice with Lenny is he often does research by asking his Twitter following. This gets some interesting nuanced responses. A great nuance to the templates’ research question is the below from @shreyas. I think my approach is similar: (a) Start from a blank page; (b) let the blank page dictate the content; (c) use templates only for inspiration as you go.
Love it when these guys reply to each other. Feels like “The PdM intellectual dark web”. Which probably should’ve been the title of this post, but that would’ve been clickbaity.
Indi Young @indiyoung writes about the role of empathy in designing solutions for humans. Indi’s Twitter content is very specific. It touches a Product Management aspect that I find important and interesting.
My most shared Indi bits:
- Paying Better Attention to the Problem (62 minutes)— Great talk about how to use empathy for discovery. I love the way Indi talks about empathy for clients and empathy for colleagues. Here’s the deck that she used in the talk.
- Problem and Solution spaces—Indi has a great definition for the distinction between Problem and Solution spaces. Starts with the distinction between ‘person’ and ‘user’. I would make some tweaks to the below. For example, I’d remove the “once a year” frequency for the problem space. When done at a high level, discovery is once a year. But as John Cutler writes, every problem is a nested solution to a higher-level problem. Lower-level problem discovery is continuous. Having said that, I can see why adding that nuance to Indi’s distinction would hurt the clarity of her message.
Less frequent posters
There are a couple of people that I must mention when writing a post like this.
They don’t post new stuff at the same rate as those above, but I recommend following them. Mostly as a reminder for their material.
Marty Cagan @cagan posts about what good Product Management looks like. Stays a bit too high level for my taste, and I’d love for him to dive a couple of levels deeper, but that high level is also useful.
My most shared Cagan bit:
- EMPOWERED — Achieving Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People (48 minutes)— Excellent talk about attributes of great Product teams. How Product Management is a struggle in most companies. That most companies don’t know what good Product Management looks like. As a beginner manager of PdMs, I really needed to hear that at the time. Also, Marty (and Chris Jones) recently published a new book with the same title as the vid (link)
Teresa Torres @ttorres has a framework for continuous discovery, which she calls “Opportunity Solution Tree”. It resembles things written by others. But the way she writes and talks about it is the best version of it for sure. Wish she published new stuff more frequently.
My most shared Teresa bits:
- Opportunity Solution Tree — Below is the most up-to-date slide. Here’s an extensive article about it, a Miro template and more links around it.
- Justify Your Product Decisions and get Stakeholder Buy-in (32 minutes) — Great talk about how to use the “Opportunity Solution Tree” to get buy-in from stakeholders.
Watch out for your feed becoming an echo chamber
At some point, your “Product Twitter” feed will become an echo chamber. That’s fine, as it means you got to the front line of people writing about the subjects that interest you. To find new patterns, start following people that aren’t followed by the ones you follow. Mr. Cutler noticed this and asked for help :)
B. Podcasts
Product Management Podcast
Product Science Podcast by Holly Hester-Reilly @H2RProductSci
I don’t listen to too many Product Management podcasts. But Holly has great guests, no ego, and she directs the conversation with genuine curiosity.
A couple of recommended episodes:
- The Josh Seiden Hypothesis: Driving Outcomes Over Output Requires Understanding Customer Behavior — This is how I heard of Josh and his short book that I recommend further down in this post.
- The Saeed Khan Hypothesis: Understanding the State of Your Product, Your Processes, and Your People Sets the Foundation for High-Growth Products — Saeed has been writing about Product Management since forever. I like how Saeed breaks down the life-cycle of products. And how unpacking that is important to understand your starting point as a PdM on a specific product.
The problem with many Product podcasts is that guests often talk about how great of a job they did. And do so without tying it to a well-articulated first principal. Or they go too high-level without detailing how that principal/process/habit informed actual decisions. So they leave the listener with the feeling of “that’s cool for you, but I don’t feel I can tie that to anything I’m going through”. Holly does a good job of focusing the guest in a way that optimizes for the listener.
Self-help and relationship podcasts
I mostly listen to podcasts about self-help and relationships.
I believe that honing my skills in both areas makes me a better product manager.
To listen, communicate, and lead productively, you need to identify when your mind is cloudy of biases and assumptions. You do this by continuously refining your self-reflection skills.
Also, leading without authority and collaborating within the organization demands constant relationship training.
Every self-help podcast can be listened to as a business or product lesson. User segments and companies are comprised of people.
Here’s a tweet asking about the weight of cognitive aspects in Product Management. Not sure I’d go with a cognitive science degree, but it’s interesting to see the acknowledgment of that weight in the comments:
Edit: Original tweet can be found here. The user has since deleted their profile. Question in the tweet was:
Product people: If you had to re-do your undergrad degree and were forced to choose between mathematics, computer science, or cognitive science, which would you choose and why?
Empathy starts with developing the habit of being empathetic to yourself (self-help). That will empower you with the habit of being empathetic to others.
Here’s Shreyas’ epic thread about empathy being the most valuable product skill:
I recommend podcasts by Rangan Chatterjee, Tim Ferris, and specific Joe Rogan episodes.
A few episodes that I love and have shared with friends, family, and colleagues many times:
- Joe Rogan Experience #1208 — Jordan Peterson — I rarely listen twice to an episode, but this one was an exception. Love the way Jordan talks about the positive role of adversity in living a life worth living (2:00:03–2:07:05). And the role of self-ignorant reflection in finding meaning (2:14:46–2:19:40). These two bits were what I needed to hear when I was going through a lot of adversity at work and considered leaving. Helped my resolve as I decided to stay and address the problem “that was calling out for me”.
- Joe Rogan Experience #1309 — Naval Ravikant — Naval Ravikant is an odd duck. He’s a combination of a Buddhist, philosopher, and hitech entrepreneur/investor. He drops pearls of wisdom nonchalantly and at high frequency. Most of the stuff he talks about is not new, but sounds new when he says it.
- Dr. Chatterjee — Esther Perel: Relationships and How They Shape Us — Esther Perel is a clinical psychologist. She’s exceptionally sharp in communicating behavior patterns within a human system.
- I also recommend listening to all episodes of Esther’s podcast How’s Work? There’s no bad episode there. These are recordings of actual work-related therapy sessions. We get a practical peep into the lives of others and their work relationships. Esther shows how personal life and work-life are inseparable. Per Esther “we take home to work, and we take work home”. I listened to these while running. I’m sure people watching me thought I was pushing myself too hard physically. When in fact I was on the verge of tears from the content (OK, sometimes went beyond the verge).
- Tim Ferris — Brené Brown: Striving versus Self-Acceptance, Saving Marriages, and More — Brené Brown has one of the most popular TED talks ever. She works with execs. She talks about the benefits of allowing yourself to be vulnerable at work and in your personal life. About the mindset shift needed for that (00:36:26–00:46:20). Great quote: “Emotion and cognition undefined and unexplored drive every decision you make. You either develop some awareness or these things control you.”
- Dr. Chatterjee — Peter Crone: How to break free from the limitations of your mind — Peter Crown is a proper life coach. There’s a bit in the podcast where he does some coaching for the interviewer (Dr. Chatterjee) and it’s fascinating.
- In the episode above, Peter talks about how he helped someone with a physical problem (eye rash) by tapping into their mental blocker. It took place as part of an interview with the person with the rash. So you may want to watch the relevant bit after listening to the Dr. Chatterjee interview. Here’s a link to the bit. Relevant parts are: 00:52:38–01:07:50 and from 01:10:10 and on.
Business current events podcast
Pivot podcast — For current events, I listen to Pivot regularly.
Scott Galloway is a Marketing professor at NYU. He has no inhibitions when he talks and is super authentic. Scott was among the first to foresee and publicly talk about the downfall of WeWork. He also predicted Amazon’s acquisition of Wholefoods. He’ll also be the first to say that he was wrong about Tesla’s stock price. Recently he’s been advising government officials and tech CEOs about market trends.
Kara is a NY Times journalist that is well connected in the tech industry. I’m sure some of her “opinions” are actually inside information.
The chemistry between Kara and Scott makes this a great listen. They talk about big tech and the effects of (mostly) American politics on business.
C. Newsletters
People lie about 2 things. The number of sex partners they’ve had, and the number of newsletters they read. The difference is that with the latter they are lying to themselves.
I recommend these two as a start. PMHQ was a good start to find Product Twitter people who write about the subjects that interested me.
I use Gmail labels to prioritize my newsletters. I read depending on my capacity that day/week/month. These days I barely get to reading the P1s. Will surely get back to it though (right? right..)
- P0 Morning = Ideally I skim these each morning. Consists of Morning Brew, 1440 Daily Digest, Chartr Data Story.
- P1, P2 Read = I separate between General newsletters and Product-oriented ones. Rule is to have 5 max for P1s. The rest go to P2. Good P2s will replace P1s that I’ve moved on from.
- P3 Discovery = Link heavy newsletters go here. I skim these when the moon lines up with the sun.
D. Books
- Outcomes Over Output — Josh Seiden — A short 70-page book. Josh does an outstanding job at framing the primary focus of a Product Manager - the problem space (or if you prefer the positive form of the term - the opportunity space).
- Survival to Thrival — Bob Tinker & Tae Hea Nahm — A book that provides a holistic view of how companies support and empower the customer journey. These ideas have become the basis of my product thinking. I try to connect every new feature or customer-facing playbook aspect to the customer journey as framed in this book. Bob Tinker gave an excellent talk that covers a lot of the book’s content here:
- What You Do Is Who You Are — Ben Horowitz — Great book about the dynamics of company culture. How to build good company culture, and how to adjust it. Company culture has a major role in how the work of the Product Manager will look like. So you’d want to learn how to identify the patterns of your company’s culture, work within it, and perhaps strive to adjust it. Here’s a tweet of mine with an excerpt of the book:
- Crucial Conversations — A must-read for every human. It describes the ideal mindset to have when entering the meeting room. Relevant for personal and work-oriented relationships. It’s a short book. Best to read when you want to move something big in your org. When you want to get buy-in from other departments and leadership. I’ll re-read this in the future when that type of scenario comes up again.
In addition, and maybe as a starting point, there are a couple of books that provide a good basis for Product Management: Inspired by Marty Cagan and Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri.
And if you’ve made it to the end of this post, then you may want to follow me on Twitter and subscribe to this blog (bottom of this post).
I’m interested in discovery and company culture. From the perspective of Product Development and the customer-facing organization.
Below is a Tweet thread version of this post which was originally posted on Medium in December 2020.
Let’s continue the discussion there 😉