Crucial books...

I have a couple of book recommendations for any product manager out there to read. VitalSmarts has a website that promotes the books and the training. The books are Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. I found the books to be very relevant to the job of a product manager because so much of what we do is about communicating. The communications are almost always conversations where there are either hard decisions to be made or confronting some performance issues in the development of the product. Obviously, we all want to see our products ship...so taking the messages of these two books to heart can help you navigate the hundreds of conversations that are required from start to finish.

Crucial Conversations focuses around having meaningful conversations with the people around you by creating a safe place for the conversation and focusing on getting the facts before reacting to bad perception or perceived facts. It is easy to see silence and violence in conversations that are not safe. Finally, once everyone has had a chance to completely understand and agree to the factual events move forward decisively and follow up later to monitor the results.

Crucial Confrontations focuses around having those conversations that are even more charged. There are many similarities in the approach described in Crucial Conversations, but there is added emphasis on the idea that the issue in question can be overcome by finding the proper motivation or making it easier to actually act on the issue.

All in all, there are many examples that you are sure to agree with or have seen in your career with some very practical guidance on what you can do to be a better product manager and lead conversations and confrontations that are impacting your product, your career, and perhaps your personal life.