Books on Communication for Product People

Writing, presenting, negotiating, and having the conversation you have been avoiding.

Product work is decided in conversations and documents more than in tools. These cover the four situations that come up most, being structuring an argument, presenting evidence, handling disagreement, and giving feedback to people you do not manage.

  1. The Pyramid Principle

    5.01 rating

    The structure behind every clear document you have read. Dense, and it will change how you write a recommendation.

  2. Crucial Conversations

    4.027 ratings

    A repeatable structure for the conversations where stakes are high and people disagree, which is most of stakeholder management.

  3. Storytelling with Data

    4.86 ratings

    How to present numbers so the point survives. The before and after makeovers are the part that transfers to your own charts.

  4. Never Split the Difference

    4.273 ratings

    Tactical empathy, labelling and calibrated questions. Written for hostage negotiation and useful for roadmap negotiation.

  5. Articulating Design Decisions

    How to explain a decision by connecting it back to an agreed objective, and how to answer the objections that recur.

  6. Radical Candor

    3.920 ratings

    Feedback that is neither evasive nor unkind, with the failure modes named clearly enough to recognise in yourself.

  7. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

    The six principles of persuasion, with enough on the mechanism that you can also see them being used on you.

  8. Working Backwards

    4.03 ratings

    The six page narrative memo, and the argument for writing prose instead of slides when a decision matters.

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