Eight books for owning an outcome when nobody who delivers it reports to you.
Most product and project work runs on borrowed authority, so the deciding skills are diagnosing what other people value and being clear about what you are asking for. These books cover the relationship with your own manager, the exchange that gets a peer to prioritise your work, and the writing and conversation that carry a decision when you are not in the room. The order runs from the general model of influence towards the specific situations you will meet this month.
Cohen and Bradford model influence as exchange and name the currencies people trade in, covering inspiration, task support, position and relationship. The most useful part is the process for working out what a potential ally actually cares about before you ask them for anything.
Abbajay treats the relationship with your boss as something you shape rather than something you receive, starting with how they take in information and how they decide. The chapters on the micromanager, the absentee and the conflict avoider give you tactics for each.
Pichler writes for the person who owns an outcome and manages nobody, which is the usual product situation. Practical on guiding stakeholders towards a decision and on the difference between consent and consensus.
Cialdini's six principles, with enough on the mechanism that you also notice them being used on you. Read it for the conditions under which each one holds rather than as a set of tactics to deploy.
Influence is mostly written, and Minto's structure puts the recommendation first and supports it in a way a busy reader can follow. Dense, and it changes how you write the document that has to win on its own.
A repeatable structure for the moment a stakeholder disagrees and the stakes are high, including how to state your path with facts before conclusions. The safety diagnosis is what keeps the conversation from ending badly.
Voss on labelling, calibrated questions and the value of getting to that is right rather than to yes. He is specific about phrasing, which is what you need when a scope conversation goes sideways.
Sandy breaks influence into named skills covering communication, negotiation and stakeholder management, set alongside the rest of the product craft. Useful if you want that material connected to the daily job rather than standing on its own.