Product Mastery Book Club
College me — and especially high school me — has come a long way. I wasn’t much of a reader in school, hardly buying a textbook and trying to find creative ways to get the important readings in front of me. But I’ll chalk that up to A) I couldn’t really afford to buy a $300 textbook (for each of the 5+ classes I was in) B) the content wasn’t always that interesting to me and C) I didn’t have the time to read 75 pages (again, for reach of the 5+ classes I was in) after class and baseball practice and clubs and dinner and yada yada yada.
Since college I’ve enjoyed reading a bit, predominantly in the leadership/personal growth genre. Now that I’ve eclipsed the 1-year mark in the working world, there’s an opportunity for me to add some readings to develop in — or learn about — a particular profession.
A senior colleague of mine recently launched a book club for our organization where we’ll collectively read the same book and gather together to discuss it at certain check points. The plan is to drop discussion points, questions, and realizations into our Slack channel to discuss ‘offline’ before joining as a group to talk more in depth. It’s a laid back, read what you can type of group and I think there’ll be a lot to gain for each of us who are all at different parts of our career.
So what books will we be reading? The full slate of books is TBD and will likely be selected one at a time as we finish one book and move to the next. Most of the books will be about product management in some form, but that form isn’t exclusive to ‘product books’ and may include books on leadership, leading large teams, working with data, etc. The group was polled, however, with a few options to kick off the club and the one decided on was… Empowered by Marty Cagan and Chris Jones
I plan to blog about my questions, discoveries, and other general thoughts from each of the readings we do, so keep your eyes open for a follow up to this blog in the future that recaps Empowered and what I took from it while both reading and discussing with the rest of the book club.
