I had a great time reading this book by Dan Pink. I had seen his presentation at the HOW Design conference in Boston this year and had been meaning to buy the book for sometime. Here is an ok summary of the book but I really recommend that you buy the book, especially if you are in product management or a small business owner.
While the early part of the book felt preachy to me because it made assumptions about the readers state of mind. I wish he would have said, “If you agree with the following tenets, skip to chapter x”.
Part 3 is the where the book really shines. The parts where I learnt the most were:
- Mimicking
- Limiting choices to increase sales
- Learning the power structure of a meeting by noting down who talks
- Improv classes to improve your listening skills
- Make it personal
- Make it purposeful
All the above items help as product managers need to have crucial conversations with business owners and other teams to get what is best for their product. Additionally, the book is inspiring in general and gets you going if you are having a bad day.
Further, the books insights gel really well with what I learned from a great talk that I Christine Mau (@mauhaus1) gave at the HOW design conference as well. I learned so much from it. I wish I had great help in implementing it in my father’s business of manufacturing measuring instruments. We can really benefit from making it personal and radically changing the packaging.
Any how, going back to Dan Pink. I also discovered that he hosts a monthly interview series with authors of many books that I’ve read and enjoyed. See this.