Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

Cagan does it again. He sets the bar for no-nonsense advice and guidance in the product space. This time its about leadership and maintaining a good product culture from the top down, while his prior book Inspired was mostly about being a product manager. There is a lot of carryover from Inspired as he maintains his key principles. There are very few people that I read where I am constantly nodding and saying to myself "couldn't have said it better", but Cagan is one of them. Here are some powerful quotes * The product manager has a clear responsibility, which is to ensure that the solutions are valuable (our customers will buy the product and/or choose to use it), and viable (it will meet the needs of the business). Together with a product designer who is responsible for ensuring the solution is usable, and a tech lead who is responsible for ensuring the solution is feasible, the team is able to collaborate to address this full range of risks (value, viability, usability, and feasibility). Together, they own the problem and are responsible and accountable for the results. * With every interaction, at the very least, you’re looking to learn: Are the customers who you think they are? Do they have the problems you think they have? How do they solve that problem today? What would it take to get them to switch? * If I had to boil it all down, I'd say that thinking like an owner versus thinking like an employee is primarily about taking responsibility for the outcome rather than just the activities. * Your highest‐order contribution and responsibility as product manager is to make sure that what the engineers are asked to build will be worth building. That it will deliver the necessary results. This means working with designers and engineers to come up with solutions that are valuable, usable, feasible, and viable. That is product discovery, and that is what takes on the order of four solid hours a day. * Stephen Covey explained that: Trust is a function of two things: competence and character. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Character includes your integrity, your motive, and your intent with people. Both are vital. I will definitely keep this book handy to brush up on some of the chapter themes around strategy or hiring in the future. * Optimizing for empowerment requires balancing three interrelated goals: ownership, autonomy, and alignment. * The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. —Jim Barksdale * “Failing” in discovery is not really failing—it is very fast and inexpensive learning Here is one gem from the book that anyone could use during interviewing. I used it a few times and loved the level of thought it forces the interviewee to put into their response. "This setup should be disarming. The candidate must understand that there is no correct answer to the question, hopefully setting up an honest conversation. Now for the four attributes, in no particular order. I (Chris) usually describe them this way: * Execution — how well do you get things done, do the right thing without being asked, and track lots of simultaneous targets? * Creativity — how often are you the person in the room with the most or the best ideas? * Strategy — how well do you get up above what you're working on and put it into a broader market or vision context and then make this clear to others? * Growth — how good are you at figuring out ways to multiply effort through smart use of process, team management, and so on?"

Empowered is and should be a must read for any product leader. There are a lot of books to help Product Managers and a lot more on leadership but almost nothing has been written about how to help develop product leadership. Product Leadership is extremely important in this world where product management principles are being applied to any industry. Product leadership needs a balance between strong functional skills of a PM, strategic thinking of a strategist and leadership skills of great leaders. The book helps you think about all the ways you can help your teams build extraordinary products. The best thing I loved about the book is the philosophies, frameworks and techniques to help PMs thrive and grow. The practices will help PMs build great products. The things that most stood out for me are 1. How top tech companies are shipping one great product after another 2. How a product leader can hire great PMs and coach their teams 3. How to set product vision 4. How to define product strategy 5. How to transform your teams I am grateful for Marty Cagan's work over the years to help Product Managers become better. I have been learning a lot from Marty's previous book Inspired, his articles and workshops. I eagerly waited for Empowered and pre-ordered the book and couldn’t wait. Empowered is a great guide book full of strategic guidance and practical advise on how PM leaders can grow. The book was amazing! It has turned out to be a lighthouse for me. The book is inspiring and I hope to keep referring it back to when I look for answers in best practices. The book will really help even ordinary people build extraordinary products and unleash their true potential to the world impacting the lives of millions of people.

I have been doing product management for over 15 years and many of the processes and methodologies I have come to learn and apply in order to become effective are beautifully summarized and explained by he author. This book is an excellent guide that can save product managers years of uninformed mistakes and trial and error. To the authors: I think that the name of the book is somewhat incongruent and misleading. I know it aligns with the simple one-word set of books you've written and that an empowered product team is the desired result, but simply naming it "Empowered" misses the opportunity to have a name that quickly sums up the incredibly valuable content of this book to potential readers. For example, it took me a year to read the book from the time it was recommended to me because the name didn't sound like anything I would have want to read, when it is now a required book for Product Managers, UX Designers, and Tech Leads on my teams. I feel that something simple like: "Product Management Mastery" would have pick way higher initial interest for me. Thanks for writing such a great book.

I really like the content of the book, the most compelling i have read about product organisations. It is an assertive guide on what a good product organisation looks like and more importantly what it doesn’t look like. A must read for all the corporate digital factories churning digital features instead of building new critical business lines around digital products.

really impressive， change how i thought about product management, helpful even when i am not a leader now, i learn a lot

Very good book

If you are in product management this will be a very good read and if you implement the things you will see results in less than a sprint’s time!

I struggle to read this book for a few reasons: 1. It’s very repetitive: The authors keep repeating the same 3-4 key points over and over and over and… again. 2. Too brad and not enough depth: I’d say that 70% + of their chapters (81 chapters in 392 pages. Do the math!) are 2-3 pages at most and very light in valuable content 3. It’s very elitist: In the authors view very few people know how to do product right and this mostly comes about because the authors think that their way of doing product is the only correct one and everyone else is wrong. 4. Sales brochure: A lot of the book reads like an over-the-top sales brochure for their organization (Silicon Valley Product Group) 5. A lot of what’s covered in the book is not new or original and has been covered by other authors in a much more engaging and clear manner. Probably I won’t be reading their last book in the series and that’s probably about 4 hours of time savings!

With his book and blog posts, Marty Cagan is building a map showing how you and your team can work more effectively to build great products. It's a book to keep next to you to help you with the struggles that will surely appear.

Très bon livre, avec plein de bonnes pratiques

Excellent book on product management.

Recommend to everyone!! An eye opener in this traditional agile world . Opens the door for top management to check their strategies prioritising Product our following a process

Es un libro con información muy valiosa y fácil de digerir.