This Book Is Always On My Desk

As a Product Leader, I strive to consistently produce quality products that resonate with users and create positive business outcomes.

Achieving this requires that I establish - and evolve - processes that works across the range of products and services I have launched and managed over my career.

Of all the courses, books, and videos I have consumed, there is one book that is always on my desk:  The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf.

Who is Steve Blank?

Steve Blank is a monumental thought leader in modern entrepreneurship.

He is known for his Customer Development methodology that drives organizations to “get outside the building” to test hypnosis and iterate products based on direct immersion in the marketplace.  Through a steadfast focus Business Model Design, Agile Engineering, and creating (and testing) Minimal Viable Products (MVPs), this methodology reliably saves organizations time and money while improving their likelihood of creating repeatable and scalable business.

Co-authoring the book is Bob Dorf, an entrepreneur and investor acclaimed as “one of top five lean startup experts on the planet.”

Why this book?

The book is a compilation of the contents of Steve Blanks’ prior books - including The Four Steps To The Epiphany - organized into a stripped down, step-by-step guide that leads entrepreneurs and product leaders.

Note that although the book is written for a startup business, the methodology naturally applies to any product.

One of the most useful parts of the book are the checklists contained in an appendix to the book.  These thirty - or so - checklists detail everything you should have considered in each step of the Customer Development process.  They then refer you back into the book to reference the finer details.

These checklists have repeatedly proven invaluable for me in leading business and product teams.  They help ensure that teams are thorough, focused, and efficient.  This ultimately drives success.

When my initiatives fail, I realize that I skipped a step

Inevitably, some business initiates fail.

While conducting those painful assessments of these failures, this book in equally invaluable.  Almost without exception, this book helps unearth where you skipped a step, took an ill-advised short cut, or neglected to acknowledge that something in your business hypothesis was wrong (or overly optimistic).

This book helps you learn from your mistakes and - hopefully - do better next time.

For these reasons, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf is the book that is always on my desk.  It is also the book I regularly gift to my team - and leadership.