Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2025-08-14
Lenny Rachitsky & Matt LeMay: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
The one question that saves product careers | Matt LeMay
Matt LeMay spent 13 years as a music critic at Pitchfork before becoming one of product management’s most influential voices. He’s consulted with companies from startups to Fortune 500s and authored two essential PM books, including Impact-First Product Teams.
Lenny Rachitsky recommended Impact-First Product Teams by Matt LeMay, and discussed Product Management in Practice by Matt LeMay. Matt LeMay recommended Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri and The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, and discussed Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Impact-First Product Teams
Recommended“From that experience, he wrote and recently published a new book called Impact First Product Teams that I could not agree more with.”
Where to get it
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Product Management in Practice
Discussed“So, you're known for writing one of the most popular books in the field of product management called Product Management in Practice. I suppose I am.”
Where to get it
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Escaping the Build Trap
Recommended“Um you know my my favorite definition of product management comes from Melissa Perry's book escaping the build trap where she describes product management as facilitating a value exchange.”
Where to get it
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Radical Focus
Discussed“This idea comes from Christina Wood's book, Radical Focus. She had a great episode on your podcast that I just rewatched uh for inspiration before I came on here. Nice move. Um but in that book, she has this visual”
Where to get it
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The Wisdom of Insecurity
Recommended“The other book, this is a bit of a curveball, is by Alan Watts, the the Buddhist philosopher. It's called the wisdom of insecurity. And a lot of the way I talk about control and giving up control comes from that book.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (5) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Product Management in Practice
“Matt is a longtime product leader, author of one of the most popular and practical books in the field of product management called Product Management in Practice.”
Plugged Impact-First Product Teams
“But that's part of why I wrote this book at the team level because I think for folks like myself who really enjoy and thrive in and enjoy that team environment, if you can look at the product team as the foundational unit of impact”
Passing Radical Focus
“They had read unfortunately they had not read Radical Focus um or they hopefully would have done things differently. They had read a lot of other books.”
Passing Impact-First Product Teams
“Maybe to start to wrap up our conversation, what's what's maybe one question from the book or even from this conversation that you think product leaders, product teams should ask themselves to help them solve problems”
Plugged Impact-First Product Teams
“And then what's the name of the book? Where do they find it? Impact First Product Teams. Um, you can find it at all the places where you find books on Amazon. There's an author read audio book which I recorded right here in this room with this microphone.”