The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Horowitz wrote the book for CEOs going through the specific kinds of pain that are not covered in business school — firing executives, laying off staff, competing while nearly insolvent, managing your own psychology under sustained pressure. The register is personal and honest in a way most leadership writing avoids. For product direction the book is useful outside its narrow CEO frame because many of the decisions product leaders make are smaller versions of the ones Horowitz describes, and his vocabulary for naming them is useful. Read it when you are going through something hard. Pair with Grove's High Output Management and McCord's Powerful for the operational companions.