January kicked off 2026 with the product community setting their sights on growth for the year ahead.
From salary benchmarks and career pivots to tactical frameworks and leadership psychology here are the five most-read pieces from January.
As always if you have any topics that you would like us to cover, or write yourself, reach out to me on louron.pratt@mindtheproduct.com
Top books and resources in 2026 for product managers
Starting the year on the right foot as on the might of a load of PMs this month. This guide shared some of the best resources to invest in this year, along with a way to make best use of your personal development time.
Key learnings: pick 2-3 resources per quarter, go deep, and implement before consuming more. Essential reads included The AI Product Playbook by Dr. Marily Nika and Diego Granados for those building AI products, and Driving Value with Sprint Goals by Maarten Dalmijn for teams escaping the feature factory.
For podcasts, standouts included Lenny's Podcast, and Product Thinking with Melissa Perri.
But before you get stuck in remember to identify your one growth area for the quarter, then pick resources that specifically address it.
Explore the full resource list
How much were product managers paid in 2025?
One of our most anticipated annual pieces delivered data on the state of PM salaries across markets. Some key insights included Senior PM salaries rising as companies look to prioritise execution, while Head of Product roles dropped due to market saturation.
The US showed stronger growth, with Senior PMs at $381K median total compensation (+13.3% from 2023-2025) and Group PMs hitting $480K (+25.6%). The market is still challenging, however things are starting to look optimistic for the year ahead.
Prioritize with purpose: The product leader's framework for data-driven roadmaps
Rakshana Balakrishnan shared her approach to roadmapping a portfolio of 20+ B2B cloud products at Oracle. Her framework scored products on a 1-20 scale across Product Value (business value + feature value) and Complexity (engineering effort + launch effort), then mapped them to four quadrants: strategic investments, quick wins, keep the lights on, and futile pursuits.
The resulting roadmap allocated 70% of engineering capacity to strategic bets, 20% to quick wins, and 10% to maintenance. What made this framework valuable was being able to customise scoring parameters, such as YoY customer churn rate, number of customers requesting features, and post-development effort like training and support.
Product thinking is the key skill behind the fastest-growing jobs in 2026
Drawing on LinkedIn's 2026 Jobs on the Rise report, this analysis revealed PM skills appearing repeatedly as top transition paths into high-growth roles.
AI Consultants (#2 fastest-growing, requiring 8.2 years median experience) list PM as a top-3 transition role alongside Founder and Software Engineer. Founders (#9, up 69% YoY) have a median 5.9 years experience, with PM as a top-3 feeder role.
Tania Ladanova, CEO at TRMNL4 said in the piece "Many founders are following a simple flow: prompt, post, and ship."
The data showed PMs are founding faster than ever, with over 90% of early-stage startups already generating revenue.
So that was a long way of basically saying that the core skills of product professionals ain’t going anywhere. Thank goodness.
Discover the trends analysis here
How to lead without authority – Sean Flaherty (ITX Corp)
On The Product Experience podcast, veteran Product Leader Sean Flaherty unpacked the science behind influencing without authority, a challenge that many product managers and leaders alike face.
Sean outlined three core motivators:
- Autonomy (structured freedom)
- Competence (demonstrated through observable behaviour)
- Relatedness (connection that builds trust)
Sean's framework offered a psychological foundation for the influence they need to drive impact. As he emphasised: autonomy is all about balancing freedom with guidance so teams can be creative without getting lost.
Learn the leadership strategies
Do you have a topic you think the product community needs to hear more about? We're always open to ideas, drop us a line at editor@mindtheproduct.com.
Until next month, happy building!
