How to unlock your product leadership skills | Ken Norton, Ex-Google

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2022

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Advancing as a product leader requires new skills and a new mindset. Ken Norton is an executive coach who works with some of the top people in product to help them get unstuck and find creativity again in their approach to problems and their careers. After 14 years as a Product Manager at Google, Ken brings deep experience in leadership and shares with us the lessons he most often offers his clients to unlock growth. Join us.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/how-to-unlock-your-product-leadership-skills-ken-norton-ex-google/#transcript

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

• Lenny’s Job Board: https://www.lennysjobs.com/talent

• Unit: https://unit.co/lenny

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Where to find Ken Norton:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kennethn

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethnorton/

• Product Leadership Coaching: https://www.bringthedonuts.com/coaching/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Books and Resources Recommended By Ken:

• Dare To Lead by Brene Brown • 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership • Mastering Leadership by Bob Anderson • Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan • Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome • Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen

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In this episode, learn:

[00:00] What to expect in this episode with Ken Norton[03:10] Why Ken will never get tired of donuts[05:05] Ken’s career path and what he does with executive coaching now[08:00] What Ken learned from his own executive coach[12:02] Driving a car and the metaphor of learning a new skill[16:20] How Ken’s helping leaders shift their mindset[19:41] Creative vs reactive leadership mindset[22:15] How your underlying beliefs impact your leadership style[33:50] Mindset and authenticity and their role within leadership[39:00] What you can do if you can’t spend a lot on coaching[42:05] Resources Ken recommends (linked in notes)[44:22] Biggest blindspots people have[48:10] Why doing the hard thing, may be the best thing[49:20] What to do with imposter syndrome[58:40] Ways to find a coach[1:01:03] 10x vs 10%[1:05:35] Ken’s one piece of advice for hiring a product manager[1:13:00] How to find Ken

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Part of what I think is pretty exciting about product management is you are a leader from day one in product management, right?
0:10.6	And you know, there's leadership all over the place place but that's sort of your job you're a leader. You don't have any formal authority
0:18.2	But you're a leader you're expected to lead
0:22.0	Over his 14-year career at Google, Ken Norton led product teams that build Google Docs, Google
0:28.1	Calendar, Google Maps, and even did a stint at Google Ventures.
0:32.0	The products that he's helped craft are now used by over 3 billion people.
0:36.8	Today Ken is a full-time executive coach, specializing at working with product leaders.
0:41.5	And in our conversation, we cover the creative versus reactive
0:44.9	mindset, why the art of product management is much more important than the science of product
0:49.7	management, how to get over imposter syndrome, the most common PM blind spots, how to find a coach and how to know
0:56.0	if a coach is right for you, and so much more.
0:59.2	I hope that you enjoy this episode with Ken Norton.
1:08.8	If you're setting up your analytics stack, but you're not using amplitude,
1:10.2	what are you doing?
1:14.3	Amplitude is the number one most popular analytic solution in the world used by both big companies like Shopify, Insticard, and Atlassian, and also most tech
1:19.8	startups. Amplitude has everything you need, including a powerful and fully-self-service analytics product, an experimentation platform, and even an integrated customer data platform to help you understand your users like never before.
1:33.0	Give your team's self-service product data to understand your users, drive conversions,
1:39.0	and increase engagement, growth, and revenue.
1:42.0	Did your vanity metrics, trust your data work smarter and grow your business try amplitude for free
1:48.0	just visit amplitude.
1:50.0	To get started
1:52.0	Have you heard of Lenny's Job Board?
	...

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