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

**Ken Norton** (0:00)
Part of what I think is pretty exciting about product management is you are a leader from day one in product management, right? And, you know, there's leadership all over the place, but that's sort of your job, you're a leader. You don't have any formal authority, but you're a leader, you're expected to lead.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:22)
Over his 14-year career at Google, Ken Norton led product teams that build Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and even did a stint at Google Ventures. The products that he's helped craft are now used by over 3 billion people. Today, Ken is a full-time executive coach specializing at working with product leaders. And in our conversation, we cover the creative versus reactive mindset, why the art of product management is much more important than the science of product management, how to get over imposter syndrome, the most common PM blind spots, how to find a coach and how to know if a coach is right for you, and so much more. I hope that you enjoy this episode with Ken Norton. If you're setting up your analytics stack, but you're not using Amplitude, what are you doing? Amplitude is the number one most popular analytics solution in the world, used by both big companies like Shopify, Instacart and Atlassian, and also most tech 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. Give your teams self-service product data to understand your users, drive conversions, and increase engagement, growth, and revenue. Ditch your vanity metrics, trust your data, work smarter, and grow your business. Try Amplitude for free. Just visit amplitude.com to get started. Have you heard of Lenny's Job Board? Well, if you're hiring or open to a new gig, if I got the site for you, lennysjobs.com. If you're a hiring manager, sign up and get access to hundreds of hand-curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply, and I personally review and accept just 10% of them to be part of this collective. You won't find a better place to hire product managers and growth people. And if you're someone who's looking around for something new, join the collective. It's free. You can be anonymous and hide yourself from any company. You can also leave anytime. And you'll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out lennysjobs.com to learn more.
Welcome to the podcast, Ken. I am so honored to have you here. You're such a legend of product managers and product management circles. Your writing has had so much influence on so many people, including myself. And if nothing else, you've led to many donuts being purchased by tech companies over the years. So thanks for being here.

**Ken Norton** (2:58)
Thank you and thanks for having me. Feelings Mutual, obviously a big fan of your work and all the things you've done for the community and this podcast, which has been fantastic. So humbled and excited to be here. And yes, I do think that I'm at least maybe partially responsible for at least a lot of consumption of donuts over these years.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:18)
Are you tired of people asking you about donuts?

**Ken Norton** (3:21)
I'll never get tired of it. Back when we met with people in person, people would bring me donuts and never got tired of it. And nor did any of the people that I worked with who got to eat those donuts get tired of it. So no, I'll never get tired of donuts.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:37)
Someone on Twitter asked, what's like a digital equivalent of bringing the donuts now that we're kind of in a remote world? Do you have any advice on that?

**Ken Norton** (3:45)
That's a great question.
I'm not even sure if the physical equivalent of donuts is donuts. I mean, when I came up with that, I think it was really to be a metaphor around being sort of a servant leader, bringing whatever needs to be done, filling the white space, filling the gaps, whatever sort of needed to happen. So it doesn't always have to be donuts. I did put that question out to some of the readers of my newsletter a while ago, maybe early in the pandemic, and got a lot of really interesting ideas. And maybe that was at a place where people had a little bit more patience for happy hours over Zoom and stuff like that. Maybe that patience has worn out. The idea that I loved the most was actual donuts. There was a PM who got DoorDash codes and found the best local donut place for each of the people on the team, and basically sent them a code and said, click here and order the donuts to come to your house whenever you want them. So maybe at least partially the digital equivalent of the donuts might be actual donuts.