Bring the Donuts

Product Management Coaching with Ken Norton

I’ve coached and mentored product managers and product leaders of all experience levels for more than fifteen years, from recent grad APMs to newly promoted product directors to experienced VPs of Product and Chief Product Officers. Below are just a few areas I focus on:

• Developing as a product leader
• Finding your purpose as a product manager
• Building a healthy and robust product culture
• Career planning and development
• Team and organizational structure
• Hiring product managers
• Working and communicating with other groups and different personalities
• Building outstanding relationships with engineering and design
• Improving product strategy and process
• Setting goals and objectives
• Long term product planning and vision
• Working effectively with CEOs, other execs, and board members
• Developing self-awareness and processing feedback
• Work/life integration
• Values

I’ve worked with PMs from many industries, including consumer software, e-commerce, enterprise, hardware, life sciences/healthcare, frontier tech, and Fortune 500 companies of all shapes and sizes.

If you’re interested in learning more about my product coaching services, please email [email protected] for current pricing and more information. Tell me a little about yourself, your company, and what you hope to get out of coaching. I offer a free consultation to make sure that there’s a fit.

I especially welcome the opportunity to coach PMs from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

What is Coaching?

I’ve benefited throughout my career from the coaching of others. Sometimes it was helpful to just bounce a problem off someone who’d been there, or even just someone who didn’t work at the same company. They helped me resolve conflict, create great cultures, make tough decisions, chart the direction of my career, and deliver world-class products. Unlike advisors, coaches help you get to the root of the challenges you’re facing. They don’t tell you what they would do, they collaborate to figure out what you should do. Coaching is more about asking the right questions than it is giving answers. A coach is someone in your corner you can test out ideas with, speak with candidly about your fears, and who will push you and hold you accountable. I’m passionate about the craft of product management and am dedicated to providing that same help to others. I hope we get the opportunity to work together.

Typical Engagements

• A fast-growing startup’s lead product manager, told that the Chief Product Officer role is “theirs to lose”
• A big tech company group product manager, recently promoted and growing from individual contributor to product leader
• A VP of Product at a big tech company, looking to reach their goal of becoming a CEO in 3-5 years
• An experienced PM who feels like their career has plateaued, looking to shake up their career, achieve work/life balance, and fall in love with the job again
• A product manager who just took on a large project, struggling to become more confident and decisive
• A Chief Product Officer at a high-growth startup who wants to become a better manager of managers, and challenged with how to structure an organization
• An experienced product leader who was hired to change the product culture at a Fortune 500 company
• A startup product CEO looking for someone to coach their entire team of product managers in a group setting
• An L6/L7 product manager at a FAANG, looking to become more strategic and accomplish their goal of being promoted to director
• A newly promoted product leader, challenged in a recent performance review to be less tactical and deliver a compelling vision for their product area

About Ken

Ken Norton spent more than fourteen years at Google, where he led product initiatives for Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Mobile Maps, and GV (formerly Google Ventures). He joined Google with the acquisition of JotSpot, where he was vice president of products. Before JotSpot, Ken led product management at Yahoo. Back in the day when he was a software engineer, he was one of the first 50 employees of CNET and the founding CTO of Snap (which became NBC Internet).

Ken has written extensively about the craft of product management. His classic essay How To Hire a Product Manager became the playbook for a generation of product managers. He’s also the reason donuts and product management have become synonymous.

Ken has a bachelor’s from Boston University and a master’s from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and he serves on BU’s College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Advisory Board. His favorite donut is the old-fashioned.

Photo Credit: Dave Studer, 2016. Used with permission.