SUNDAY REWIND: The art of product management with Ken Norton

Ken Norton is an executive coach to tech leaders, and spent 14 years at Google where helped product initiatives for Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Mobile Maps, and Google Ventures.  He starts the interview by talking about the importance of being able to lean into soft skills as you progress your product career. He says so much of the conversation about product management is about the tactics of product management but in most of his coaching work it is soft skills that people actually want to talk about. The earlier you start to think about your soft skills, the more successful you will end up being, so work on developing them, he says.

He also looks at how to deal with fear and anxiety and says they come from an imagined future. “People tend to live in a future where a business idea or proposal goes wrong. If you return to living in the moment, there won’t be a threat to your existence,” he says. Our brains are hardwired to see threats and respond to them whether it’s imminent or in the future. You should appreciate that there is no threat to you at the moment and focus on what is here right now, he says.

Watch the original interview: The art of product management with Ken Norton