Thomas M. Loarie

5 de septiembre de 2020

Trillion Dollar Coach is The Ultimate Compliment for an Authentic Leader

I found “Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell” to be an excellent book. As someone who has served as a CEO of early stage companies for many years and has also been asked frequently for advice by growth minded professionals and entrepreneurs, this book resonated. My copy is dog-eared and filled with post-it notes highlighting the many gems I discovered and can incorporate immediately into my own approach to managing and coaching.“Trillion Dollar Coach” is the ultimate compliment for what appears to be an incredible individual. Like most, he was not known to me nor to many outside Silicon Valley and the tech industry. Paying homage with a great deal of love and respect to the person who had a positive influence on your life is the ultimate compliment a subordinate or co-worker can give. There is much we can learn from this book which was authored by Google’s Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle who spent years under his influence.Campbell died in 2016 at age 75.His passing drew tributes from many notable tech executives and other luminaries in Silicon Valley. Apple rescheduled its earnings announcement by one day to allows its top executives attend his funeral. He was known to all affectionately as “Coach Campbell.”His roster of mentees went well beyond Google and included Dick Costolo, Lee Bullinger, Ben Horowitz, Ronnie Lott, Sundar Pichai, Bill Gurley, Sheryl Sandberg, John Doerr, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, and the boys and girls flag football teams at Atherton’s (CA) Sacred Heart Schools.“Trillion Dollar Coach” takes you through Campbell’s life so you can learn about those experiences, particularly in coaching...that shaped him, his success as a CEO, and his influence as a coach. What is left out is Campbell’s devotion to being Catholic and exercising the Catholic values that helped shape him. He was not one to talk about his faith but all who knew him knew how important this was in his life.Campbell’s journey began in the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania. He then attended Columbia University where he led its football team to an Ivy League Championship in 1961, a feat that has yet to be repeated. Upon graduation, he decided on a career as a college football coach ending up back at Columbia as its head coach. He had a hard time at Columbia and did not win. His failure was having too much compassion. “I was not hard-edged enough.”So, with his compassion and degrees in economics and education, Campbell headed to J. Walter Thompson (a top ad agency my dad helped to build) and then to Kodak where he rose quickly. Apple’s Scully brought him in to head sales and marketing where he created its famed Orwell ad. He was recognized as a rising star and was brought in to be CEO from 1994 to 1998 of personal software company, Intuit.Campbell, the CEO with empathy, created a strong organizational culture at Intuit. Campbell’s core belief was that teams that work together are the most productive. And to do this, all employees must focus on making themselves and those around them better.Campbell’s motto was “your title makes you a manager, your people make you a leader.”“Trillion Dollar Coach” brings Campbell’s principles to the forefront. The fundamental take-away is that Companies (organizations too!) need to have teams that work together as communities and these teams need a coach to make this happen. Coaching for Campbell is not an after-hours session with a mentor. It is a real-time, interactive activity that requires managers to be involved as good coaches. “You cannot be a good manager if you are not a good coach.”The book highlights Campbell’s: five key factors for success; his simple practices that lead to a strong, cohesive organization; the critical human values we all care about; what to do if you are over 50; five words on a whiteboad; how CEOs should work with their boards; how to build and envelope of trust; the value of pairing people; how to deal with the elephant in the room; and the power of love (See Joel Manby’s “Love Works”).Schmidt, Rosenberg, and Eagle provide many practical examples and the necessary color to make this book an entertaining and useful guide for everyone.Campbell was an expert at getting people to do things they did not think they were capable of doing. His specialty was knowing people, identifying their strengths and doubling down on them to help them shine both on the inside and out.Ver más

8 personas la encontraron útil

Wally Bock

23 de julio de 2019

Part Hagiography, Part Insight, Worth Reading

I read Trillion-Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell for two reasons. Campbell was a legendary executive coach in Silicon Valley. I wanted to pick up leadership insights that I could use. I also coach people on how to write great books. I wanted to pick up some coaching tips.This book takes an awfully long time to start to prepare to begin to get ready to share anything helpful. The book opens with Bill Campbell’s memorial service. The authors talk about what a swell guy Bill was and what a great coach he was and what a great impact he had on them. They tell you why they decided to write the book. That takes about 20 pages. Now that you know, you can skip ahead if you get bored.I’m glad that I stayed with the book, despite the slow start. There were some good things that make the book worth the price. There are also some bad things that you can overlook or that may keep you from wanting to read the book. And there are ugly things, too. Let’s take the good things first.The GoodThere’s a lot of standard management/leadership advice here. You may have heard many of these ideas before, but they’re worth reading again. Sometimes the stars align, and a common point becomes an uncommon insight. There is one powerful idea here. “Your title makes you a manager, your people make you a leader.” That was one of Bill Campbell’s mantras, but he gave Donna Dubinsky credit for opening his eyes to it.There were also three areas of advice that seemed particularly insightful to me. One was the advice to “Lead based on first principles.” First principles are things that everyone agrees on and set the foundation for the company or the product.The second important, practical insight was, “Manage the aberrant genius.” The aberrant genius is that high-performing team member who is difficult to deal with. I’ve seen several treatments of this in other books, but this is the best. There are specific guidelines for what to tolerate and what not to tolerate. There are ideas about when it’s time for the aberrant genius to depart.The third, and the most potent insight was, “Work the team, then the problem.” This seems to have two meanings. First, make sure you put the right team together before you tackle a problem. The other is that when you have a problem getting things done, address the team and the way it works before you worry about fixing the problem. This is not something unique to Bill Campbell. Ed Catmull says much the same thing in Creativity, Inc. This book has more detail and is therefore more helpful. The section on coaching the team is excellentThe BadThese are things that I didn’t like. They may keep you from buying the book, or that you skip when you read the book, or things that don’t bother you at all.Early in the book, the authors say, “We quickly rejected the idea of writing a hagiography.” A hagiography was originally a biography of a saint. Today, the term refers to a biography that idealizes its subject. Sorry guys, you wrote a hagiography.There’s way too much about what a swell guy and a great coach Bill Campbell was. We learn that he used the “F word” a lot, but it was okay because it was Bill. He hugged everyone, but it was okay because it was Bill. We’re told that he knew things “instinctively.” People took things from him they wouldn’t take from anybody else. There were too many phrases describing how Bill did something no one else can do.“Of course, he was right.”“Intuitive sense”“Remarkable ability”“Conversations with Bill were more nuanced than layered.”“Bill’s genius”Then, there’s my favorite. “With Bill, you close your eyes and it’s more about who he was.”That may be true, but it’s distinctly unhelpful and it’s nothing like a “playbook.” If you can’t describe how he produced those remarkable results or developed that “remarkable ability,” you’re describing a magic trick. The book would have been less of a hagiography and more helpful if there was more about times when Bill Campbell dealt with adversity. There is something about how he supported Steve Jobs when Jobs was forced out of Apple. The authors could have used that to humanize Bill. We could have learned about his struggles at the time and how risky his stance was. Another example. Bill was CEO at GO when the company was in its death spiral. That’s a failure story in one sense. The authors could have told it in some detail. It illustrates why people admired Bill Campbell, trusted him, and listened to him. This wouldn’t be a hagiography if there was more about how Bill the football coach became Bill the Silicon Valley Wonder Coach. There’s plenty of ticking off achievements and admiring quotes, but precious little that humanizes the man. The content of this book will work better for you if you are a Silicon Valley or high-tech CEO. The authors describe things that a middle manager often can't do. They blur the line between what a middle manager can do and what an external coach can do.There are also some things in the book which step over the line from bad to ugly.The UglySome things made me uncomfortable. One of them was a tone throughout the book I call “Silicon Valley macho.” There’s a kind of repeating background beat of “We’re tough. We can handle this stuff.”Bill Campbell liked to give “everyone” bear hugs. He used the “F word” and other colorful language a lot. The book seems to imply that it’s okay because Bill did it, and Bill was a great guy. There’s not a single note that I could find of anyone being uncomfortable when Bill did it.People are less likely to object to a hug from a guy who is a great friend and coach of the CEO of their company. They may not like it, but they’re not real likely to speak up.Full disclosure here. I don’t think that kind of language or that kind of behavior are appropriate in a business or professional setting. If that’s what it takes to be a great coach, I’ll pass.Bottom LineThere are good leadership insights in Trillion Dollar Coach. Those insights, by themselves, make this book worth reading. I don’t think you’ll learn much about coaching, though.A lot of the book describes Bill Campbell’s unique way of communicating. It might not work for you if you haven’t been a football coach and a Silicon Valley CEO. It’s dangerous to believe you can do it his way and succeed. Bill Campbell gave people insightful and helpful advice and he told the truth. If you can figure out how to do that in your own way you’ve learned something powerful indeed.

An Internet Expert

19 de abril de 2019

Everyone Needs a Coach

About a decade ago, I received the following e-mail forward from Andrew Westrgren, Intuit’s then head of corporate development.“AndrewMake sure Howard understands that if he (and his valuable team) want a home for their company, where they can pursue their dreams then putting the company up for bid is not the answer. Either go public or get the deal that you want from the company that you want to be part of.Bill”The note was from Bill Campbell, legendary coach at Apple, Google, Intuit and many more companies. Silicon Valley’s elite called Bill “coach” to solve their toughest problems. Literally a coach, Campbell was a football coach turned marketing and sales exec turned executive coach. In our case, Bill Campbell was right again. Despite being pursued, it was the destiny of the special team at Yext to stay independent, go public, and put our own dent on the world.Written from the vantage point of Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenburg, Trillion Dollar Coach lays out the lessons learned from Silicon Valley’ Coach. While many themes are covered in the book, I have one major takeaway: Every team needs a coach. Even Eric Schmidt, the seemingly omniscient technology executive, leaned on a coach during inflection points in his career at Google, and in normal operating cadence as a mediator to ensure team camraderie.The key themes I note in the book include extraversion (Bill was clearly an E. I’m guessing Eric is ENTJ and Jonathan is ENTP, btw), direct honesty and tough love, grit and growth mindset (ala Dweck and Duckworth), teamwork and love for all humans. One of my favorite things to read was Bill looked for people capable of making “far analogies”. I personally believe far analogy is one of the greatest measures of intelligence. This connects deeply with my belief that human thought is driven by categorization, and intelligence is driven by analogy. Reading Campbell’s note on “far analogy” made me think of Job’s statement that a computer is like a bicycle for your mind and Einstein’s explanation of the theory of relativity through the lens of a beetle traversing a tree branch upside down.Campbell also believed in minimally dwelling on negative things. Optimism, he believed is key to achieved outsized greatness. This is something I have also learned. When you’re playing a game of random chance, like gambling, believing you’re going to win is crazy. But when you’re in control of the outcome, positive thinking can make all the difference.Small talk matters. Like Eric Schmidt at Google, I too hold the Yext executive meeting every Monday at 1:00pm. It’s tough to cold open right into the numbers. It can feel like a person being woken up in the middle of the night and asked to run 10 miles in the freezing cold while naked. To ease into a meeting, Bill Campbell had a “trip rule” where any executive who went on a trip was required to open the meeting by reporting on their trip to the whole team. The point isn’t the exchange of small talk as much as the warm up that connects people and primes people to wake up and warm up before sprinting.A coach is a glue that holds a team together. They take the time to understand what motivates each unique person and challenge them to grow. They bridge gaps between incredible ambitious people who may otherwise be competitive so they can work together. They show up quickly when things are horrible when you don’t even have to ask. They also build trust so team members feel pyschologically safe to “let them in”. I sort of use humor to do this. Making fun of each other - and being a willing participant in being made fun of - can be a great leveler to make people more comfortable to be honest with each other.I never met Bill Campbell. He was Apple, Google, and Intuit and I was a spec of dust. He lived on the other side of the country from me. Yet somehow, he managed to touch me with his coaching.Every team needs a coach. Who is your coach? Read Trillion Dollar Coach to learn about the kind you want to bring on.

Sully

29 de junio de 2026

Excellent book

This book was highly recommended to me. Have to say that its an excellent read where you will get a number of great nuggets of gold

Alan L. Chase

29 de agosto de 2019

Pure Gold for Coaches and CEOs - The Wisdom of Bill Campbell

Before reading "Trillion Dollar Coach," I had not been aware of the legendary career of Bill Campbell, for many years Silicon Valley's uber coach to leading executives. Despite his success as a leading executive and coach, during his lifetime Campbell opted to stay out of the public eye - often refusing to step into the limelight. After Campbell's death in 2016, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle got together and decided that an appropriate way to honor Campbell's life and legacy would be to distill his wisdom into a book, sort of a posthumous festschrift. The result of their distillation efforts is this book that is worth its weight in gold.In his lifetime, Campbell coached football at Columbia University, moved to the business world when Kodak hired him, and then carved out a remarkable third career in Silicon Valley. He founded several successful companies, and began to serve on Boards and to invest in companies and to coach their leaders. The likes of Steve Jobs, Al Gore, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos, and Sheryl Sandberg. The total valuation of the leaders he coached is well north of one trillion dollars, hence the book's title. Among those companies are Google, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Intuit, Claris, and Adobe. Campbell served on the Board of Apple, and was instrumental in bringing Steve Jobs back to the helm of the company.As effective as Bill was in coaching and befriending individual leaders, his real secret sauce was his emphasis on coaching teams of leaders. He was convinced that even in a cutthroat place like Silicon Valley, webs of relationships of trust were essential to success. As a former football coach, he was not averse to dispensing some tough love, telling those he coached the hard truths they needed to hear. But because he had established a strong foundation of trust, and they knew that he was on their side, they were able to hear and accept what would have been painful coming from any other source.The book is filled with nuggets of gold drawn from Bill Campbell's relationships with those who were eager to share vignettes of their encounters with Coach Bill. The consistent thread that ties these recollections together is Bill's consistent message that addressing the strength and health of the team was usually the straightest path to solving complex problems. In his life, he would go to extreme lengths to be the catalyst who would pull together effective teams - within companies and across corporate boundaries. His annual trips to the Super Bowl became events that numerous individuals looked forward to. The game was secondary; the opportun enjoy the relationships within the traveling group was the primary point of these outings. There were also weekly gatherings at a sports bar in Palo Alto in which Bill was invested to build a sense of community among the participants.Like any effective executive coach, Bill would abstain from offering his own solutions. He would listen carefully, ask probing questions, challenge assumptions, and over time help the leader he was coaching to arrive at wise decisions on her own. Now, thanks to the work done by this trio of authors, his wisdom and spirit can live on in perpetuity, allowing those of us who did not meet him in his lifetime to encounter him through the reflections of those he invested in.I recommend this book to anyone who finds himself or herself in the role of coach, as well as those who are leading companies and teams. Campbell was emphatic that any leader worth his salt should also be intentionally coaching those he was leading.Enjoy!

DanaJ

21 de abril de 2019

Written with the best of intentions, but not nuanced enough

In all, Trillion Dollar Coach, a book summarizing the lessons of legendary Silicon Valley business coach Bill Campbell, has been somewhat of a disappointment. Having recently read other acclaimed biographies (such as I Have America Surrounded on Tim Leary and Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson), I was hoping to read a book with the same level of depth, research and nuance. Looking back on it, this was of course a foolish expectation - none of Trillion Dollar Coach's authors are journalists or career writers, but rather busy technologists with diverse interests beyond writing. It's silly for me to expect that they'd spend time truly researching Bill Campbell's childhood or interviewing his children. Certainly, the byline makes it clear that this book is a collection of principles/lessons.It's a bit less silly to expect that the authors would present a more nuanced perspective on the Coach though. The book doesn't dwell too much on Campbell's background or failings. Reading it, you'd think the only flaw the Coach ever had was his penchant for swear words - but don't be alarmed! He does it out of love, so it's all fine. I was hoping for a bit more meat on his failures: the unimpressive coaching career, the problems at Go - not least because this would help us learn alongside the Coach. The book breezes through Campbell's formative years and barely mentions his family. The Coach was born a fully-formed 40-year-old seasoned executive.My second gripe with this book is the sometimes maddening lack of specificity in some of the situations Campbell helps adjudicate. In one such example, the book describes Campbell helping decide if a Google product should fall under one Googler's remit or under another's. We're never told what the product was, and the lesson falls flat as a result - the anecdote, stripped of its content, is too bland to truly land a punch.That being said, I put this book down feeling weirdly warm and fuzzy. It's essentially a version of the eulogy that the authors didn't get the chance to put together before Campbell's memorial service - long by eulogy standards, but short by book standards (2h read). The Coach was clearly an outstanding man, whose guiding principles can be mostly summarized as "Be a good person". It all made me a tinge sad that I never got the chance to meet him.