Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle
HarperBusiness/An imprint of HarperCollins (April 2019)
“People won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Theodore Roosevelt
Roosevelt’s observation complements another by Donna Dubinsky when her friend and colleague at Apple, Bill Campbell, was named CEO of Claris, the software company that was spun out of Apple: “Bill, your title makes you a manager; your people make you a leader.” By then, Campbell had already demonstrated several leadership qualities as Columbia University’s head football coach — notably being detail-oriented, results-driven, and passionate about “winning,” whatever the given competition may be. However, Dubinsky was concerned about Campbell’s tendency to tell everyone what to do and how to do it. As Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle note, he got the message. He later told a struggling manager, “you have demanded respect, rather than having it accrue to you. You need to project humility, a selflessness that projects that you care about the company and about people.”
Based on what is revealed about Campbell, I suspect he was aware of this passage from Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:
“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”
This essentially describes Campbell’s management style after the conversation with Dubinsky. According to those who knew him best, he had a heart at least as large as his brain. He embraced competition, was the consummate “team player,” and as gracious in defeat as he was in victory. He exemplifies what Oscar Wilde had in mind when suggesting, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”
For example, Schmidt, Rosenberg, and Eagle point out that during a conversation with David Drummond (head of Alphabet’s corporate development and legal affairs, and an African American), Campbell reminded him “that so much about him was where he came from, and that he should hang on to that as a source of motivation. Drummond’s reaction? “He made me less self-conscious about the fact that I wasn’t the same as everyone. That I was black.”
These are among the comments by others that also caught my eye:
o “Bill Campbell was a trillion dollar coach. In fact, a trillion dollars understates the value he created” for dozens of corporations that include J. Walter Thompson, Kodak, Apple, and Intuit (Schmidt, Rosenberg, and Eagle…SR&E)
o “‘What keeps you up at night?’ is a traditional question asked of executives. For Bill the answer was always the same: the well-being and success of my people.” (SR&E)
o Many C-level executives are mostly style. “Bill was one hundred percent substance.” (Nirav Tolia)
o “With Bill, there was never an elephant in the room.” The biggest problems were always addressed first. (Andrea Jung)
o “Winning wasn’t everything to Bill. Winning right was.” Todd Bradey called it “the humanity of winning.” (SR&E)
o When having so much to do at work, “he showed me that what really matters at the end of the day is how you live your life and treat the people in your life. It was always a lovely reset.” (Sundur Pichai)
o “Bill showed me that when you have a friend who is injured or ill or needs you in some way, you drop everything and just go. That’s what you do, that’s how you really show up. That’s what Bill would do. Just go.” (Phil Schiller)
o “You have to take the time to smell the roses, and the roses are the people. Recognize that people want to talk to you about other things than just the job.” (Mark Human)
o The common thread with all the trips Campbell organized every year? “Community. Bill built community instinctively. He knew that a place was much stronger when people were connected.” His favorite sports bar, The Old Pro, “was the physical manifestation of the numerous communities he created.” (SR&E)
Those who read this book will be well-prepared to accelerate their personal growth as well as their professional development. Bill Campbell’s extraordinary success as an executive coach that success suggests there are lessons of exceptional value to be learned from his life and work. He would make no such claim but I think he would (perhaps reluctantly) agree with me — or at least hope — that those who read this book will also be well prepared to help others to do so and then, in turn, to help still others to…you get the idea. He certainly did.
His was a purpose-driven life, with wisdom generously shared.