Trillion Dollar Coach — Inspiring leadership lessons from Bill Campbell, Valley’s most loved and most successful Coach!

Intuit is what Intuit is because Bill happened to it for 4 years as CEO and then 18 years on its board and as its Chief Coach till 2016. Same can be said about Google, Apple and other companies that owe their market value in a lot of ways to the silicon valley’s most loved and most successful coach — hence the title! This book unpacks Bill’s inspiring story and practical lessons on becoming and then creating successful leaders. The book has been authored by Google execs Eric Schmidt (former CEO and Chairman), Jonathan Rosenberg (SVP, Alphabet), and Alan Eagle (Director).

The book first tells the inspiring story of Bill. Bill graduated from Columbia and then was a football coach for team Columbia for 5 years. He switched over to corporate roles with Kodak and then came to the valley to join Apple, rising very quickly to the top. When Apple hived off Claris, Bill became its CEO and then took over the reins at Intuit. Subsequently he was full time into coaching — the leaders Bill coached are practically the who’s who of tech world, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Eric Schmidt, Brad Smith, Scott Cook, Sheryl Sandberg …

The book then codifies Bill’s secret sauce, which he was always eager to give away but never agreed to get a book written about, lest he gets deified. The four pillars of Bill’s leadership approach were People, Trust, Team, Love.

People

“Your title makes you a manager. Your people make you a leader”

“Leaders do not demand respect, they allow respect to accrue to them”

Everybody needs and can do with coaching on traits and subjects they want to learn more about. Humility and sensitivity is key to express to your team, peers and to your coachees that you care deeply about them. In doing so, substance matters far more than style. The Charisma of a leader doesn’t take him far; selflessness does.

Rituals are very important — The staff meeting and the 1:1 with your people cannot be overlooked or hustled together. Google’s CEO staff met Monday morning religiously and talked first about the weekend gone by. Marissa started Yahoo’s CEO staff with a ‘thank you’s at the beginning. Small talk is not a pleasantry, it’s a team glue. Bill’s 1:1 were always planned ahead … by Bill, not by his reports. They had always 5 topics captured in exactly 1 word each.

While innovative smart people (What authors call ‘creative smarts’ in How Google Works) are the engines of technological change and inventions, if they have a acerbic, corrosive nature they should be coached out of it. The Authors realize they missed this bit in their previous book (ie don’t tolerate brilliant jerks). Bill was a stickler for treating everyone with respect, even when somebody needs to be fired.

Trust

“Build an envelope of trust”.

Team

“Team players have four key characteristics: smartness, hard work, integrity and grit.”

Love

“Love is part of what makes a great team great,”

Bill’s love included tough love … two of his memorable comments“You’re as dumb as a post” and “That’s the sound of your head coming out of your ass.”