Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt, Johnathan Rosenburg, and Alan Eagle deals with the managerial philosophy of Bill Campbell, a management thinker, guru, and coach. Although perhaps not a household name, Campbell helped to build some of Silicon Valley’s greatest companies, including Apple, Google, and others, before passing away in 2016 at the age of 75. He began his remarkable career as a football player and coach: He was the captain of Columbia University’s varsity football team, with Columbia winning the Ivy League title in 1961. He later went on to be a successful football coach, culminating with him being Columbia football’s head coach until 1979. He then changed careers and went into business, rising to several major positions, first at Kodak and later in Silicon Valley. In 1994, he became CEO of Intuit, and gradually he also joined the boards of directors of several of the leading firms in the “Valley,” including Apple’s. Perhaps even more importantly, he developed a trusted role as a senior advisor to many of Silicon Valley’s leading executives, including the late Steve Jobs. Campbell was also a trusted advisor to Eric Schmidt, the co-author of this book, who was Google’s CEO/chairman from 2001 to 2011 and executive chairman from 2011 until 2015, as well as Alphabet’s executive chairman until 2018.
This unique book thus reports on how a particular individual was able to impact the success of several large multinationals. As a trillion dollar coach, Campbell had a much larger reach than if he had only worked at one firm. He influenced senior management teams using his personal approach to several core aspects of management; it seems as if his thinking actually became part of these firms’ very DNA. Let us here briefly review some of Campbell´s “dos and don’ts”:
**1) **Be a leader of teams; don’t be merely a manager
It is the people in an organization who make the key difference. These people work best in effective teams. Decisiveness also matters greatly. One has to accept that highly talented but perhaps difficult individuals are part of such successful teams. Another key leadership consideration concerns the board of directors: It is the CEO who should manage the board, not the other way around. Accordingly, the board might actually contribute to advancing the entire organization.
2) Trust people
Campbell is very clear that one should only attempt to provide advice where there is trust (i.e., “only coach the coachable”). He put particular emphasis on four traits to determine the extent to which someone might be coachable:
Honesty
Humility
Willingness to work hard
Openness to learning
Aspiring to showcase these four traits in himself, Campbell derived three main guidelines:
Listen
Tell the truth
Tell employees what goals to reach, but do not indicate how to reach them!
3) Prioritize the team
Above all, Campbell stressed the importance of teamwork. His perspective can be summarized as promoting a “we, we, we” culture in contrast to the so common “me, me, me” culture. He also stresses the leader’s essential role in making teams work effectively. This role requires the leader to demonstrate loyalty and commitment to the team, willingness for self-sacrifice and to demonstrate decisiveness on behalf of the team.
4) Be humane
Another key component in Campbell’s eyes is to give praise when it is due. Furthermore, people who belong to strongly-knit communities are more able to jointly take pride in individual peers’ accomplishments. Leaders should practice their humanity!
5) Make performance-enhancing decisions
Ultimately, an organization is measured through its performance. Having strong leaders who build teams based on trust and humanity is not enough if improved performance does not result from such efforts. Campbell´s advice regarding performance-enhancing decisions is as follows:
Be creative
Do not be a dilettante
Find people who have vitality
Build on what each person is good at
Do not waste time worrying about the future, just “do it.”
It is always interesting to read about factors that have proven crucial for strong performance in companies. In much management literature, top executives share various perspectives of what drives success. Yet to some degree, they all converge on factors and principles that we can find in this book:
The importance of learning and being open-minded toward knowledge
The key role of people who are “teachers/coaches”
The importance of teams
Speed and adaptability
The importance of a “human” approach: genuineness, honesty, trust.
In conclusion, I find it fascinating that Campbell’s powerful managerial insights originated from his experiences in the field of American football. In other words, this parallel demonstrates the clear link between high performance in sports and high performance in business.
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