Trillion Dollar Coach
X (by the way, director of a smaller company): So, how do you see your “working with people/employees,” HR and company functioning?
Me: (talking about my vision of situations and approaches to problem-solving broadly and passionately)
X: (after a brief silence) You better go to “Silicon Valley” and make your way there. This area won’t be ready for such an approach for a long time…
Though I expect most people to raise an eyebrow and immediately categorize this dialogue as “didn’t happen,” this is a story that happened to me, somewhere a few years after entering the career world. And this isn’t some story where I wanted to show how I was already cool at the beginning of my career and had visionary ideas… because there was no point. I didn’t go young to “Silicon Valley” (I still haven’t traveled there) and naively believed I didn’t have to leave the country to find such companies that have such visions and need such people.
Of course, there were disappointments. People (i.e., companies) generally didn’t understand that approach, and considered it a waste of time and money (I think equally both). I continued to accumulate knowledge and adapt it, and now I present it to individuals who are really interested.
Unfortunately, many companies (especially from these areas) like to present on social networks how they function according to principles you can read about in “Trillion Dollar Coach”… the biggest problem is they’re lying. Yes, that’s, I think, the right word. They talk about how they develop new technologies/tools that improve productivity and employee satisfaction… and, for some mysterious reason, workers are increasingly dissatisfied and turnover in companies is growing. And then we shouldn’t be surprised that people trash HR, employer branding or management of some company. It’s easy to write illusions/fairy tales on (business) social networks.
My biggest regret, in the dialogue from the beginning of this story, would now be that I didn’t go to “Silicon Valley.” Maybe I would have had the crazy luck to meet the late Bill Campbell (died in 2016) and it would have additionally encouraged me in my position that in the future companies will need people who care about people. But really care about them.
For many, “Trillion Dollar Coach” Bill Campbell (who was simply called coach) was a mystery. This man wasn’t a classic public figure, not much was known about him. Occasionally he’d burst out and snap back, curse like a peasant and often have unexpected reactions, like hugging employees regardless of their position in the hierarchy. And on the other hand, he was very patient, sharp-eyed, tactical, persistent…
Team was sacred for him, everything started from the team, as well as from the one leading the team. Trust was the key word.
And most important of all… he really loved people and had a big heart.
And because of all those characteristics, people loved Bill Campbell very much.
Obviously Bill did something good in the field of career and generally relationships with people, if few people heard (and knew at all) that this man died at 75, and in the audience, in April 2016, at the tribute to this man, sat people like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, John Doerr, Brad Smith, Ben Horowitz and others… Even if you don’t know (or don’t follow) the IT world, you might recognize a few names. And if you follow the IT world, this information is enough for you to maybe raise an eyebrow. The biggest technology leaders from the biggest (and often rival) companies sat next to each other at this man’s send-off. Not just “for the sake of it” or out of some courtesy. For the vast majority of these people, Bill Campbell was both a mentor/coach and friend.
Though as a rugby team coach he perhaps didn’t achieve concrete success, he remained in players’ memory as a man of trust, passionate and dedicated to the work he did.
When he decided to turn to the business world, he started his career at a marketing agency, and then soon moved to “Kodak,” where he continued to nurture his position of dedication to work and team… and the rest became history. “Apple,” “Claris,” “GO Corporation,” “Intuit”… and we’re only talking about companies where he worked. And companies he advised, i.e., people and teams he worked with as coach? “Facebook,” “Kleiner Perkins,” “YouTube,” “Google,” “Yahoo,” “Twitter”… the list goes on endlessly.
Was Bill Campbell some genius of IT or business processes? No. There’s no doubt he knew his operational work well, but he wasn’t the best at it. He was best at understanding people, “reaching” them and directing them.
And it really would be a shame if his knowledge, thoughts, tactics and anecdotes simply got lost over time, right?
That’s what Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle thought too (if you know the company “Google”/”Alphabet” a bit better, these names are probably familiar to you). And that’s why they decided to interview over 80 people who worked with and loved Bill Campbell, where they shared with the authors anecdotes, business situations, private events and various crises that happened to them, where Bill had a share or saved the situation. And these weren’t his neighbors and relatives who were interviewed. We’re talking about many rich and successful people from the business world (about eighty of them).
The book “Trillion Dollar Coach” is divided into six chapters:
- The Caddie and the CEO
- Your Title Makes You a Manager. Your People Make You a Leader
- Build an Envelope of Trust
- Team First
- The Power of Love
- The Yardstick
- Bill Campbell
The titles of these chapters show what some of the values Bill most valued were and in accordance with which he approached work and which he most, so to speak, promoted.
Each chapter consists of a large number of stories/anecdotes from people Bill worked with and/or worked with as coach, accompanied by notes from authors who try to bring us even closer to what Bill was like as a person, how he behaved with people (both at work and outside it), what values he advocated, as well as why some of Bill’s (effective) approaches were maybe even a bit ahead of their time, often supported by some scientific study. Authors will often note how Bill had some approaches that have their counterpart in psychology (or will only appear in it), although he didn’t have formal education from that field.
But as the book’s authors will often emphasize, Bill was “schooled” in understanding and knowing people.
What the authors will occasionally mention to you (and you’ll figure it out yourself from the stories) is that Bill wasn’t a typical coach who “flounces around” with lots of fancy professional terms and “tools” picked up from various courses… which (is also my understanding and approach that) a coach shouldn’t be. Bill Campbell had that simple back to basics approach, which obviously worked even in such a strong technological area. Bill, according to the stories of those interviewed, was authentic in the true sense of that word, both in his approach to working with people and in his behavior. And it seems he didn’t like phonies much.
That’s apparently why he was a magnet for many powerful, influential, and eccentric people, and everyone considered him a friend. Steve Jobs adored him (and never forgot that Bill was one of the few who was against his ouster from “Apple” company in 1985 and who believed the board was making a big mistake). Bob Iger (was CEO of “Disney” company for 15 years, here you have a review of his excellent business memoir “The Ride of a Lifetime”) saw in him a powerful person. Susan Wojcicki (CEO of “Youtube” company) herself says how much she owes Bill, and often wonders how Bill would act in some situation she would find herself in. For Sundar Pichai (CEO “Alphabet/Google”), Bill and his principles had a very important influence on his further direction. And the list of names continues and continues…
The authors would in each chapter (better said, in mini-chapters of main chapters), always extract something that would be basic lessons/mantras/rules in working with people (and working in a company in general). So you’ll have the opportunity to read lessons like:
Start trip reports – To build mutual relationships and better relationships among team members, start team meetings with trip reports, or other types of more personal topics that have nothing to do with business.
Base leadership on first principles – Define “first principles” for a specific situation, indisputable truths that are the foundation of the company or product, and help by managing decision-making based on those principles.
Build trust – only coach people who are coachable. Characteristics that make someone coachable are honesty, humility and willingness to persevere and work hard, and constant openness to learning.
Address the team, then the problem – When faced with a problem or opportunity, the first step is to make sure the right team is in charge and working on it.
Solve the biggest problem – Discover the biggest problem, what’s being silenced, give it full attention, and deal with it first.
Permission for empathy – Leading teams becomes much more enjoyable, and teams become more efficient when you know people and care about them.
And what other lessons can be discovered here, you’ll find out if you read “Trillion Dollar Coach.” 😀
This isn’t a book about motivation, nor about how cool and infallible Bill Campbell was in “Silicon Valley.” This is the authors’ attempt to present how Bill approached solving serious problems within companies, by dealing with teams and leading people in directing them to find a solution.
“A fish rots from the head.” I like to mention this folk saying to managers and people in leadership positions. And they don’t like it when they hear this. I recently heard an excellent response to this – “Well, the fish rots entirely.” 😀 And that’s true, but it still “rots most from the head.” Everything starts from the top. How management is set up, accordingly other employees will be directed, and that’s why I’m always an advocate of the position that any kind of training, education, seminar, coaching, whatever… should start from management. Bill apparently understood this well.
Managers usually don’t like coaching because of Ego and fear (and for some this is also combined into one). Ego usually has a reaction (full of prejudice) “no one else will tell me what to do, surely I know my job best and how it is in this company,” while fear usually thinks “does that mean I’m not doing my job well and I need help… and what if I discover that’s true… and what will others think of me then.” Employees have a similar reaction, though I’d say fear dominates more (“I must not be doing my job well… obviously I have to go to this training to keep my job”), especially if they see their supervisor never takes part in similar activity.
We shouldn’t be surprised by such people’s reasoning. We live in a (business) world where feedback=criticism, and where we’re more focused on desperately keeping a job (survival), than on our growth. And we shouldn’t be surprised by prejudices toward learning and/or help from outside. The famous “I know best what I need” is true… but provided you see yourself progressing (in any sense). And if you’re stagnating (or, God forbid, regressing), it wouldn’t hurt to find some form of help, whether in the form of a book, video or person.
Bill understood the significance of working with people who are in the “upper part of the hierarchy.” He believed that every manager must also become a coach and direct people they work with. I assume that’s why such a book was created, by interviewing people from the “upper part of the hierarchy.”
I’d like to share something with you, though I risk you might declare me arrogant. “Trillion Dollar Coach” is a good book and worth your reading. But I can’t say I discovered some new approach to working with people. I don’t attribute that to being something particularly smart… rather perhaps to the fact that like a maniac for over a decade I read a huge number of various books, studies and courses, went through four different corporate cultures… and thought a lot, analyzed and wrote about everything. But I’m glad I read this book, because I saw how it works on the other end of the world (and precisely in “Silic… Silicon Valley”)… and that there are companies that need people like Bill… who knows, maybe I too (unconsciously) aspire to be some variant of Bill… just less cowboy-style. 😀
All in all, 200 pages of (business-situational-biographical) book “Trillion Dollar Coach” is worth your time. You’ll have the opportunity to see how various problems (or if you prefer the word – challenges) were approached in the biggest IT companies, and that it’s not all in various fancy complex “tools,” as much as in some simpler ones… like communication, respect and constructive discussion. As Richard Branson has the saying: “Clients aren’t first, but employees are. If you take care of your employees, they’ll take care of your client,” it could be said that Bill’s version could go “The problem in the company isn’t first, but your teams and managers are. If you take care of your teams and managers, they’ll take care of the problem themselves.”
At the end of the day, isn’t that the point of a successful company… that everyone is satisfied and successful, wherever they are on the hierarchical ladder? And a satisfied worker who feels valued (and rewarded) = greater retention/lower turnover = greater productivity = more money for everyone?
Was that Bill’s vision too? 🙂
And you, dear reader, what’s your vision of a successful company? 🙂
“Trillion Dollar Coach” book website
Book price: Vulkan | Slavicasquire.com | Mindstyle
Ratings (and purchase) on foreign sites: Goodreads | Amazon | Bookdepository | Audible | Waterstones | Penguin Random House
