Trillion Dollar Coach, by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle
My chapter-by-chapter summary of the invaluable advice from one of Silicon Valley's most influential business coaches.
I’m excited to wrap up 2022 with an excellent (and quick read!) book of advice on leadership. Thank you all for your support as I have embarked on this fun adventure of sharing my notes with you.
Especially in the last several years, it’s seems near impossible to read anything about leadership that doesn’t either directly or indirectly refer to Bill Campbell’s influence. This book is not only an effective playbook for building and leading your team. It’s a testament to the impact one person can have when they bring the right mindset, care a lot, and are willing to say what needs to be said.
Note: this summary pairs well with Build. Tony Fadell references Bill Campbell a lot. It also comes highly recommended within Mary Cagan’s recent book, EMPOWERED, which I am actively reading right now.
If you enjoy the summary below, I highly encourage you to buy the book either via Amazon or Bookshop.
Chapter 1: The Caddie and the CEO
[Background on Bill Campbell: his time as a football player (small, yet “ballsy”); his time as a football coach (his win/loss record suffered due to his compassion for his players and not being ruthlessly focused on winning); his time entering business at age 39, working in advertising, Kodak, Apple, and eventually as an executive in residence at Kleiner Perkins. He was a man who respected everyone, down to the caddy at his favorite golf course.]
Chapter 2: Your Title Makes You a Manager. Your People Make You a Leader.
Even when offered the chance to work free from management oversight (as in Google’s early days), people want managers in order to have someone to learn from (and to occasionally break ties with decisions). Key Principles:
It’s the People: the top priority of any manager is the well-being and success of her people. Think hard about what you can do to help people get better at what they do.
Start with Trip Reports: Check-in on personal, non-business topics to build rapport and better relationships among team members. It shows you care when “small talk” is substantive.
Five Words on a Whiteboard: All 1:1s should have a structure, even if just a sequence of 5 one-word topics, in priority order. 1:1s are the best way to help people grow and become more effective, so take the time to prepare for them. It’s critical to get these (and staff meetings) to be productive.
The Throne Behind the Round Table: the manager’s job is to run a decision making process that ensures all perspectives get heard and considered (aim to be the last to speak). It’s always best (when possible) for the team to make their own decision, but be willing to break any ties if needed. Failure to make a decision can be as damaging as a wrong decision.
Lead Based on First Principles: define the immutable truths which are either a) driving the situation; or b) the foundation for the company or product. This is particularly helpful when guiding difficult decisions.
Manage the Aberrant Genius: high performing but difficult team members should be tolerated and even protected as long as their value outweighs the toll their behavior takes on management, colleagues, and teams. Do your best to coach them out of the truly aberrant aspects of their behavior, but don’t fail to get rid of them if they are in fact toxic or abusive.
Money’s Not About Money: compensating people well demonstrates love and respect and ties them strongly to the goals of the company.
Innovation is Where the Crazy People Have Stature: the purpose of a company is to bring a product vision to life. All the other components are in service to the product. “If you have the right product for the right market at the right time, go as fast as you can."
Heads Held High: if you have to let people go, be generous, treat them well, and celebrate their accomplishments. “You cannot let them keep the job, but you absolutely can let them keep their respect.”
Bill On Boards: it’s the CEO’s job to manage boards, not the other way around. The first order of business is always a frank, open, succinct discussion about how the company is performing. Include highlights and lowlights, and be candid.
Other Takeaways:
Topics for 1:1s and Reviews: a) performance on job requirements; b) relationship with peer groups (critical for company integration and cohesiveness); management/leadership (how you’re guiding/coaching your people, getting your people to do heroic things); d) innovation & best practices (how you’re improving what you do.)
Frame team disagreements as debates to get substantive ideas & perspectives.
Finance, sales, or marketing should supply product teams with intelligence on what customer problems need solving and what opportunities they see.
As CEO, Bill had lunch with his engineers each Friday to know what was slowing them down (and this cultivated their trust).
Chapter 3: Build an Envelope of Trust
Make a point of establishing - and honoring - trust in your relationships. Trust means you keep your word, are loyal, have integrity, and are discreet. Establish trust first, before anything else. Getting your team to trust each other is “a primary mechanism of achieving goals.” Key Principles:
Only Coach the Coachable: Traits that make a person coachable include honesty and humility, the willingness to persevere and work hard, and a constant openness to learning. There’s no room for bullshit. Cultivate your own “coachable-ness.”
Practice Free-Form Listening: listen to people with full and undivided attention. Don’t think ahead to what you’re going to say next, and ask questions to get to the heart of the issue.
No Gap Between Statements and Fact: be relentlessly honest and candid; pair negative feedback with caring; give feedback as soon as possible; and if the feedback is negative, deliver it privately. Coach in the moment, not after the fact. Aim for the person to be excited and pumped up after receiving negative feedback.
Don’t Stick It In Their Ear: don’t tell people what to do or plant your own ideas in their head. Be supportive and demanding, and help guide them to the best decisions for them.
Be the Evangelist For Courage: believe in people more than they believe in themselves, and push them to be more courageous. Be the one who gives energy, not one who takes it away. Many are too afraid of failure to take big bets; if you sense a positive direction, encourage boldness. Believe people can be greater than they believe.
Full Identity Front And Center: people are most effective when they can be completely themselves and bring their full identity to work. “People can tell when you’re not being yourself […] and that breeds distrust.”
Other Takeaways:
“People perceive the best listeners to be those who periodically ask questions that promote discovery and insight.” (From a 2016 HBR article)
When a leader asks questions, it heightens the follower’s “feelings of competence (feeling challenged and experiencing mastery), relatedness (feeling of belonging), and autonomy (feeling in control and having options),” the three cornerstones of Deci & Ryan’s self-determination theory.
You can soften moments of critical feedback with humorous non-verbal actions [e.g. when Bill threw his hat at a CEO while congratulating him on being the “most successful non growth CEO in the valley.”]
Chapter 4: Team First
Nurture a team-first attitude where you set aside your own agenda or pride and focus on serving the team. Make your first instinct to work on the team’s dynamics, not to solve the team’s particular challenges. “You can only really succeed and accomplish things through the collective, the common purpose.” (Lee C. Bollinger) Key Principles:
Work the Team, Then the Problem: when faced with a problem or opportunity, first ensure the right team is in place and working on it. As a manager, “you need to bet on people. Think much harder about choosing your team.” This also gives you more leverage in the long run.
Pick the Right Players: the top characteristics to look for are smarts and hearts: the ability to learn fast, a willingness to work hard, integrity, grit, empathy, and a team-first attitude. Keep note of times when they give up things, or are excited about someone else’s success.
Pair People: peer relationships are critical and often overlooked. Seek opportunities to pair people (especially peers) on projects and decisions, or in mentorship roles across the company.
Get To The Table: winning depends on having the best team, and the best teams have more women. Get representation at the table (not sitting at the edge of the room).
Solve the Biggest Problem: identify the biggest problem, the “elephant in the room,” bring it front and center, and tackle it first. Football mentality: where’s the weakest link on the offensive line? Learn to spot tension, and “beat the politics out of the situation” by bringing up the problem clearly and focusing attention on it.
Don’t Let the Bitch Sessions Last: air all of the negative issues, but don’t dwell on them. Move on as fast as possible to actually solving problems (a.k.a. problem-focused coping). Stay level headed, constructive, and learn forward. Stay positive while asking tough questions; focusing on the most important problems (with the right team) makes it more likely you’ll solve the issue.
Winning Right: strive to win, but always with (full) commitment, teamwork, and integrity. Win as a team: “it’s amazing what can be accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Leaders Lead: when things are going badly, teams look for even more loyalty, commitment, and decisiveness from their leaders.
Fill the Gaps Between People: listen, observe, and fill the communication and understanding gaps between people. Look for patterns, assess strengths and weaknesses, try to spot when people are simmering. Attempt to take in the “whole field,” e.g. all of the players all at once. Seek the side conversations when you anticipate misinterpretations or micro frustrations.
Permission to Be Empathic: leading teams becomes a lot more joyful - and teams are more effective - when you know and care about the people. Give yourself the permission to be empathic while building and leading your team.
Other Takeaways:
Having a single coach for an entire executive team can be indispensable for addressing communication gaps and building connections between the team members.
"Learn fast" by making connections, getting up to speed quickly in different areas, and developing your ability to make “far analogies.”
When interviewing someone, don’t just ask what they did, but ask them how they did it. Also: do they have more answers than questions? Are they done growing? Look for commitment to the cause & the team, not just their own success.
Seek out doers … “people who show up, work hard, and have an impact every day.”
You can’t have an entire team of quarterbacks.
Chapter 5: The Power of Love
Don’t separate the human from the worker. Treat everyone as a person, and care about your people fiercely and genuinely. Key Principles:
The Lovely Reset: to care about people you have to care about people. Ask about their lives outside of work, understand their families, and when things get rough, show up. Make your holiday parties truly special occasions. Go the extra mile to help people who need extra help.
The Percussive Clap: cheer demonstrably for people and their successes. Particularly in (often dreary) board meetings when someone presents a brilliant new project. Show that the work is worth getting excited about.
Always Build Communities: build communities inside and outside of work. A place is much stronger when people are connected.
Help People: be generous with your time, connections, and other resources. Do the “five minute favors” (from Adam Grant’s Give and Take) that are easy to do yet mean a lot to the recipient. Bend rules in order to do people favors, provided it’s the right thing to do.
Love the Founders: hold a special reverence for - and protect - the people with the most vision and passion for the company. “Someday you’ll be the ex-CEO, but they’ll still be the founders.”
The Elevator Chat: if connecting with others is a challenge (e.g. if you’re an introvert, or struggle to remember names), practice until it becomes more natural.
Other Takeaways:
People who lead with warmth are often perceived as less competent. But don’t that stop you from leading with warmth.
“An organization full of compassionate love […] will have higher employee satisfaction and teamwork, lower absenteeism, and better team performance.”
Chapter 6: The Yardstick
Take care to provide the emotional support people need, particularly during transitions (e.g. when a CEO steps down after leading a company for a while). “Bill grasped that there are things we all care about as people […]. To create effective teams, you need to understand and pay attention to these human values. He understood that positive human values generate positive business outcomes. This is a connection that too many business leaders ignore.”
APPENDIX
It’s the People (Bill’s Manifesto)
People are the foundation of any company’s success. The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them. Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect, and trust.
Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people’s skills. Great managers help people excel and grow. Respect means understanding people’s unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way that’s consistent with the needs of the company. Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will.
Peer Feedback Survey (Bill’s Version)
CORE ATTRIBUTES: For the past 12 months, to what extent do you agree/disagree that each person:
Displayed extraordinary in-role performance
Exemplified world-class leadership
Achieved outcomes that were in the best interest of both [Google] as a whole and his/her org.
Expanded the boundaries of what is possible for [Google] through innovation and/or application of best practices.
Collaborated effectively with peers (for example, worked well together, resolved barriers/issues with others) and championed the same in his/her team.
Contributed effectively during senior team meetings (for example, was prepared, participated actively, listened well, was open and respectful to others, disagreed constructively).
PRODUCT LEADER ATTRIBUTES: For the past 12 months, to what extent do you agree/disagree that each person demonstrated exemplary leadership in the following areas:
Product Vision
Product Quality
Product Execution
OPEN-TEXT QUESTIONS
What differentiates each SVP and makes him/her effective today?
What advice would you give each SVP to be more effective and/or have greater impact?