“Trillion Dollar Coach” Commentary & Summary

Learning how to be a great leader is something that I struggle with immensely. Reading books like this will, hopefully, give me the insight needed to become a great leader for my team.

Author

If you wish to know about Bill in greater detail read the synopsis of the first chapter as it gives great detail on who Bill was and where he came from. In short, he mentored the greatest minds of the tech world in the dot com era. Many of those individuals declare that Bills intervention was the reason for their success.

Summary

The book reflects from over 80 interviews conducted by the authors to piece together the playbook of Silicone Valley. Here are the principles taught and received by the mentees of Bill Campbel. Here Bill teaches us how great leaders are amazing coaches.

Analysis

I will dive into chapter summaries highlighting the most important stuff from each sub section.

The Caddie & The CEO

The chapter opens up with the individuals touched by Bill, the tech giants of Silicon Valley. His experience in Homestead as a football player gave him immense insight and was probably the catalyst for his career and success. His time there taught him the invaluable lesson of teamwork. Success was predicated on “ the players working together and [had] senior leadership.”

From 1964 to the late 70s bill would coach football and would learn a lesson on compassion. “There is something that I would say is called dispassionate toughness that you need [as a football coach], and I don’t think I have it. What you need to do is not worry about feelings. You’ve got to push everybody and everything harder and be almost insensitive about feelings. You replace a kid with another kid; you take an older guy and replace him with a younger guy. That is the nature of the game. Survival of the fittest. The best players play. In my case, I worried about that. I tried to make sure the kids understood what we were doing. I just think I wasn’t hard-edged enough.” This mindset of dispassion was certainly true for football, but the opposite was definitely required in the business realm.

After retiring as a football coach, he dove into the business realm getting a job and quickly ranking up the corporate hierarchy. His initial job search led him to John Scully who was the top exec at Pepsi but Bill declined the offer. Later when John would be appointed CEO at apple he reached out to Bill once again.

He was playing catch up for many years as a result of “blunting his success as a dumbass football coach,” He moved quickly and after joining apple he would soon become the VP of marketing after a short 9 months of performance. This led him to launch the famous 1984 ad. The immense success from the ad propelled Bill’s career. “Not too bad for a dumb ass football coach.”

After the ad was aired he would soon become the CEO of Claris that only after a few short years would be reversed leaving Bill back on the market. Then Jobs returned and repaid Bill’s loyalty by naming him a new director of Apple (where he served till 2014). In the interim, he would be appointed as the new CEO of intuit. When the previous CEO offered him a job to advise the portfolio of companies at Kleiner Perkins Bill solidified his reputation and brand as a coach.

His coaching career was about to explode. In 2001 the new Google CEO Eric Schmidt met with and was enamored by his intense presence and ability to coach. Then it lists off the countless people he helped and coached personally.

There is a section that reflects the funeral and after the eulogy speech by Pat Gallager. The may people directly affected by Bills presence came together and decided to write this book to share his principles and leadership ideology (that would later be backed by research on managerial and employee psychology).

It was an impressive summary of his life and the people molded by him were many and impressive. Great overview of who he was, what he stood for, and how he operated.

Your Title Makes You a Manager, but Your People Make You a Leader

Bill discussing his time at early google in 2001. The google management team had all but a few been fired from their positions leaving the engineers in a disorg for a little over a year. After some reflection, the managerial team realized that their presence was not only needed but desired by the engineers. This is backed by an academic report stating that managers are quintessential for companies undergoing immense innovation.

The chapter continues to name the essential elements that describe a great manager. They are not proud and certainly not a dictator. Your goal is to cultivate an environment for them to flourish — not tell them what the hell to do and micromanage. He is often heard quoting Mrs. Dubinsky saying, “If you’re a great manager, your people will make you a leader. They acclaim that, not you.” Those words resonated with Bill so much that he would later say, “you have demanded respect, rather than having it accrue to you. You need to project humility, selflessness, that projects that you care about the company and about people.”

They navigate to 2008 where Gawker would publish an article titled, “The 10 Most Terrible Tyrants of Tech.” This prompted him to print the document and show it to the Google Execs. Johnathan was pleased to have made the list but Bill was most certainly not. This is when Bill shared the “Its the people” manifesto.

The academic research would follow Bills lesson by verifying the need for treating the people of the organization as an asset. “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how they are going to make someone else better. But that’s what coaches do. It’s what Bill Campbell did, he just did it on a different field.”

A common question for CEOS would be, “What keeps you up at night?” . . . “For Bill, the answer was always the same: the well-being and success of his people”

He prescribes that meetings are started with something non-business related and he uses his “Start with Trip Reports” example.

5 Words on a Whiteboard

Eric would often conduct his meetings (primarily one-on-ones) by writing 5 words on a whiteboard. These would represent anything from people to products. Those were the points of discussion. Unlike Eric, Bill would hold his 5 words close to him “like a poker play holding his cards close to his chest”. Hed asks what the others persons top 5 points were in an effort to extract their priorities and efforts.

BILL’S FRAMEWORK FOR 1:1s AND REVIEWS

PERFORMANCE ON JOB REQUIREMENTS

• Could be sales figures
• Could be product delivery or product milestones
• Could be customer feedback or product quality
• Could be budget numbers

RELATIONSHIP WITH PEER GROUPS

(This is critical for company integration and cohesiveness)

• Product and Engineering Marketing and Product
• Sales and Engineering

MANAGEMENT/LEADERSHIP

• Are you guiding/coaching your people?
• Are you weeding out the bad ones?
• Are you working hard at hiring?
• Are you able to get your people to do heroic things?

INNOVATION (BEST PRACTICES)

• Are you constantly moving ahead . . . thinking about how to continually get better?
• Are you constantly evaluating new technologies, new products, new practices?
• Do you measure yourself against the best in the industry/world?

The Round Table

He adopted Sir Arther’s round table idea. Here he would promote others to share their ideas first all at the same time. This promoted others to share their perspective of ideas or problems and get considered. The job of the manager is to break ties and make the decision when the team cannot come to one.

Lead-Based on First Principles

This section is an anecdotal experience from Bill and Mike McCue the founder of TellMe a cloud-based speech recognition startup from 1999. The company was going through the exit process with Microsoft as the acquirer. Yet, they were unsolicited another offer greater than Microsoft’s. This left Mike confused on how to move forward. He ended up choosing Microsoft because it aligned better with their first principles even though it was less money.

Define the “first principles” for the situation, immutable truths that are the foundation for the company or product, and help guide the decision from those principles.

Manage the Aberrant Genius

This is the same sentiment as Jocko. If there is a high performing individual on the team you want to foster them and nurture them. However, if they are toxic and self-service you must cut them or else perish at your own expense. The team outperforms even the best individual out there. Make sure the team comes first.

Aberrant geniuses — high-performing but difficult team members — should be tolerated and even protected, as long as their behavior isn’t unethical or abusive and their value outweighs the toll their behavior takes on management, colleagues, and teams.

Money’s Not About Money

This oxymoron is just demonstrating how compensation reflects the companies admiration for the individual. Sure they want to live well as well but to the star athletes or employees, it’s about you showing them that they are valued by the company.

Compensating people well demonstrates love and respect and ties them strongly to the goals of the company.

Innovation is Where Crazy People Have Stature

The main objective of a company is to push out its flagship product and optimize that product (or service). Everything else is tertiary. The Sales/marketing department are merely tools to tell engineers what the people LIKE and DISLIKE. “Bill often commented, ‘Why is marketing losing its clout? Because it forgot its first name: product.’”

The purpose of a company is to bring a product vision to life. All the other components are in service to product.

Heads Held High

Firing a member of the team — the family — is always hard. So he gives the method on how to properly let someone go.

If you have to let people go, be generous, treat them well, and celebrate their accomplishments.

Bill on Boards
He explains that board meetings fail due to the CEOs lack of preparation or ability to follow their own agenda. The agenda should always start with operational updates: “ the board needs to know how the company is doing. That includes financial and sales reports, product status, and metrics around operational rigor (hiring, communications, marketing, support). If the board has committees, for example, to oversee audit and finance or compensation, have those committees meet ahead of time (in person or via phone or video conference) and present updates at the board meeting. The first order of business always needs to be a frank, open, succinct discussion about how the company is performing”

This promoted him and Eric to perform the highlights and lowlights. He also made clear that board members who do not do their job should be quickly removed. Send over the details a week in advance so you are not bogged down by minutia.

He was also quite clear about what a bad board member looks like: “Someone who just walks in and wants to be the smartest guy in the room and talks too much.”

It’s the CEO’s job to manage boards, not the other way around.

Build an Envelope of Trust

Trust is a multifaceted concept, so what do we mean by it? One academic paper defines trust as “the willingness to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations about another’s behavior.”

They break down what trust means:

1. Keeping your word
2. Integrity, you will always be transparent and honest
3. Loyalty. You are a family so watch eachothers back, even outside the office.
4. Discretion. Knowing people can hold faith in their ability to keep secrets.

A slew of academic research bears out what Bill intuitively knew — not just that trust is important, but that it is the first thing to create if you want a relationship to be successful. It is the foundation. For example, a highly cited 2000 study from Cornell University discusses the correlation between task conflict (disagreements about decisions) and relationship conflict (emotional friction) in teams.

Only Coach the Coachable

To be mentored you need to be coachable, that is, you must be willing to learn and humble yourself in your inadequacies. If you were a “Smart aleck” then you had too much ego and would probably provide too much resistance from your coach.

What defines a good coach though? Well, bill was often heard quoting the Dallas Cowboys Head Coach Tom Landry, “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”

The traits that make a person coachable include honesty and humility, the willingness to persevere and work hard, and a constant openness to learning.

Practice Free Form Listening

This is pulling parallels from Peterson’s book “12 Rules of Life”. We often are hearing the other person speak with the intent to respond rather than listen.

Listen to people with your full and undivided attention — don’t think ahead to what you’re going to say next — and ask questions to get to the real issue.

No-Gap Between Statement and Fact

The parallels between this section and Dalio were surprisingly obvious. The two share similar mindset when operating internal affairs. They both propose immense transparent and to be honest. Offer feedback immediately even if negative. The caveat is to still remain compassionate and caring.

Be relentlessly honest and candid, couple negative feedback with caring, give feedback as soon as possible, and if the feedback is negative, deliver it privately.

DON’T STICK IT IN THEIR EAR

This is a point pulled from Jocko in his book. You don’t want to tell people what to do. One people don’t like doing what they told and two its actually a disservice to your subordinates — your “Junior Leaders”. Create a story to guide them through the possibilities and the outcomes. Then assist them in making the right decision. You want to autotomize the decision-making process by EMPOWERING your subordinates.

Don’t stick it in their ear don’t tell people what to do; offer stories and help guide them to the best decisions for them.

Be The Evangelist For Courage

This section deals with the constant feeling of a demoralizing work environment. People feel defeated and progress stalls. You must reinvigorate the atmosphere. Build confidence in your team pushes them to reach their potential.

Believe in people more than they believe in themselves, and push them to be more courageous.

Full Identity Front And Center

Once again Dalio and Campbell share similar ideologies. They believe for a company to thrive there must be a culture of comfort to be yourself. Dalio’s approach was more methodical though.

People are most effective when they can be completely themselves and bring their full identity to work.

Team First

There were many similarities between this chapter and the books of Dalio and Jocko pertaining to leadership in the organization. The team was the quintessential element for the company’s success. Like Peterson states, “We are playing many sub-games in the game of life” you as the leader must be certain you have the right (wo)man for the job.

“A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”

Work The Team, Then The Problem

Similar to the previous topic, you must ensure that the right team (comprised of the right members) are placed together to tackle a problem (or opportunity).

When faced with a problem or opportunity, the first step is to ensure the right team is in place and working on it.

Pick The Right Players

This section teaches the manager how to properly pick their stars for the team. You need an individual with superior capabilities for completing their tasks while still being coachable and a team player (See Aberrant Geniuses above). They must still possess the key characteristics that were important to Bill and found in Building an Envelope of Trust.

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.

Pair People

This is a page out of principles. Dalio would use his Baseball card idea to pair people with the right personality traits (I told you he was more methodical) while Bill instinctively did this. THe coworker’s chemistry is almost as important as the skills they possess. Without a properly functioning team, you are left with nothing.

Peer relationships are critical and often overlooked, so seek opportunities to pair people up on projects or decisions.

The Peer Feedback Survey

I’ll just copy what was shared in the book on the surveys.

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 organization.
• 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?

Get To The Table

Bill was a motivator for women to go after bigger roles in corporate America. He was noted encouraging women in his work-life to strive for non-typical female roles like HR and go after higher exec level positions. He also made clear to treat everyone like equals based on merit and capabilities, not by their gender.

Winning depends on having the best team, and the best teams have more women.

Solve The Biggest Problem

If you recall the book on leadership by Jocko, he talks about defining the objective and being clear on desired outcomes. You must be crystal clear and leave no room for interpretation, as per Sivers from “Anything You Want”. Once you identified the problem and the ROOT problem not its symptoms then you need to address it with immense intensity so that you can overcome those obstacles.

Identify the biggest problem, the “elephant in the room,” bring it front and center, and tackle it first.

Don’t Let The Bitch Sessions Last

Something you’d expect from an ex-football coach. Shitty stuff happens often and usually business plans never go to plan or something catastrophic occurs. You have two options bitch and dwell or move on and use that experience as a learning one. You decide. I can tell you first hand after losing $300,000 i was fucking depressed and angry. BUT I didn’t dwell (too much) and I moved on.

Air all the negative issues, but don’t dwell on them. Move on as fast as possible.

Winning Right

I like this section because he priorities doing the RIGHT thing with winning. Winning is great but if it’s overshadowed by cutting corners (i.e. doing bad) then profit shouldn’t lead your motivations.

Strive to win, but always win right, with commitment, teamwork, and integrity.

Leaders Lead

If you recall the first chapter, you will remember Bill talking about the importance of the leaders capacity to lead, especially in times of adversity. Your people make you a leader so it is your obligation to do everything in your ability to improve the situation even if it’s offering your encouragement. You are in charge of making decisions as to the leader so when things go south or not according to plan (because it most certainly will) you are tasked with making effective decisions that lead the company and the situation upward. #NoPressure

When things are going bad, teams are looking for even more loyalty, commitment, and decisiveness from their leaders.

Fill The Gaps Between People

Once again, this is extirpating on Dalio’s idea of looking at the “machine” on a higher-order level. This allows you to view the problem and organization as a whole from a completely different perspective. Consider how easy it is to offer advice to someone experiencing personal problems, yet when faced with similar problems you cannot properly cope either. Why? Well, you are simply looking at the same problem from a different perspective. You must observe everything going on so that you can see and listen to patterns. This will allow you to make principles based on those patterns.

Listen, observe, and fill the communication and understanding gaps between people

Permission To Be Empathetic

em·pa·thet·ic

/ˌempəˈTHedik/

adjective

adjective: empathetic

1. showing an ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Bradley Horowitz noted that Bill used empathy to cultivate cultures of success and fluids. It’s certainly not discussed amongst the user manuals of managers but it’s an integral component if you wish to create an environment of frictionless development and effective outcomes.

Leading teams becomes a lot more joyful, and the teams more effective, when you know and care about the people.

The Power of Love

This chapter talks about bills perspective of love with his colleagues. The love was never romantic rather more in the form of agape — unconditional love. He may have been stern, abrasive and even fire people costing them their livelihood, it was always fair and conducted win an empathetic heart.

Top Ten “Billisms”

These were phrases most often chanted by Bill in the workplace and was even pasted on the back of his eulogy pamphlet.

10.“You should have that shirt cleaned and burned.”

09.“You’re as dumb as a post.”

08.“He’s one of the great horse’s asses of our time.”

07.“You’re a numbnuts.”

06.“You couldn’t run a five-flat forty-yard dash off a cliff.”

05.“You’ve got hands like feet.”

04.“You’d fuck up a free lunch.”

03.“You’re so fucked up you make me look good.”

02.“Don’t fuck it up.”

01.“That’s the sound of your head coming out of your ass.”

The Lovely Reset

This section may mirror a previous chapter but he places much more emphasis on being there for your jr leaders in times of distress not to just simply know their family. Show your subordinates that you truly care for their well being outside of the workplace. One of his mentees Mark of a golf course in Mexico (Bill had a summer house there). He took Bill’s advice for organizational compassion so well that he would start throwing an end of year employee parties and make them memorable. It may seem like a useless expense but remember, your team is your biggest asset next is the product and everything else. You must invest in assets for them to appreciate over time. This would later be proven effective in a 2004 study on “organizational compassion.”

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.

The Percussive Clap

This is self-explanatory. Cheer and celebrate success. This is talked about furiously by Dalio and Drucker. There are immense benefits from rewarding people for doing the right thing. At the very minimum, you at least get them to produce more of that behavior.

Cheer demonstrably for people and their successes

Always Build Communities

Remember, we are tribal Beings. Building company culture is great to keep the organization as a whole running smoothly, but it needs to be fractionalized a bit further to create tight bonds between colleagues. Communities are great elements of the organization to further supplement and reinforce company culture. This intensified the emotional bonds created between managers and their subordinates. Focus on building real emotional connections

Build communities inside and outside of work. a place is much stronger when people are connected.

Help People

This section appends onto the already existing section from above about helping others. The other section emphasised helping in time of desperate need whereas this one is small favors that were extreme gestures of sincere compassion and interest in others. The best example was Susan Wojcicki, at the time early Google Employee and later CEO of YouTube, was not invited to an important tech conference. She was understandably ferrious, however, not attending would not imply life or death repercussions. Needless To Say, Bill would make several calls, pulling strings with his connections to get her access. It was a small token of appreciation that cost Bill nothing more than his time and connections yet was proven to be an exemplary tool to encourage a strong bond between the leaders and jr leaders.

Be generous with your time, connections, and other resources.

Love The Founders

The founders were the visionaries behind the organization and most likely the product. Bill places prominence on keeping the founders engaged regardless of their operating role.

More than the founders he accentuates the need to cling strongly to the companies core values and its initial mission. He simply states that the founders usually embody that spirit while they are not the only ones that can or do possess that.

Hold a special reverence for — and protect — the people with the most vision and passion for the company

The Elevator Chat

He wraps up the chapter by encouraging “Elevator,” or “hallway Chat”. This just further initiates and fosters the emotional bond with employees. If you find yourself like CEO of Adobe Bruce Chizen, and it’s difficult to develop an emotional connection, but with time it gets easier. Get after it every day with these guiding principles and you can over time more effortlessly execute meaningful dialogue.

Loving colleagues in the workplace may be challenging, so practice it until it becomes more natural.

The Yardstick

This chapter was more of a summation of Eric’s experience with Bill and focused on acknowledgment and gratitude.

Conclusion

I will highlight several of the key principles that I found to be most important for you to absorb. I hope this book proves to be helpful for you in your ventures whether it’s coaching a company or a little league soccer team.

Principle One

Your team is your biggest asset, invest in them heavily or run the risk of failing.

Principle Two

Your product comes second to the team. The [flagship] product (or service) is the backbone of the company. It must be perfect. Product-oriented teams are primary while every other department is tertiary to the product and are there to aid in its perfecting.

Principle Three

Allow for an idea meritocracy and do not accidentally place your biases onto others by talking first. Listen and guide your team to the best course of action.

Principle Four

Work on people than the problem. You must coach and train your team continually if they are to be suitable for the problems that you will encounter. So get them ready then find the ROOT problem and attack it head-on.

Principle Five

Create an environment that allows others to be themselves without fear of retribution.

Principle Six

Build a family oriented culture with little sub-committees to the strength that emotional bond.

Principle Seven

Shit will fail, don’t let the bitching last more than it should Grief quickly and move forward.

Principle Eight

Lead with compassion and integrity. Your goal as a coach is to make others succeed. Be a coach, not just a leader. Your title only makes you a manager, to be a leader your people must revere you as such.

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Written by: Angel Mondragon.