Book Review - Super Wizard Coach for Silicon Valley's Wizard Executives

Trillion Dollar Coach

By - Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg,

Alan Eagle

John Murray(Publishers);

pages 217;  Rs 599 

Bill Gates once told an interviewer, "Steve Jobs was a wizard…….(and) I was like a minor wizard". By that standard Bill Campbell, who was a ‘sounding board’, a coach, a mentor, and a friend of Steve Jobs must be considered a super coaching wizard. The book, 'Trillion Dollar  Coach' is indeed a playbook for business wizards, not only in the IT industry but for all business executives.

 

Bill Campbell coached Steve Jobs when he was re-building Apple from near bankruptcy to make it a company with a market valuation of several hundred billion dollars. Bill also worked side by side with Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt to build Google (now Alphabet) from a start-up to a company with a market capitalization of several billion dollars. He also coached many other billionaires (see the list below; it is not an exhaustive one). Taking into account the total market capitalization of all these companies, trillion dollars is indeed an underestimation of the value creation by Bill's coachees. So, Bill can be called the greatest executive coach in the world. 

 

Bill also coached: 

·         John Donahue, former CEO of eBay

·         Al Gore, former US Vice President

·         Dick Costolo, former CEO of Twitter

·         Lee C. Bollinger,  President of Columbia University

·         Sunder Pichai, CEO of Google

·         John Hennessy, former President of Stanford University

·         Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

 

How can the value created by all these companies be attributed to Bill Campbell's coaching? It is obvious from the candid admission of the   authors (who are all from Google and were coached by Bill). They write, "we can say without a doubt that Bill Campbell was one of the people most integral to Google's success. Without him, the company would not be where it is today." (Emphasis added) to read the book and learn the practical solutions to intractable problems and absorb easily actionable ideas. Nevertheless, while on the subject here we narrate a few of Bill's nuggets on coaching.

 

Coaching Style

 

Executive coaching is now in vogue and the number of coaches is rising fast by the day. Bill was larger than life personality and defied stereotypes. There is a growing demand for the professionalization of executive coaching with structure, standards, qualifications, and formal accreditation. For all these people, it would come as a rude shock that Bill was a football coach. He successfully coached "people doing work he did not understand". (Emphasis added)

 

What was the magic wand Bill used for such monumental achievements? Hold your breath for another shock. The magic wand was 'LOVE'. There is a full chapter in the book with the heading: ‘The Power of Love’.

 

"Everyone has a style and hugs and kisses was Bill’s. He came from the working-class. Bill was a delightfully profane man. He used F-word the way people use 'like'.” The book contains a list of the top ten of his most loved expressions termed as ‘Billysms’. Three of these have F-word. He was most informal, so much so that "right there in the Board meeting or Eric's staff meeting he would give you a wink or blow you a kiss". He not only got away with such acts but people looked forward to it happening again, because "they knew Bill loved them". There is a widespread fallacy in business circles that those who are warm and 'loving' are incompetent and those who are cold are competent. Bill conclusively proved that one can be warm and loving and yet highly competent and effective. 

 

That loving, caring, warm style did not mean a compromise on the performance of the coachees.  Bill was totally involved in the company's and individuals' activities and monitored and ensured the highest level of performance. He was not an as-and-when-needed coach working on-call basis. "Bill met Eric just about every week. He attended Eric's staff meetings every week and frequently visited the campus. He was not focused only on Eric. He often walked to the halls and talked to people. The conversations would always start with kids and other family members.

 

"Bill did not tell people what to do. He understood the people. He could spot tension through keen observation using his habit as a football coach to observe the entire field of twenty-two players and also the happenings on the periphery." He hated the political “bitch sessions" and ensured they were avoided and quickly stopped. 

 

Beyond Busyness

 

Bill Campbell instinctively involved himself in the wellbeing of the company, individuals, and their families and would go out of the way often disregarding personal interests.

• When a proposal to oust Steve jobs from Apple came up for discussion, Bill opposed the move vehemently. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he appointed Bill to the Board; many others had to quit.

• When Steve was diagnosed with cancer, Bill visited him every day in the office, the hospital, or at home. His dictum: "when you have a friend drop everything and go".

• A senior executive at Google was diagnosed with a serious illness. He only revealed it to Bill. Bill helped him and did not tell about the illness even to the CEO. Later, the executive recovered. Eric got to know about that matter but appreciated that Bill had kept the trust of the colleague. 

 

Business Coaching

 

• Bill's basic principle of coaching was "to tell them what they don't want to hear, and show them what they don't want to see". Before Bill joined Google, Larry, Sergey, and Eric had implemented an operation called "disorg" with the aim of dealing directly with the product development teams. All managerial posts were done away with. Soon after Bill joined, he mentioned to Larry, "we have to get some managers here." Larry was shocked as they had just done away with the managerial posts. Both were firm in their convictions. One day Bill said, why not ask the engineers for their views? Larry, Sergey, and Bill went to the hall. Bill asked an engineer if he would like to have a manager? "Yes,"  came the reply. "Why?" asked Bill. "I want someone I can learn from and someone who can break the ties they talked to several engineers and got the same answers. Still, the operation "disorg" continued for a year. But, finally, it was dropped and managers were appointed.

 

• Jeff  Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon took leave to spend time with his family. In his absence, COO, Joe Galli, managed the business. When Jeff Bezos returned, the company was in trouble. The Amazon Board mooted a proposal that Jeff stays only as the Chairman and Joe should be elevated to become CEO. The Amazon Board,  mooted the proposal but were not sure. was not so sure if the move was sound, so they referred the matter to Bill. Bill paid several visits to the Amazon offices, attended meetings, talked to people informally, studied the cultural and interpersonal relationships. Bill told the Amazon Board, "Jeff Bezos needed to stay as CEO………..as employees were loyal to him." The Amazon Board accepted Bill's report and Jeff stayed as CEO. One more example of Bill's people-centric decision that proved right.

• Dan Rosensweig joined Chegg in 2010. He was told that an IPO was in the offing in six months. In fact, the reality was that bankruptcy was imminent. Dan took some right decisions and launched the IPO. The stock price fell below the issue price. Dan was thinking of leaving but did not tell anyone. Bill got to know and called him. During the conversation, Bill explained his perspective and told Dan "to stick with Chegg. Leaders must lead." Dan did not leave Chegg. He turned it around.

 

In conclusion, it needs to be recounted as to what were the secrets of Bill Campbell's legendary successes in the new revolutionary era and in fields, the intricacies of which he did not understand. In the words of the authors, "Bill grasped that there are things we all care about as people - love, family, money, attention, power, meaning, purpose - that are factors in any business situation………..He understood that positive human values generate positive business outcomes. This is a connection that too many business  leaders ignore……….it is important that we learn to do it now." (Emphasis added}