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Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell Audio CD – Unabridged, April 16, 2019
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The team behind How Google Works returns with management lessons from legendary coach and business executive, Bill Campbell, whose mentoring of some of our most successful modern entrepreneurs has helped create well over a trillion dollars in market value.
Bill Campbell played an instrumental role in the growth of several prominent companies, such as Google, Apple, and Intuit, fostering deep relationships with Silicon Valley visionaries, including Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. In addition, this business genius mentored dozens of other important leaders on both coasts, from entrepreneurs to venture capitalists to educators to football players, leaving behind a legacy of growing companies, successful people, respect, friendship, and love after his death in 2016.
Leaders at Google for over a decade, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle experienced firsthand how the man fondly known as Coach Bill built trusting relationships, fostered personal growth--even in those at the pinnacle of their careers--inspired courage, and identified and resolved simmering tensions that inevitably arise in fast-moving environments. To honor their mentor and inspire and teach future generations, they have codified his wisdom in this essential guide.
Based on interviews with over eighty people who knew and loved Bill Campbell, Trillion Dollar Coach explains the Coach's principles and illustrates them with stories from the many great people and companies with which he worked. The result is a blueprint for forward-thinking business leaders and managers that will help them create higher performing and faster moving cultures, teams, and companies.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarperCollins
- Publication dateApril 16, 2019
- Dimensions5.8 x 0.6 x 5.6 inches
- ISBN-101982626291
- ISBN-13978-1982626297
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
ERIC E. SCHMIDT is the former Executive Chairman of Alphabet, Google's holding company, and served as Google's CEO from 2001 until 2011.
JONATHAN ROSENBERG is Senior Vice President and an advisor to Alphabet CEO, Larry Page. He formerly ran the Google product team.
ALAN EAGLE has been a Director of Executive Communications at Google since 2007, and has led speechwriting and other communications activities for Eric and Jonathan.
Jonathan Rosenberg is a senior vice president at Alphabet and an advisor to the company's management team. He ran the Google product team from 2002 to 2011.
Alan Eagle has been a Director of Executive Communications at Google since 2007, and has led speechwriting and other communications activities for Eric and Jonathan.
Dan Woren is an American voice actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator. He has worked extensively in animation, video games, and feature films. He is best known for his many roles in anime productions such as Bleach and as the voice of Sub-Zero in the video game Mortal Kombat.
Product details
- Publisher : HarperCollins; Unabridged edition (April 16, 2019)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1982626291
- ISBN-13 : 978-1982626297
- Item Weight : 3.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.8 x 0.6 x 5.6 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,199,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,112 in Business Mentoring & Coaching (Books)
- #11,345 in Books on CD
- #16,793 in Business Management (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Alan Eagle is an author and executive communications consultant, helping leaders and companies shape their stories and communicate with clarity. He spent 16 years at Google, partnering with executives to communicate the company’s story to clients, partners, employees, and the public. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and an MBA from The Wharton School.
Alan is the co-author of the books How Google Works, Trillion Dollar Coach, and Learned Excellence, and the author, all by himself, of seven letters-to-the-editor published in Sports Illustrated. He has never won the New Yorker Caption Contest.
A Northern California native, Alan lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and golden retriever. Their four twentysomething children come by from time to time.
Eric Schmidt is a technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He joined Google in 2001, helping the company grow from a Silicon Valley startup to a global technological leader. He served as chief executive officer and chairman from 2001 to 2011, and as executive chairman and technical advisor thereafter. Under his leadership, Google dramatically scaled its infrastructure and diversified its product offerings while maintaining a culture of innovation. In 2017, he co-founded Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative that bets early on exceptional people making the world better. He serves as chair of The Broad Institute, and formerly served as chair of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. He is the host of Reimagine with Eric Schmidt, a podcast exploring how society can build a brighter future after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers say the book is rich with valuable advice and stories about great leaders. They also find the reading experience awesome and easy to read. Readers also appreciate the great stories and insights. They describe the writing style as well done and easy-to-implement concepts.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book rich with valuable advice and stories about Bill Campbell. They say the authors do a great job capturing Bill's philosophical outlook, humor, passion, and style. Readers also say the book is inspiring, inspiring, and very useful. They also say it's a good tool to share at a meeting.
"...The result of their distillation efforts is this book that is worth its weight in gold...." Read more
"...Bottom LineThere are good leadership insights in Trillion Dollar Coach. Those insights, by themselves, make this book worth reading...." Read more
"...The book’s structure can be confusing, but it’s rich with valuable advice and stories about Bill Campbell’s impactful coaching style, making it more..." Read more
"There are just a handful of valuable, insightful and inspiring books that not only provide insights into the techniques that have driven the success..." Read more
Customers find the book entertaining and inspiring from the start to the end. They also mention that it's an awesome book for you to read if you are thinking about becoming.
"...Those insights, by themselves, make this book worth reading. I don’t think you’ll learn much about coaching, though...." Read more
"...and the necessary color to make this book an entertaining and useful guide for everyone...." Read more
"...Dollar Coach" offers lasting lessons in leadership, making it a worthwhile read." Read more
"...Overall, a great book. Recommended." Read more
Customers find the stories in the book great, with insights into great leaders. They also say the book is well-documented and analyzed to portray the most down-to-earth guy. Customers also mention that the authors are noteworthy Google leaders, including former CEO.
"This book has been one of the most impactful books on my leadership in the last 10years. Thankful they decided to write it...." Read more
"...to manage well and focusing on team before diving into problems, are memorable...." Read more
"There are just a handful of valuable, insightful and inspiring books that not only provide insights into the techniques that have driven the success..." Read more
"I really enjoyed this book. It told some great inside stories of major companies and the backbone behind some of the success- Bill Campbell...." Read more
Customers find the writing style easy to read, understand, and replicate. They also appreciate the simple, logical, and easily replicated techniques used to resolve issues.
"...This is a must read. Really well done (5 claps)...." Read more
"...I started to use Bill’s method for my team and the company. Easy and simple, but working approaches and tactics for people and teams...." Read more
"Easy read...no verbose language. Stories of impact sell the book. A must read for coaches looking to level leadership skills." Read more
"...Great writing there. Then he tries to distill his wisdom. That order fails. Pretty poorly actually IMHO...." Read more
Customers find the coach in the book great.
"Great book. Really interesting. Yes it's a book about an amazing man and coach...." Read more
"It sounds like Bill Campbell was a really special person and great coach. But don't expect to really learn the specifics from this book...." Read more
"Pleasure reading this. An example of an amazing human being, hopefully leaders can learn from them.Highly recommend it. 5 stars" Read more
"Amazing man, fine book..." Read more
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In his lifetime, Campbell coached football at Columbia University, moved to the business world when Kodak hired him, and then carved out a remarkable third career in Silicon Valley. He founded several successful companies, and began to serve on Boards and to invest in companies and to coach their leaders. The likes of Steve Jobs, Al Gore, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos, and Sheryl Sandberg. The total valuation of the leaders he coached is well north of one trillion dollars, hence the book's title. Among those companies are Google, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Intuit, Claris, and Adobe. Campbell served on the Board of Apple, and was instrumental in bringing Steve Jobs back to the helm of the company.
As effective as Bill was in coaching and befriending individual leaders, his real secret sauce was his emphasis on coaching teams of leaders. He was convinced that even in a cutthroat place like Silicon Valley, webs of relationships of trust were essential to success. As a former football coach, he was not averse to dispensing some tough love, telling those he coached the hard truths they needed to hear. But because he had established a strong foundation of trust, and they knew that he was on their side, they were able to hear and accept what would have been painful coming from any other source.
The book is filled with nuggets of gold drawn from Bill Campbell's relationships with those who were eager to share vignettes of their encounters with Coach Bill. The consistent thread that ties these recollections together is Bill's consistent message that addressing the strength and health of the team was usually the straightest path to solving complex problems. In his life, he would go to extreme lengths to be the catalyst who would pull together effective teams - within companies and across corporate boundaries. His annual trips to the Super Bowl became events that numerous individuals looked forward to. The game was secondary; the opportun enjoy the relationships within the traveling group was the primary point of these outings. There were also weekly gatherings at a sports bar in Palo Alto in which Bill was invested to build a sense of community among the participants.
Like any effective executive coach, Bill would abstain from offering his own solutions. He would listen carefully, ask probing questions, challenge assumptions, and over time help the leader he was coaching to arrive at wise decisions on her own. Now, thanks to the work done by this trio of authors, his wisdom and spirit can live on in perpetuity, allowing those of us who did not meet him in his lifetime to encounter him through the reflections of those he invested in.
I recommend this book to anyone who finds himself or herself in the role of coach, as well as those who are leading companies and teams. Campbell was emphatic that any leader worth his salt should also be intentionally coaching those he was leading.
Enjoy!
This book takes an awfully long time to start to prepare to begin to get ready to share anything helpful. The book opens with Bill Campbell’s memorial service. The authors talk about what a swell guy Bill was and what a great coach he was and what a great impact he had on them. They tell you why they decided to write the book. That takes about 20 pages. Now that you know, you can skip ahead if you get bored.
I’m glad that I stayed with the book, despite the slow start. There were some good things that make the book worth the price. There are also some bad things that you can overlook or that may keep you from wanting to read the book. And there are ugly things, too. Let’s take the good things first.
The Good
There’s a lot of standard management/leadership advice here. You may have heard many of these ideas before, but they’re worth reading again. Sometimes the stars align, and a common point becomes an uncommon insight.
There is one powerful idea here. “Your title makes you a manager, your people make you a leader.” That was one of Bill Campbell’s mantras, but he gave Donna Dubinsky credit for opening his eyes to it.
There were also three areas of advice that seemed particularly insightful to me. One was the advice to “Lead based on first principles.” First principles are things that everyone agrees on and set the foundation for the company or the product.
The second important, practical insight was, “Manage the aberrant genius.” The aberrant genius is that high-performing team member who is difficult to deal with. I’ve seen several treatments of this in other books, but this is the best. There are specific guidelines for what to tolerate and what not to tolerate. There are ideas about when it’s time for the aberrant genius to depart.
The third, and the most potent insight was, “Work the team, then the problem.” This seems to have two meanings. First, make sure you put the right team together before you tackle a problem. The other is that when you have a problem getting things done, address the team and the way it works before you worry about fixing the problem. This is not something unique to Bill Campbell. Ed Catmull says much the same thing in Creativity, Inc. This book has more detail and is therefore more helpful. The section on coaching the team is excellent
The Bad
These are things that I didn’t like. They may keep you from buying the book, or that you skip when you read the book, or things that don’t bother you at all.
Early in the book, the authors say, “We quickly rejected the idea of writing a hagiography.” A hagiography was originally a biography of a saint. Today, the term refers to a biography that idealizes its subject. Sorry guys, you wrote a hagiography.
There’s way too much about what a swell guy and a great coach Bill Campbell was. We learn that he used the “F word” a lot, but it was okay because it was Bill. He hugged everyone, but it was okay because it was Bill. We’re told that he knew things “instinctively.” People took things from him they wouldn’t take from anybody else. There were too many phrases describing how Bill did something no one else can do.
“Of course, he was right.”
“Intuitive sense”
“Remarkable ability”
“Conversations with Bill were more nuanced than layered.”
“Bill’s genius”
T
hen, there’s my favorite. “With Bill, you close your eyes and it’s more about who he was.”
That may be true, but it’s distinctly unhelpful and it’s nothing like a “playbook.” If you can’t describe how he produced those remarkable results or developed that “remarkable ability,” you’re describing a magic trick.
The book would have been less of a hagiography and more helpful if there was more about times when Bill Campbell dealt with adversity.
There is something about how he supported Steve Jobs when Jobs was forced out of Apple. The authors could have used that to humanize Bill. We could have learned about his struggles at the time and how risky his stance was.
Another example. Bill was CEO at GO when the company was in its death spiral. That’s a failure story in one sense. The authors could have told it in some detail. It illustrates why people admired Bill Campbell, trusted him, and listened to him.
This wouldn’t be a hagiography if there was more about how Bill the football coach became Bill the Silicon Valley Wonder Coach. There’s plenty of ticking off achievements and admiring quotes, but precious little that humanizes the man.
The content of this book will work better for you if you are a Silicon Valley or high-tech CEO. The authors describe things that a middle manager often can't do. They blur the line between what a middle manager can do and what an external coach can do.
There are also some things in the book which step over the line from bad to ugly.
The Ugly
Some things made me uncomfortable. One of them was a tone throughout the book I call “Silicon Valley macho.” There’s a kind of repeating background beat of “We’re tough. We can handle this stuff.”
Bill Campbell liked to give “everyone” bear hugs. He used the “F word” and other colorful language a lot. The book seems to imply that it’s okay because Bill did it, and Bill was a great guy. There’s not a single note that I could find of anyone being uncomfortable when Bill did it.
People are less likely to object to a hug from a guy who is a great friend and coach of the CEO of their company. They may not like it, but they’re not real likely to speak up.
Full disclosure here. I don’t think that kind of language or that kind of behavior are appropriate in a business or professional setting. If that’s what it takes to be a great coach, I’ll pass.
Bottom Line
There are good leadership insights in Trillion Dollar Coach. Those insights, by themselves, make this book worth reading. I don’t think you’ll learn much about coaching, though.
A lot of the book describes Bill Campbell’s unique way of communicating. It might not work for you if you haven’t been a football coach and a Silicon Valley CEO. It’s dangerous to believe you can do it his way and succeed. Bill Campbell gave people insightful and helpful advice and he told the truth. If you can figure out how to do that in your own way you’ve learned something powerful indeed.