Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle. This is one of a few books that I recommend without hesitation to anyone. In addition, you do not need to be a manager to benefit from Bill’s coaching others to wild success.
Surprisingly Bill Campbell spent five years coaching football at Columbia. Then he coached many of the most successful technology teams driving innovation across Silicon Valley.
This book was written by three Google leaders in other words, based upon their coaching relationship with Bill over many years.
Eric Schmidt is the former Executive Chairman of Alphabet and ex-Google CEO. Jonathan Rosenberg was a Senior Vice President at Google. Today he is an advisor to the Alphabet management team. In addition, he ran the Google product team from 2002 to 2011. Alan Eagle is Director of Executive Communications at Google. He has been working at Google since 2007. As a result, all three grew as leaders via Bill’s wisdom.
Similarly Bill was a driving success for several prominent companies including Apple, and Intuit.
Bill’s relationships with Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and many more CEOs throughout the book reveal Bill’s coaching mantra.
Bill was truly a gifted individual who gave back many times over. You will certainly learn his character spoke volumes of the kind of person he was. Moreover Bill’s love of coaching all aspects of life is on full display in each chapter. He held such a rare gift that reading this book will easily inspire you. Above all, Bill’s focus was not on problems but rather helping teams tackle problems. Likewise, there are many lessons to be learned for many leaders.
Bill had a great spirit. How many people would have a funeral at a football stadium in order to hold all those who wished to their respect for Bill? Certainly having Bill’s Top 10 profanity-laced quotes printed on the backside of the speaker’s program handed out at the service was unique. It was pure Bill Campbell.
While an Apple engineer many years ago I had an opportunity to be in three meetings with Bill. One event was Apple’s WWDC while the annual sales conference was the setting for my other meetings. I can vividly recall many of my fellow engineers speaking highly of Bill. When Bill began running Claris, some of my fellow engineers were suggesting moving to our sister company just to be able to work for him.
London Business Forum | Eric Schmidt – Trillion Dollar Coach
Claremont McKenna College | Jonathan Rosenberg – Trillion Dollar Coach: Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley
How To Academy | Google’s Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle On Leadership
Computer History Museum | Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
Fortune Magazine | Remembering the Life and Career of Bill Campbell