THE GOOGLE COACH

One day in 2001 a local startup, run by a couple of brash kids from Stanford, decided to bring in a “professional” CEO: Eric Schmidt. Eric built the software operations at Sun Microsystems and served as CEO and chairman at Novell. John Doerr advised Eric that he needed Bill Campbell as his coach. Eric had met Bill when Sun CEO Scott McNealy tried to hire him and was impressed with his accomplishments and energy.

Once, when Bill came into the Sun offices for a meeting, he remarked that he had just returned from a one-day trip to Japan! This made a huge impression on Eric. But still, Eric was a rightfully proud man and Doerr’s suggestion offended him. By that time, Eric was already a big deal: CEO of Novell, former CTO of Sun, MS and PhD in computer science from Cal, and BS from Princeton. That’s a lot of letters; what could this gruff guy from Pennsylvania—an ex-football coach!—have to teach him? A lot, it turns out.

In less than a year, Eric’s self-review showed how much he had come around: “Bill Campbell has been very helpful in coaching all of us,” he wrote. “In hindsight, his role was needed from the beginning. I should have encouraged this structure sooner, ideally the moment I started at Google.”

For fifteen years, Bill met with Eric just about every week. And not only Eric: Bill became a coach to Jonathan, Larry Page, and several other Google leaders. He attended Eric’s staff meeting every week and was a frequent presence on the company’s Mountain View, California, campus (which, conveniently, was a stone’s throw from the Intuit campus, where Bill was still chairman). For those fifteen years, Bill’s counsel was deeply influential. It’s not that he told us what to do—far from it.

If Bill had opinions about product and strategy, he usually kept them to himself. But he made sure the team was communicating, that tensions and disagreements were brought to the surface and discussed, so that when the big decisions were made, everyone was on board, whether they agreed or not. 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. Which would be enough for just about anyone, but not Bill.

While he was working with Google’s senior team and with Steve Jobs at Apple, he was also helping so many more. He coached Brad Smith, former CEO of Intuit. He coached John Donahoe, former CEO of eBay. He coached former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. He coached Dick Costolo,former CEO of Twitter.

He coached Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard. He coached Donna Dubinsky, CEO of Numenta. He coached Nirav Tolia, CEO of Nextdoor. He coached Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University. He coached Shellye Archambeau, former CEO of MetricStream.

He coached Ben Horowitz, partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He coached the boys and girls flag football teams at Sacred Heart. He coached Bill Gurley, general partner at venture capital firm Benchmark. He coached NFL Hall of Famer Ronnie Lott.

He coached Danny Shader, CEO of Handle Financial. He coached Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. He coached Dan Rosensweig, CEO of Chegg. He coached Charlie Batch, fellow Homestead native and former quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

He coached Jesse Rogers, managing director of Altamont Capital Partners. He coached John Hennessy, former president of Stanford University. He coached Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook.

(From Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, Book by Alan Eagle, Eric Schmidt, and Jonathan Rosenberg)

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