This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Trillion Dollar Coach" by Bill Campbell. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Are you looking for Bill Campbell quotes from Trillion Dollar Coach? How do these quotes echo the lessons of the Coach?
Trillion Dollar Coach highlights the key principles Bill Campbell shared as a coach. These Bill Campbell quotes highlight some of the main points of his management philosophy.
Read on for three great Bill Campbell quotes.
Bill Campbell Quotes
“The path to success in a fast-moving, highly competitive, technology-driven business world is to form high-performing teams and give them the resources and freedom to do great things.”
The first of the Bill Campbell quotes identifies one of his key principles. When faced with a problem, the first step is to ensure the right team or individual is handling it. On the football field or basketball court, if you’ve got the wrong player in the wrong position, the team can’t win. Campbell’s motto was “work the team, not the problem.” Business leaders don’t need to be overly concerned about a problem’s nitty-gritty details as long as they have the right individual or team in place to solve the problem.
Example: In 2010, Steve Jobs of Apple believed that Google’s Android operating system was violating Apple’s iPhone patents. Apple sued the Android phone manufacturers, who were Google’s business partners. Even though Campbell was friends with players at both Apple and Google, he didn’t get involved in solving the conflict. Instead, he focused on putting the right player into action. He told Google’s CEO to utilize engineering chief Alan Eustace to negotiate with Apple. Eustace had the best skillset for the job. Because he was an engineer, he was able to get the engineers on both sides to talk to each other.
(Shortform note: Eustace achieved much greater fame in October 2014 by jumping from a helium-filled balloon floating in the stratosphere. He holds the world’s highest freefall record at 135,899 feet.)
“The purpose of a company is to bring a product vision to life. All the other components are in service to product.”
The second of the Bill Campbell quotes is about the focus of a company. Creating innovative products or services should be the company’s primary goal. Campbell believed since this was the core of the company mission, engineers should take the lead in decision-making. Not every creator is an aberrant genius; some are just hardworking engineers or designers who make daily efforts at innovation, and they need latitude to do so. The people who work in sales, marketing, and finance can supply useful information about what customer problems need to be fixed and what opportunities they see, but they should never tell the product teams what exactly to build. Workers who are developing new products should always be given a certain amount of company clout and freedom to create.
“Leadership is about recognizing that there’s a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge.”
The third of the Bill Campbell quotes identifies the goal of leadership. Campbell’s coaching can be distilled into a simple equation: Humanity and compassion in the workplace equals happy employees, and happy employees are more productive. Campbell built his business principles around two main themes: 1) create and maintain strong teams; and 2) bring love and compassion into the workplace.
One of Campbell’s most often-repeated lines was “positive human values generate positive business outcomes.” Team members who feel genuinely listened to, respected, and cared for will work harder, innovate more, and feel happier and more fulfilled in their jobs.
Campbell coached executives on how to nurture their employees so they could grow and develop into the best version of themselves. He believed a leader’s or manager’s primary role was to help his or her employees succeed. In Campbell’s view, running a successful business was not much different than winning at sports. His approach centered on teamwork—he sought to maximize the performance of teams, not individuals. He insisted the only way to thrive in the cutthroat tech business was to build high-performing teams, then install a team leader who was both a caring coach and a strong operations manager.
These three Bill Campbell quotes have all covered important pieces of Campbell’s management philosophy.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Trillion Dollar Coach summary :
- How Bill Campbell went from football coach to tech coach
- The 4 pillars of Campbell's leadership philosophy
- How the King Arthur Round Table model for making decisions empowers employees
