Eric decided to step down as Alphabet’s executive chairman in December 2017, right around the time we were completing the first draft of this book. The timing was right. The company had successfully navigated a tricky transition from being just Google to being Alphabet, a holding company that oversees Google as well as a handful of burgeoning “other bets,” such as Verily (life sciences) and Waymo (transportation). A new generation of leaders, including CEO Sundar Pichai, had taken the helm at Google and the company was thriving. It had successfully made the transition to a mobile-first, and, in many places, mobile-only, world and had a pipeline brimming with innovative products and services, driven by exciting breakthroughs in machine learning technologies.
Eric had been with Google for nearly seventeen years. He became chairman of the board in March 2001. Then he joined full-time as CEO in August 2001 and moved from CEO to executive chairman in April 2011. Now his full-time engagement with the company was coming to an end. He was considered by any measure to be an accomplished, successful person. And yet, as he discovered, just like anyone who is faced by a challenge or change, he needed emotional support.
When Eric became Google’s CEO and when he moved to executive chairman, Bill Campbell was there to smooth the transitions. Bill talked to the individuals involved and made sure that the human, emotional side of things was being addressed. When the board asked Eric to step down as chairman before the IPO, Bill was there to talk him through it. As a result, when these changes were made, they weren’t just transactions—they ended up feeling right. This time, there was no Bill. The entire process felt different. There was general agreement on the next steps, but there was no one there to guide Eric through the process. The team got to the best outcome for all, but the process was more businesslike, lacking the love and affirmation that Bill would have added.
Mentorship and coaching are intensely personal. Eric knew what Bill would have been telling him, and he knew what to do, but he badly missed hearing him say it.
This may all seem somewhat silly to an outsider. After all, this was a change among powerful, successful executives, operating with lofty titles—CEO, executive chairman—that the vast majority of people will never hold. What could Eric, or anyone else in this rarefied realm, possibly have to worry about? Why does an Eric Schmidt need emotional support?
In fact, it is often the highest-performing people who feel the most alone. They usually have more interdependent relationships but feel more independent and separate from others.*1 Their powerful egos and confidence help drive their success but may be paired with insecurities and uncertainty. They often have people who want to be their friends for personal gain rather than for friendship. They’re human. They still need affirmation and to know they are appreciated. And when a human is stepping back from a place that has been part of his heart and soul for seventeen years, a place he helped to nurture and grow into something spectacular, a place he loves, he just might need a pat on the back, a big hug, and the assurance that everything is going to be okay, that there is a very exciting future out there. Which Bill was not there to deliver.
When we started the process of writing this book, we knew all about our own firsthand experiences of working with Bill, we knew how important he was to the success of Google, and we knew that he had worked with many other people throughout the valley. Through interviews with the people who knew and were coached by Bill, and through research into some of his principles, we learned so much more. A more detailed and complex model of his approach to management emerged, and we developed a thesis as to how critical his principles are to business success.
To be successful, companies need to have teams that work together as communities, where individuals integrate their interests and put aside differences to be individually and collectively obsessed with what’s good and right for the company. Since this doesn’t naturally happen among groups of people, especially high-performing, ambitious people, you need someone playing the role of a coach, a team coach, to make it happen. Any company that wants to succeed in a time where technology has suffused every industry and most aspects of consumer life, where speed and innovation are paramount, must have team coaching as part of its culture. This is especially true at its top levels; executive teams must have a coach if they want to perform at their best.
We were lucky to have a Bill Campbell acting as our team coach, but most teams aren’t so lucky, which is fine. Because the best person to be the team’s coach is the team’s manager. Being a good coach is essential to being a good manager and leader. Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach. 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. And an essential component of high-performing teams is a leader who is both a savvy manager and a caring coach.
In this book, we have explored how Bill approached his role as a coach of teams. He insisted on management excellence and hammered home the importance of simple practices that add up to a strong operation. He believed that managers who put their people first and run a strong operation are held as leaders by their employees; these managers don’t assume leadership, they earn it. He had a thoughtful and consistent approach to communications. He prized decisiveness; strong managers recognize when the time for debate is over and make a decision. He appreciated “aberrant geniuses,” those strong performers whose behavior can stray outside the norm, but also advocated moving on quickly if their behavior endangers the team. He believed that great products and the teams that create them are at the core of a great company. Everything else should be in service to that core. He knew that sometimes managers need to let people go, but they should also allow them to leave with their dignity intact.
He understood that relationships are built on trust, so he prioritized building trust and loyalty with the people he worked with. He listened completely, was relentlessly candid, and believed in his people more than they believed in themselves. He thought that the team was paramount, insisted on team-first behavior, and when faced with any issue his first step was to look at the team, not the problem. He sought out the biggest problems, the elephants in the room, and brought them front and center, ensuring they got looked at first. He worked behind the scenes, in hallway meetings, phone calls, and 1:1s, to fill communication gaps. He pushed leaders to lead, especially when things were bleak. He believed in diversity and in being completely yourself in the workplace.
He loved people. He brought that love to communities he created or joined. He made it okay to bring it into the workplace.
So we interviewed a bunch of people, we built a thesis, we enumerated Bill’s principles and supported them with quotes and stories. But we hadn’t really felt any of this until one of us, Eric, was faced with a major transition, and his coach wasn’t there to help.
Jonathan was walking his dog Bo with his wife, Beryl, on a December afternoon in 2017. He had gotten the email from Eric that morning letting him know that Eric was stepping down. While the news was disconcerting to Jonathan, he could sense that Eric’s uncertainty was even greater. He brought this up to Beryl. You have to help him, Beryl urged. Bo wagged in agreement.
Which made Jonathan wonder: If Bill were here, what would he do?
The answer was, Bill would have helped Eric figure out the best next steps for him. He would not have told Eric what to do; he would have helped him devise his own plan. He would have given him a hug and a pat on the back and reminded him just how great a job he had done at Google over the past seventeen years. He would have rallied a small community to surround Eric with the things he likes most—big ideas, new momentum, fascinating science, advanced technology. He would have done this with love and affirmation.
So that’s what Jonathan started to do. He spoke with Eric and with Jared Cohen, who runs Alphabet’s Jigsaw subsidiary and is a close friend of Eric’s. He brought in Alan Eagle, and they started to put together ideas and a plan for a project they eventually called “Eric 3.0.” But mostly, he cared and rallied others who cared to help out. Because through the journey of writing this book, the three of us have come to realize an essential truth about team coaching and how Bill did it.
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. That to create effective teams, you need to understand and pay attention to these human values. They are part of who we all are, regardless of our age, level, or status. Bill would get to know people as people, and by doing so he could motivate them to perform as businesspeople. He understood that positive human values generate positive business outcomes. This is a connection that too many business leaders ignore. Which is why we think it is so important that we all learn to do it now. It is counterintuitive in the business world, but essential to success.
Our small team gradually developed a plan for Eric’s next stage in his career. That there is a plan is important. That there is a team is paramount.
THE WHAT NEXT? DECISION
John Donahoe faced a situation somewhat similar to Eric’s when he stepped down as CEO of eBay in 2015: successful businessman, past age fifty, kids grown . . . What do you do next? John tackled this question by interviewing dozens of people who were older than him but had retained plenty of vitality, asking them how they had approached similar transitions and how they stayed engaged in their later-in-life careers. The answers:
BE CREATIVE. Your post-fifty years should be your most creative time. You have wisdom of experience and freedom to apply it where you want. Avoid metaphors such as you are on the “back nine.” This denigrates the impact you can have.
DON’T BE A DILETTANTE. Don’t just do a portfolio of things. Whatever you get involved with, have accountability and consequence. Drive it.
FIND PEOPLE WHO HAVE VITALITY. Surround yourself with them; engage with them. Often they will be younger.
APPLY YOUR GIFTS. Figure out what you are uniquely good at, what sets you apart. And understand the things inside you that give you a sense of purpose. Then apply them.
DON’T WASTE TIME WORRYING ABOUT THE FUTURE. Allow serendipity to play a role. Most of the turning points in life cannot be predicted or controlled.
Bill usually did not take compensation for his work as a coach. When he first showed up at Dan Rosensweig’s office, he told Dan, “I don’t take cash, I don’t take stock, and I don’t take shit.” He repeatedly declined offers of compensation for his work at Google, and when he finally accepted some stock, he donated it all to charity. This is not normal; most advisors to companies get paid in stock or cash. But Bill felt he had been amply compensated throughout his business career, and now he wanted to give back. As he told Ron Johnson, CEO of Enjoy, after Ron had stepped down from his CEO job at JCPenney in 2013, “If you’ve been blessed, be a blessing.” Bill was a blessing.
When asked about his habit of eschewing compensation, Bill would say that he had a different way of measuring his impact, his own kind of yardstick. I look at all the people who’ve worked for me or who I’ve helped in some way, he would say, and I count up how many are great leaders now. That’s how I measure success.
We interviewed more than eighty great leaders in working on this book, all of whom credit Bill with playing a major role in their success, and there are more we missed. Bill’s yardstick is looking pretty good.
We hope that in reading this book you have picked up some principles on how to be a better manager and coach. We hope that you are thinking about how to make your team great, and how you can propel yourself to be great, to go beyond your self-imposed limits. We hope that you will become another leader on Bill’s yardstick. Because the world faces many challenges, and they can only be solved by teams. Those teams need coaches.