A former football coach behind the scenes, a respectable and trustworthy mentor, an idea that influenced most men in Silicon Valley.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Silicon Valley Plus Mr.” (ID: Guigujiaxiansheng), author garnett ge.
传奇
In 2001, when Eric Schmidt became Google’s CEO, he was quickly irritated by the advice of investor John Doerr: Why is it the former Novell CEO? In the late 1980s, once dominated the personal computer operating system), the former Sun Microsystems CTO (established four years in the market, one of the world’s best languages, the inventor of Java, the most important web server in the Internet bubble era, 30% revenue in 10 years) The growth record creator needs to be guided by a former football coach?
Prior to this, Schmidt did not hear the name of Bill Campbell: When he was working at Sun, he was fascinated by the 1984 advertisement of the immortal Apple. In the tide of Internet competition in the 1990s, he I have touched the 39-year-old former Intuit (the product is the well-known US tax filing software TurboTax) CEO who left the Columbia football team – just four years ago, when Jobs returned to Apple, he also named Bill as a board member and became Jobs in Apple. The building will turn its back to the right arm.
Even so, the proud Schmidt is still full of enthusiasm: he does not think that he will fall to the point where he needs to teach himself how to run the company. In the turbulent 2001, his story has been written on the honor wall of his alma mater Princeton and Berkeley, written in the most brilliant 14 years of SUN’s glory to the CTO since 1983, written in software. The bells of the grams and the sunshine of the Silicon Valley.
On the courtesy, Schmidt and Bill met once.
This view is 15 years.
In 15 years, Google has grown from a small company that has never been seen to a technology giant, and has led the way in changing the history of mobile Internet and unmanned vehicles. Bill’s disciples also occupy half of Silicon Valley: former eBay CEO John Donahoe, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, A16Z founder Ben Horowitz, now Google CEO Sundar Pichai, formerTwitter CEO Dick Costolo, former Stanford president John Hennessy, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and many more.
When Bill died in 2016, most of Silicon Valley was in grief. The three authors of the book wrote in Bill’s book, Trillion Dollar Coach, that “Bill has been our behind-the-scenes hero on Google’s path to becoming the world’s most valuable and branded company. Without him, maybe there is no Everything about Google.”
A great enough journey
One day in January 2002, Jonathan Rosenberg, then senior vice president of @Home, came to the Google office with confidence and prepared for the start of his next career.
What is surprising is that there is only one old man waiting for him in the conference room. As soon as I entered the door, the old man looked at him and said that I discussed your background with the @Home co-founder. I exchanged your hard work with the first CEO of @Home. I and Google investor John Dour thought about your ability. – They said that you work hard and say that you are smart. I don’t care about any of them, I only care if you can be trained.
Are you, can you?
The future senior vice president of Google, which is in charge of search, advertising, email, Android, APP, browser and other core products, will be evaluated by the US media in the future and Rosenberg, who is closely related to Gates, Jobs, and Ballmer. Without hesitation, it depends on the tutor.
Without hesitation, Bill left the seat and the interview was over.
Can’t help but scream at Rosenberg’s pleading, Bill returned to his seat. “What do you want from the mentor?”
Electrical Flint, Rosenberger quoted perhaps the most important words of his life. “The mentor is the one who tells you to listen and ignore, sees you turn a blind eye and helps you truly become yourself.”
This sentence made him start a great enough journey.
Bill’s choice is not only among the top executives, but also among the entrepreneurs who have aspirations to change the world.
One day in 2000, Bill received a special mission. Amazon’s board of thoughts think of the CEO of overhead CEO Jeff Bezos and the promotion of COO as CEO. This kind of operation is very effective in the venture capital circle and even in some cases: Musk expelled the Tesla founding team, Google invited Schmidt to join the alliance, and Bill became the CEO of Intuit, which is of great benefit to the company’s development.
Of course, the failed cases are too numerous to mention: Apple’s board of directors fired Jobs, Cisco’s board of directors expelled the founding team, easy to sell after the redemption failed, and countless founders after the market cleared. Have made such a key decisionLight and heavy.
After several weeks of investigation, from participating in management meetings to observing employee work, Bill wrote in the report, “COO has unusual enthusiasm for things like salary and private jets, and employees love from the heart. Bezos.”
As a board of directors expelling Jobs and Steve Jobs from Apple’s experience, Bill pays homage to entrepreneurs who have the courage to fight their own world: they can humble themselves to the dust every day, or they can be crazy to believe that they will change the world.
The book says that Bill’s criteria for screening disciples are simple and straightforward: smart, hardworking, upright, and persevering.
Simple and straightforward style
Every two weeks, Bill and the disciples meet individually to discuss the company’s development and challenges. He used a method called Top5 Priority, which asked the disciples to talk about the five most important things involved in their half-month.
After listening quietly, it is a series of questions on the theme of sharp and straightforward theme: What are the main points of work in the past two weeks? What is the specific progress? What kind of help do you need? Does the team know where to go? How is the execution? Do you know the progress of your work? Does the company have enough time to innovate? Does the company effectively balance the relationship between innovation and execution?
For the disciples, Bill is always the one who directly raises and tries to solve the core problem. From product release to board conflicts, from company competition to personnel appointment and dismissal.
Jes Rogers, founder of Altamont Capital, who now manages $25 billion in assets, consulted Bill many times at the start of his career and sent Bill a new company website a few weeks after his startup. A few minutes later, Bill’s phone chased it.
Looking forward to Bill’s praise and encouragement, Rutger picked up the phone. “The website is like SHI!” Bill snarled on the other end of the phone. Then there is a 2-minute course that expresses the disappointment of the site and emphasizes its importance in Silicon Valley. Rutgers said that Bill’s nature is constantly challenging the limits of the disciples on their own path, and that Rutgers most appreciates the aggression and tenacity of Bill in giving his opinion.
Not just Rutgers, almost all of Bill’s disciples love Bill’s honesty, transparency and directness. The US version of the homework helped Chegg develop a critical moment, and CEO Dan Rosensweig successfully secured the board. Although it has not been greatly developed, but at least not fragmented, the company behind the board of directors has stabilized a lot more than the situation before the meeting. Rosenweig and the team entered the celebration mode.
Bill said hello to Rosenweig after he greeted him with the company. “Congratulations, you managed to save the company. Now you are the most successful CEO in Silicon Valley.”
The instructor looked at him. “But this is not the original intention of joining the company, right?”
Bill’s words are like a slap in the face of Rosenweig’s face. It hurts. Rosenweig found himself solving a problem, but there are countless problems waiting for him. He had to admit that Bill’s frankness and straightforwardness were as cold and effective as reality.
Google’s board member and former Amazon director Ram Shriram said, “Bill’s style is directly transparent, he doesn’t hide his thoughts, his words are always punctuating reality.” The blunt expression of his point is Bill’s affairs and disciples. The way to value. He knows that those leaders who are determined to change the world need a solid solution, rather than exaggerated praise.
Thinking about Silicon Valley
In addition to successfully leading Intuit to dominate the tax reporting software and helping Apple to make a comeback, Bill’s work experience also covers the intellectual madman’s golden age of JWT, the once-traditional traditional enterprise Kodak and the entrepreneurial failure of GO. His thoughts on people and businesses have indirectly influenced most of Silicon Valley through disciples:
Talent is the foundation of everything. The primary goal of managers is to help their subordinates improve their work efficiency and achieve personal growth. Good people are very self-motivated, and what managers need to do is to support, respect and trust them.
Support means giving talent tools, information, training and guidance, which means investing in talent growth; respect means understanding the unique career aspirations of talents and respecting their life choices, which means that they are consistent with the company. Help them to pursue and achieve goals; trust means giving people the freedom and decision-making power of work, which means understanding the pursuit and value of talents.
Based on the above theory, we treat employees well in the scope of the company’s ability (the money represents not only the money itself, but the recognition of the value created by people), and builds a culture of innovation-oriented (innovation is the passion of employees to achieve life) The ultimate manifestation of meaning) and other methods of driving manpower in the Silicon Valley.
Rosenberg, who was responsible for Google’s multiple product lines, said that the most impressive thing he learned from Bill was that “titles make you a manager, and talent makes you a leader” (Your tittle make you a manager, you people make you a Leader).”
The meaning of the company is to integrate the vision of the future into the product and achieve it in reality (The Purpose of a company is to bring a product vision to life). With products as the core, the company creates a series of auxiliary elements such as finance, sales and marketing. When Bill was the CEO of Intuit, he once said to the PM, if you dare to slap on the product team, I will throw you on the street. You only need to do three things: 1. Communicate the problems faced by the customer, 2. ClarifyCustomer user portrait, 3. Wait for the product team to tell you how to improve the product. What you really have to do is to work closely with other departments to give the product team a real space to think.
Biel believes that the ultimate goal of the product team is to put the right product into the target market at the right time and in the right way. To achieve this goal, there is no deep and thorough independent thinking and effective market judgment is undoubtedly a fantasy.
Apple’s board member Ron Sugar said, “Bill lets me know critical thinking and explore the meaning of the unknown, which is an incomparable advantage for Apple, which allows us to embrace the future better.”
In this way, Bill put himself in the experience of Intuit and Apple, Kodak and GO, Columbia and JWT, successful failure, proud frustration, and confessed to the disciples. This has affected Silicon Valley’s Rising Sun’s people-oriented and technology-oriented technology culture, and has also driven great innovations from generation to generation.
Save Google’s dark moments
Either an ambitious entrepreneur or a CEO who is in charge of killing power, there are still many challenges on the road to becoming a qualified leader: how to properly open the board? How to deal with the relationship between each director? How to balance and balance your energy and time? How to determine your own work focus? How to dismiss employees? How to define company culture?
But the core question is: Who is the one I can trust and can advise me openly and honestly? Why is he? Why can I trust him?
Bill’s style of building trust is unique: he motivates disciples like a rugby player, and he knows the importance of building trust and team in this way. This kind of trust made Google not fall apart in the early days. Such trust made the team become the driving force for the company’s development. Such trust made Google one of the greatest companies in the world.
Maybe Google’s dark moments appeared before the listing in 2004. Perhaps because of the annoyance of setting up AB shares, perhaps it feels that Schmidt and the founding team are too close, the Google board made an important decision: to expel the chairman of Schmidt’s board of directors. He is still the CEO of Google, but the board of directors needs to ask for another clever.
Proud Schmidt was completely irritated: Google, who led only 200 people when he joined, made a big leap forward in three years, not only out of the shadow of the Internet bubble, but also headed for the bright future of Nasdaq. Now, in order to challenge the problems of the forest, do you want to expel me?
Schmidt called Bill, I think it was time for me to say goodbye to Google.
At that moment, Bill knew that he would play a pivotal role in Google’s history: the team that he personally built and the greatest in history is about to fall apart, and he may be the only one who can save the crisis. He knows the importance of the team and the emotions and pride of the deeply injured Schmidt.
He knows that Schmidt is needed for both the Google IPO and the future development of the team. “Now is not a time of vindictiveness,” he said in his reply the next day. “Your team needs you. Your pride and dignity are obstacles to the success of the company and a stumbling block to your own success. Believe me, in the near future, I will help you get back to the position of Chairman of the Google Board of Directors, and you will be stronger at that time.”
For three years of tacit understanding and trust, Schmidt accepted Bill’s advice. Three years later, he was re-elected as chairman of the board. After a few more years, Schmidt was promoted to executive chairman of Google. This position, he has been retained until the end of Google’s career in 2018.
At that time, the person who asked him to remain calm at the critical moment of his career, gave him 15 years of teaching, and could unconditionally trust, has passed away.
Journey without an end point
In the two years after Bill’s death, the three authors rushed for Bill’s story. They interviewed dozens of Bill’s disciples. They compiled Bill’s ideas into books. They searched for Bill’s principles of life. Support and story background.
They recognize that Bill is different: first-rate listeners, insightful thinkers, former CEOs of listed companies, behind-the-scenes heroes of 1984 advertising, savage saviors, grumpy players, relaxed and happy masters The owner of the legendary bar, the ritual-filled old cannon, the builder of the community culture, and the former rugby coach who only swears to male disciples.
There is nothing wrong with it, Bill has a rich experience and a unique personality charm. One day after Bill’s death, the authors truly realized the great value that Bill had brought to them: unreserved trust and deep love.
Like many good CEOs, Schmidt and Loneliness go hand in hand. On those nights when nights can’t be stunned, at the juncture of major decisions, Schmidt knows that he has a person who can always be trusted. That is his mentor, his close friend, who told him to listen, and saw him turn a blind eye to help him truly become himself. People.
After a year after Bill’s death, when Schmidt once again faced a turning point in life, no one could give him the same support as Bill. He no longer had a mentor and was no longer far from loneliness.
Rosenberg, another author of the book, received the news and an idea jumped into his mind: What would Bill do?
Bill will help Schmidt find the next journey of life; Bill will help Schmidt make plans for the future; Bill will give Schmidt a hard hug, or pat his shoulders, praising the past 17 years at Google. Achievements; Bill will organize a party filled with Schmidt’s love of things: changing the world’s dreams, future-oriented milestones, fascinating science, world-leading technology… Bill will tell Schmidt himself and the world with trust and love His expectations.
So this is also later Rosenberg, once was