Just finished reading Trillion Dollar Coach written by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle. The trillion dollar coach they are referring to is former Columbia football coach, Bill Campbell…
Yet, it’s not exactly what you would think. This isn’t a success story about the college football coach that took over a struggling football program and led them to national prominence… Quite the opposite actually.
Bill Campbell has a relatively unremarkable and short lived tenure at Columbia, but what he did have was an ethics and value system in place that arguably made him one of the greatest coaches in any sport and any industry.
After Columbia, Bill humbly headed west, got into sales and found a career home in the computer software industry… Campbell went on to become the VP of marketing at Apple and the CEO for Claris, Intuit and Go Corporation…
That’s cool, former football coach done pretty good, right?
Not even close, This dude took his unique skill set and became the ultimate conduit between the hard working eccentric engineer types and tough love executives. As Campbell’s career progressed, his natural demeanor and knowledge of the industry led him to become the most famous and influential “executive coach”… EVER.
Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Sundar Pichai at Google, Steve Jobs at Apple, Brad Smith at Intuit, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, John Donahoe at eBay, Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Dick Costolo at Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook we’re just a few of the many eye popping names listed on Wikipedia that Bill worked with.
In this day and age where artificial intelligence is taking over the world, Bill taught us that there is not a computer program in the world that can replace true and authentic human interaction and communication that will help maximize individual performance resulting in monumental team gains.
The beautiful part about Bill was that he was a no nonsense football coach that somehow randomly found himself at the forefront of the technological revolution in the middle of Silicon Valley, and he had an overwhelming influence on the world far greater than if he had gone on to win multiple Super Bowls…
Sometimes in life, we think we find our calling (our Ikigai), yet in reality, it’s our ikigai that finds us… So long as we remain authentic and open to what the world brings, just like Bill, we’ll capitalize on life opportunities and bring the world what it needs.
Bill didn’t do this sitting behind a computer screen and by being a hermit. He did this by developing relationships and dedicating his life to figuring out what’s best for the team…
Not him.
-EB