Silicon Valley legend Bill Campbell – leadership advice

Bill Campbell, widely known in Silicon Valley as „The Coach,“ died on Tuesday after a long battle with cancer.

Before entering the tech industry, Campbell served as head football coach at Columbia University and maintained a pep-talk approach when dealing with executives. Campbell’s illustrious career included a stint as an Apple executive and board member, and he served as CEO and chairman of Intuit.


As Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Randy Komisar said in an episode of his „Ventured“ podcast, Campbell’s executive-coaching style was akin to that of a psychiatrist, asking the right questions to steer his subjects to their own conclusions rather than giving mandates.

Campbell preferred to stay out of the spotlight, but we’ve collected some of his best leadership advice from relatively recent interviews.



Campbell was adamant that the greatest marketing in the world was useless if it didn’t advertise an excellent product. It’s why he was a fierce advocate for granting engineers creative freedom.

Source: Intuit

Trust your managers, and make sure they trust their subordinates


Source: Intuit

Experiment, but never at the cost of your existing business


Source: Intuit

Spend your days doing, not planning

„Writing a list of things and checking dates and all that, that’s a bunch of bulls—, you can take the last 10 minutes of your day and do that,“ he said.


Source: Intuit

Your company must have unifying product principles


„That’s what Apple does brilliantly,“ Campbell said. „Everyone knows where the design principles are trending.“

Source: Intuit

It is imperative that you stop infighting as soon as it arises

Campbell said that internal warfare „brings companies to their knees“ and that it is the CEO’s job to end tensions immediately. He said that Apple under CEO John Sculley, before Steve Jobs was brought back in to lead his company, was marked by turf wars and power grabs.

„The political problem just goes down through the organization,“ Campbell said. „Everybody’s paralyzed by the fighting that top executives have, all the time.“


Source: Intuit

Determine cultural values from the outset and then model them


Source: „Venture“ podcast

Evaluate your managers by what their employees think of them

Regularly survey your employees to ensure that their managers are upholding the company’s values and guiding, rather than interfering with, their work.

Source: „Venture“ podcast

Maintain a culture of respect


For example, he said, „Larry Page takes great, great pride in making sure that [executives he hires] are humble about what they do.“

If someone continuously disrespects their colleagues to the point where they feel their opinions aren’t heard, then that person needs to be let go.

Source: „Venture“ podcast

Be honest with your team



Source: Fortune


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