Barbell Strategy - Bill Campbell Edition
I was listening to a podcast by Tim Ferriss. Tim interviewed the a16z founder, Ben Horowitz. Ben is on a podcast tour to promote his newly published book. The book is about culture and why entrepreneurs should think about and work on it in their companies. It sounded like a good book. I will add it my queue and warm there. I don’t think I have an appetite for business-related non-fiction right now. Unless until someone recommends it really hard, I will not move it up the queue.
Ben speaks highly of Bill Campbell. Bill was a legendary coach and mentor in Silicon Valley. There is a new book about Bill Campbell written by Google’s ex-CEO Eric Schmidt, that is also in my queue.
I reminded of an instance that Ben Horowitz wrote during the death of Bill Campbell. Bill was Ben’s mentor and coach. Ben was narrating an incident from his. His 20+ yo son identified himself as a sexually non-binary person. Ben’s son was planning to inject himself with a lot of hormones for a sex change. Ben was clearly sad and he took solace in narrating this to Bill. Bill didn’t offer any advice or tip to manage this. But he listened actively to Ben, had tears in his eye and gave a big hug. Then he uttered the word, it is very tough to be in his situation.
I don’t know with Bill Campbell offered any advice or tips. It didn’t matter to me. But that moment of actively listening to someone, empathising their position and feeling for them genuinely is a rare skill. I really appreciated Bill Campbell’s ability for listening beyond the words and looking through someone’s heart directly.
But the barbell strategy lens reminded me of another instance too.
To set more context about Bill Campbell, everyone says he has been a legend in Silicon Valley. He was the CEO of Intuit. He was a close friend of Steve Jobs. He mentored people like Sheryl Sandberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and a ton. He doesn’t take money or stake in any company to do his coaching. But everyone regards him highly.
I also read the book by Nick Bilton called Hatching Twitter. It is the founding story of Twitter. You get to know a lot about Ev Williams, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and a bunch of others. The book is like a tabloidy, gossipy one. But it is interesting. Nick Bilton is an opinionated guy. Nick has strong words against Jack and genuinely empathetic towards Ev. Frankly, my respect for Ev Williams went really high after reading this book.
Ev was also mentored by Bill Campbell. But Nick writes that Bill spoke to Ev really well and meant good to him. But behind Ev’s back, Bill really bitched about him to the board and felt he was incapable. I know that these stories are like Chinese whispers. There may be only an iota of truth. But still, that is extremely important.
When Ben Horowitz is portraying Bill as a hero and singing praises about him, we need to understand the point of view from Ev Williams too. If we are looking to get a whole picture of Bill Campbell. Ev’s comment could be in the other extreme. Ben’s comment should be kept in the other extreme. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, for someone who is interested in Bill Campbell.