“Enjoy it when and as you can. It passes as quick as spark to flame.”
K. B. Wagers in A Pale Light in the Black
Archives for September 2023
Highlight from ‘The Big Break’ by Ben Terris
Adam Green, the founder of a progressive grassroots organization, told me. “When nobody is the most important person in the room, everyone who enters the room gains power and the convener gains influence,” he said.
Ben Terris in The Big Break
Highlight from ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
another word for tension is politics. When you hear people saying that things are getting “political,” that often means that problems have arisen because the data or process hasn’t led to the best decision.
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle in Trillion Dollar Coach
Highlight from ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
Bill looked for four characteristics in people. The person has to be smart, not necessarily academically but more from the standpoint of being able to get up to speed quickly in different areas and then make connections. Bill called this the ability to make “far analogies.” The person has to work hard, and has to have high integrity. Finally, the person should have that hard-to-define characteristic: grit. The ability to get knocked down and have the passion and perseverance to get up and go at it again.
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle in Trillion Dollar Coach
Highlight from ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
As managers, we tend to focus on the problem at hand. What is the situation? What are the issues? What are the options? And so on. These are valid questions, but the coach’s instinct is to lead with a more fundamental one. Who was working on the problem? Was the right team in place? Did they have what they needed to succeed? “When I became CEO of Google,” Sundar Pichai says, “Bill advised me that at that level, more than ever before, you need to bet on people. Choose your team. Think much harder about that.”
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle in Trillion Dollar Coach
Highlight from ‘Trillion Dollar Coach’ by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
it’s a manager’s job to push the team to be more courageous. Courage is hard. People are naturally afraid of taking risks for fear of failure. It’s the manager’s job to push them past their reticence. Shona Brown, a longtime Google executive, calls it being an “evangelist for courage.”
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle in Trillion Dollar Coach