What's most remarkable about Bill Campbell's story is that the more you read about him, the more you'll see opportunities every day for becoming more like him. There are small choices, like treating everyone you meet with dignity and respect. And there are bigger commitments, like taking the time to show a sincere interest in the lives of your team-to the point of remembering where their kids go to school.

I have often lamented that every bookstore has a self help section, but there isn’t help-others section.

We called him Coach, but we also called him friend, and in this we were like pretty much everyone around us. In fact, as we later found out, many of the people in the audience that day, an audience that numbered well over a thousand people, considered Bill to be their best friend.

People are the foundation of any company's success.

The primary job of each manager is to help people be more effective in their job and to grow and develop. We have great people who want to do well, are capable of doing great things, and come to work fired up to do them.

Great people flourish in an environment that liberates and amplifies that energy. Managers create this environment through support, respect, and trust.

Ronnie Lott says, when talking about two coaches he worked closely with, Bill Walsh and Bill Campbell: “Great coaches lie awake at night thinking about how to make you better. They relish creating an environment where you get more out of yourself. Coaches are like great artists getting the stroke exactly right on a painting. They are painting relationships.

Most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they are going to make someone else better. But that's what coaches do. It's what Bill Campbell did, he just did it on a different field."

"What keeps you up at night?" is a traditional question asked of executives. For Bill the answer was always the same: the well-being and success of his people

Bill and his management team had decided on a particular strategy, but when Bill presented the strategy at the board meeting, his CFO, who had been on board with the plan, proclaimed that he didn't agree with Bill. After the meeting, Bill asked the CFO to not come back. Even if he didn't agree with the decision, he needed to commit to it. If he couldn't, then he was no longer a member of the team.

For a great many people, the money is about the money.

But it's also about something else. Compensation isn't just about the economic value of the money; it's about the emotional value. It's a signaling device for recognition, respect, and status, and it ties people strongly to the goals of the company. Bill knew that everyone is human and needs to be appreciated, including people who are already financially secure. This is why the superstar athlete who is worth tens or hundreds of millions pushes for that next huge contract. It's not for the money; it's for the love.

They chatted with several software engineers that night, and most of the responses were similar. These engineers liked being managed, as long as their manager was someone from whom they could learn something, and someone who helped make decisions.

To Bill, being an executive of a successful company is all about management, about creating operational excellence.

As a manager and CEO, Bill was very good at making sure his teams delivered. He brought people together and created a strong team culture, but never lost sight of the fact that results mattered, and that they were a direct result of good management.

"You have to think about how you're going to run a meeting," he told a group of Googlers in a management seminar. "How you're going to run an operations review.

You've got to be able to look at someone in a one-on-one and know how to help them course correct. People who are successful run their companies well. They have good processes, they make sure their people are accountable, they know how to hire great people, how to evaluate them and give them feedback, and they pay them well."

Firing people (terminating someone for performance is sues) demands a similar level of respect. It has to be done sometimes, and it's tough. Bill would tell us, "When you fire someone, you feel terrible for about a day, then you say to yourself that you should have done it sooner.

No one ever succeeds at their third chance." If you've ever had the crappy task of firing someone, and you think back on that experience, you will realize that this is absolutely correct. But again, you must let people leave with their heads held high.

As Bill once told Ben Horowitz about a departing executive: "Ben, you cannot let him keep his job, but you absolutely can let him keep his respect