In those very, very early days you want people who are there for the mission above all. You’re looking for passion, enthusiasm, and mindset. And you’re looking for seed crystals. Seed crystals are people who are so good and so well loved that they can almost single-handedly build large parts of your org. Typically they’re experienced leaders, either managers of large teams or super-ICs who everyone listens to. Once they’re in, a tidal wave of other awesome people will typically follow.

That’s how we built our core team at Nest. We sought out the best of the best, and they created their own gravity—pulling in more and more talent.

I remember looking around the office in those early days with my mentor, the gritty, boisterous, wise Bill Campbell. We stood there just grinning.

I first met Bill when he was on the board of directors at Apple. I got in touch again when I needed help as I was starting Nest. I remember he looked directly into my eyes with a dead stare, watching for any microexpressions, and asked, “Are you coachable?” Which meant, “Will you listen? Are you ready to learn?” That was the only qualification you needed to be coached by Bill—the ability to admit that you don’t know everything. That you’re going to screw up. And that you’re ready to learn from those screwups, listen to advice, and act on it.

When Larry told me during acquisition that Google would marshal the team and align their priorities with ours, he was 100 percent telling the truth. But what that looked like at Google was giving the team the skeleton of a plan and letting them fill in the rest as they went. Then they’d have a meeting every so often to ask how things were going.

But I had interpreted his words through an Apple lens. If Steve Jobs said he was going to marshal the team, that meant he was going to be there every step of the way—weekly, sometimes daily. He’d assemble everyone, tell them where to go, make sure they were marching together, and drag any stragglers back in place by sheer force of will.

IT’S THE PEOPLE: 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.

Support means giving people the tools, information, training, and coaching they need to succeed. It means continuous effort to develop people’s skills. Great managers help people excel and grow.

Respect means understanding people’s unique career goals and being sensitive to their life choices. It means helping people achieve these career goals in a way that’s consistent with the needs of the company.

Trust means freeing people to do their jobs and to make decisions. It means knowing people want to do well and believing that they will. - Bill Campbell’s mantra

...Bill always reminded us that managing these people is one of the bigger challenges of the job. He called them “aberrant geniuses,” and said, “You get these quirky guys or women who are going to be great differentiators for you. It is your job to manage that person in a way that doesn’t disrupt the company. They have to be able to work with other people. If they can’t, you need to let them go. They need to work in an environment where they collaborate with other people.

Leadership is not about you, it’s about service to something bigger: the company, the team. Bill believed that good leaders grow over time, that leadership accrues to them from their teams.