Eric Nehrlich on the Art of Executive Coaching and Forecasting
Commonplace Expertise
How I Learned to Read a Balance Sheet
The former Google CFO talks about how he got his start in the tech industry. He started out as a quantitative analyst before learning to read balance sheets and forecasting revenue. The job was "a trial by fire but I learned so much," says John Defterios, who now works for an investment firm.
Eric Nehrlich is an executive coach, and was formerly the chief of staff on the Google Search Ads team. Before becoming chief of staff, Eric was part of the team that got Google's revenue forecasting down from an error rate of 10-20% to an error rate of around 0.5%. We open up with some wild stories of Google's early attempts at revenue forecasting, and then dig into how that forecasting success happened. Along the way, Eric explains how he, his boss, and his team developed a fingertip feel for variation in data.
We then switch gears to talk about Eric's coaching practice. We discuss the differences between mentorship and coaching, and talk about the tricky art of helping leaders grow their impact. Eric has a wealth of knowledge on coming up with small experiments in order to make personal growth easier. We talk about how he comes up with those experiments, and what some of those experiments look like in practice.
Finally, we close with a chat about Eric's upcoming book.
- Eric's Executive Coaching practice: https://www.toomanytrees.com/
- Eric's upcoming book is named You Have a Choice, and you may sign up for updates here: https://www.toomanytrees.com/book
- Eric's LinkedIn (where he posts insights every week): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehrlich
- Eric's blog: https://www.nehrlich.com/blog/
- Eric's newsletter: https://www.nehrlich.com/blog/newsletter/ (which I highly recommend)
- Full list of coaching and leadership development resources that Eric recommends: https://www.toomanytrees.com/resources
- Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman!: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35167685-surely-you-re-joking-mr-feynman
- Becoming Data Driven in Business Series: https://commoncog.com/becoming-data-driven-in-business/
- Be Good To Your Mentors: https://commoncog.com/be-good-to-your-mentors/
- Eric Nehrlich — Commitment, Competence, Structure: https://www.nehrlich.com/blog/2017/10/20/why-dont-we-change/
- James Clear — Atomic Habits (on Structure): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40121378
- Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey — Immunity to Change: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/hgse100/story/changing-better
- Eric Nehrlich's post on Immunity to Change https://www.nehrlich.com/blog/2018/06/18/immunity-to-change-methodology/
- Claire Hughes Johnson — Scaling People: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63063173-scaling-people
- Eric's thoughts on Scaling People: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nehrlich_google-stripe-leadership-activity-7044441138623127552-jhau
- Dan Martell — Buy Back Your Time: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60880804
- Terrence Real — Us Getting Past You and Me: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58502657-us
- Eric's post on Us Getting Past You and Me: https://www.nehrlich.com/blog/2023/02/21/us-getting-past-you-and-me-to-build-a-more-loving-relationship-by-terrence-real/
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:21) - Eric's Background
- (09:00) - Google Revenue Forecasting Stories
- (13:16) - Driving the Forecasting Error Rate Down
- (18:00) - Developing an Intuition for Variation
- (29:45) - What a Forecasting Novice Would Get Wrong
- (36:46) - What Does an Executive Coach Do?
- (45:34) - The Difference Between Mentorship and Coaching
- (53:42) - Changing Behaviour: Will, Skill, Structure
- (01:02:14) - Changing When Your Identity Holds You Back
- (01:05:50) - Coming Up With Small Experiments to Change
- (01:08:48) - Getting Organisational Identities to Change
- (01:11:55) - More Examples of Change Experiments
- (01:15:25) - Books Eric Recommends for Experiments
- (01:20:25) - Finding Eric Online
- (01:21:10) - Eric's Book
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