I have been reading a lot lately. Reading interesting books has been really helpful in making more sense of the world, its history, how should I work etc.
Recently read the book “Only the paranoid survive” by Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel whose life can be an inspiration to all of us. He migrated to US after surviving the persecution against the jewish people, did not speak english at that time. His journey as someone who could not even speak the local language to someone who became the CEO of Intel, one of the most impactful companies in compute history is testimony to his grit, intelligence and planning.
Coming to the book, here are the main lessons of the book-
- Change in constant- Business keeps on changing as the society keeps on moving. Business models change, markets change and sometimes people don’t want your products any more. Keep on analysing what is going on at every level to get hold of business. Be prepared. You don’t know what can hit you, so keep agility.
- 10X change- Sometimes a change can be 10X and then all bets about your business are off. You need to get into survival mode where you define your strategy clearly and without doubt. Such 10X change came into Intel history, early in its existence when Intel’s memory business was under attack by Japanese memory companies. The Japanese companies were selling memories at a lower cost and were of better quality. Intel realised it could not compete in the area. And hence it took the hard decision of moving out of memory business. This is akin to Apple today moving out of phone business, because at that time when people heard Intel, they thought of memory business.
- Valley of death- When your company is facing 10X change in the market, then all bets are off and now you are in this place. Getting out of here would be crucial for the survival. Andy describes a two step process to come out of it-
- let the chaos rein- First you need to listen your employees, give them freedom. Because nothing that your business is currently working on is going to take you beyond, it has hit the 10X change. So you need to experiment to find a way out. Ideally your company should experiment without the 10X change hitting it.
- find the direction- Once you find something that might work, you need to decide if it is the thing that is going to work. Don’t be ambiguous or indecisive because that might kill the company. After the direction, your troops should march in that direction with unflinching conviction.
- Advice to CEOs –
- Zen thinking- When the company is facing 10X change, you might be fired in future if you keep on running the existing business in the way that it has always been run. You need to think it in this way – If the board fires me, what would the new CEO do? would he just close this segment of business which is the current major bread earner.
- Experience can kill- In the face of major change, when a new CEO is brought in by the board, it is not because the new CEO is necessarily better at skills – it is because he is not over exposed to patterns of experience which are no longer valid and hence his decisions can be in new directions.
- Culture of open-ness and experimentation- Culture is what would help your company survive through the tough times. You need to have a culture in which people can speak their mind, discuss and debate because all of this would make the company healthy in the long run.
- Don’t be afraid of your ignorance- Andy cites numerous examples where he sought feedback from subject matter experts. This can be specially helpful when the company is facing a crisis where you would need to get help from many subject matter experts. Don’t overthink how much you should know, would you be considered ignorant etc. Your job is to get as much help as is there in order to improve the health of the business.
That’s pretty much my summary.
Overall the book goes into great length about the thought processes that have made Intel a household name. Its a great book to learn about some timeless values from a great company and a great man.
If you want to learn more about Andy, you can watch this small speech by him-
neeraj's 