Can you fire yourself?

the revolving door test

“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”

Andy Grove, founder and former CEO of Intel.

There is a famous moment in the history of executive decision making which I came across in the book “Strategy Rules” by David Yoffie and Michael Cusumano that refers to a 1985 conversation between the Intel’s CEOs Andrew Grove and Gordon Moore.

In 1985 Intel was losing millions of dollars on its memory chip business, the flagship unit of the company.

Andy Grove had been thinking deeply about the next evolution of the computer business and realized that computers would be everywhere moving to a world of mass production and specialization. Vertically integrated companies like IBM for example, would not be able to adapt to the speed of change and need of specialization. As a result, and here his critical insight, the vertically integrated computer industry would disintegrate due to the growth of the PC.

Let’s put this realization in perspective, Intel’s core business consisted in providing memory chips to these vertically integrated giants. So, if personal computers were to become ubiquitous, Intel would also need to specialize and become a big player in microprocessors technology. This meant that they would need to make a potential existential decision: to continue competing in the memory chip business or to reposition the company for the emerging microprocessor business.

THE REVOLVING DOOR

This is where the ability to think radically different would be a game changer!

Andy Grove turned to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and asked, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?”

Gordon Moore answered without a doubt, “They would get us out of memories.” To which Andy Grove famously responded, “Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?”

So they went to the board of directors and presented this famous graphic to explain how they would abandon one business and move into the next.

They were at the bottom of that the pyramid with their “memory chips”; the solid base of a vertically integrated computer business model. However the world was moving towards a disintegrated PC dominated model, hence their need for specialization. Moving into “branded microprocessors” would mean that.

This graph is shown in Andy Grove’s masterpiece on strategic inflection points: “Only the paranoid survive”

What followed is one of the greatest success histories in business. Intel would become a dominant player and Andy Grove one of the all-time best CEOs.

Andy Grove wrote in his book, “If existing management want to keep their jobs when the basics of the business are undergoing profound change, they must adopt an outsider’s intellectual objectivity.”

You need to free yourself to make decisions from a fresh perspective.

So, what are the lessons here?

• Are you looking at your performance and choices based on what is needed today to get where things need to be tomorrow?

• Are you self-aware enough to understand that if you are not moving forward in your own personal development, you are indeed moving backwards?

• Do you look at what is needed in your job every year with the new lens of who would be hired to do your job today if you were to leave, and not who you were yesterday when you were hired to do the job?

• Are you willing to look at the challenges you have in 2023 and fire yourself; go out the revolving door and come back ready to do the job that will be required tomorrow?

The quote I use as north star for my personal and professional life, which I often share with my teams, is the following:

I will dedicate a future post to this story and this CEO, taken from the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. But what we have here is the answer from a remarkably successful CEO over a long period of time, when asked something along the lines of what was his job as a CEO, or what was his formula for success as a CEO…

His answer reflects the intellectual humility required to know what is needed today to do the same job that you were hired to do yesterday will not remain the same.

Can you “fire” and “re-hire” yourself as challenges and opportunities evolve?

P.S. Before I go, here you have “The Treat,” where I share some of the music that kept me company while writing … Enjoy as you bid farewell to this post

“Lead yourself, Learn to live. Lead others, Learn to Build.”

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