Friday Reflections: Back to Basics-Lessons from Andy Grove

Point to Ponder: "The new business environment dictates two rules: 1) Everything happens faster; and, 2) Anything that can be done will be done. If it's not done by you it will be by someone else." Andrew Grove

Story Line: Back to Basics: Lessons from Andy Grove

A day before Andy Grove retired, I had a rare fortune to meet the person who was Andy’s Technical Assistant in his early career and then a senior executive of our company. Our Boss Gidu Shroff had invited Sean Maloney for a dialogue about state of the business and implication on our group’s strategy. Knowing that Sean had been TA of Andy in his early career, my curiosity compelled me to drift from business related discussions to some questions about Andy.

“You were once the technical assistant to the man who is on his last day at work at Intel. a. How did that experience help you in your career and b. what are some great things about Andy that you learnt.?” Sean’s Answers:

Question the obvious. When everybody says something is this way or great, better question hard.
Very analytical, could understand incredible amount of details and linkages
Always pushed you to do better. Always made you believe that there is still a way to go in realizing your potential.
Very committed to the development of the people who worked for him and He devoted a lot of time on this subject.

Reflection: After the meeting, my mind ventured into memories lane about a few past encounters with/about Andy that were so consistent with what I had learnt about him that day.

When I joined Intel first time in 1980s, Andy was one of the speakers at New Hire Orientation. Three things that influenced my career from that talk were: the importance of a sound culture for an organization, focus on employee training and development (Intel University) and If you see a problem you own it. Don’t bury the problems or they will become large. Bring them out and address them. (and if it is not in your area, find the right owner who can fix them.)
About 35 people from different sites from the company were in the phone bridge meeting to discuss a lingering problem “exposed glass lid” that had impacted product shipments. Andy showed up to one meeting and after a few minutes of listening, excused most of the people (note takers, facilitators, reporters, speculators,..) and gave actions and ownership to engineers in Asian factories. He had quickly understood the technical issue and realized that a lot of side actors were dominating the stage instead of the Doers.
In mid 1980s, one of our plants in Asia had done pilot implantation of Just in Time System. The plant manager was very excited with results and wanted to take the lead to proliferate the system across the company. One morning he got a call from none other than Andy Grove who asked him about JIT. After listening to very excited plant manager describing glorious benefits of JIT, Andy asked only one question: What could go wrong with the system? In the words of that manager” I was frozen. I had not thought about that part.” Andy told him to do the homework and then come back with new proposal.
Sometime after Andy had already retired, our boss also retired after a long service. Andy sent a video message expressing his appreciation and recounting memories of their association and some incidences that had taken place over 20 years ago. That was a class act.