Grove was hard on everybody, most of all himself. A proudly self-made man, he could be arrogant. He did not suffer fools, or meandering meetings, or ill-formed proposals. (He kept a set of rubber stamps on his desk, including one engraved BULLSHIT.) The best way to solve a management problem, he believed, was through “creative confrontation”—by facing people “bluntly, directly, and unapologetically.”*
