Only the Paranoid Survive

by Andrew S. Grove

But let’s go back to acquisitions, my favorite example. If I undertake a multibillion-dollar acquisition, every decision associated with it will require my attention. I will have to work so very hard and very quickly that the acquisition will take on far more importance than anything else that I have to deal with in the ordinary line of my business. So I will have created an infinite sink for my attention. I can justify looking in the mirror every morning and saying, “I don’t have time to deal with such mundane issues as why we are gradually losing sales at the smaller accounts. I’ve got a very important midnight meeting with my investment advisers coming up.” Under the circumstances, my inattention to daily details is understandable, even respectable; the acquisition has taken on a life of its own that takes me away from something that I don’t know how to handle. I wonder to what extent all the acquisitions of movie studios by the major Japanese consumer electronics companies were motivated by the need of senior management to engage in diversions from the far more intractable and mundane problems of a secular slowdown of their core businesses.