Only the Paranoid Survive

by Andrew S. Grove

if you’re in a leadership position, how you spend your time has enormous symbolic value. It will communicate what’s important or what isn’t far more powerfully than all the speeches you can give.

Strategic change doesn’t just start at the top. It starts with your calendar.

Simply put, in times of change, managers almost always know which direction they should go in, but usually act too late and do too little.

“first instantiation,” as described in Chapter 6.

Mark Twain hit it on the head when he said, “Put all of your eggs in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET.”

The greatest danger is in standing still.

you will find that repetition sharpens your articulation of the new direction and makes it increasingly clear to your employees.

Communicating strategic change in an interactive, exposed fashion is not easy. But it is absolutely necessary.

Put another way, your internal thinking and feeling machinery is as much a part of your environment as an employee as your external situation. Major changes in either can affect your work life.

History offers plenty of examples. In early nineteenth-century England, the increasing use of mechanized looms made woven cloth so much more cheaply than by traditional manual means that an entire class of craftsmen, both expert and mediocre weavers, lost their independent livelihoods and were forced to work as unskilled laborers in the mills. The rise of the automobile threw harnessmakers, both good and bad, out of work. Today, small farmers are struggling to retain their economic viability against competition from agricultural conglomerates.

Gordon Moore, made a comment to the effect that if we were to change from a semiconductor company to a microprocessor company, half of our management would have to become software types.

There are two things that will help you get through the career valley: clarity and conviction.