How Andy Grove Handled Business Uncertainty
Grove made a fascinating statement one time when he talked about times when Intel (INTC) was heading in directions that he didn't know where they'd end up.
He said: "So you strike out in a new direction. In a way, you have to feign more confidence than you feel, and you have to be convincing enough and courageous enough that you can affect the rest of the organization to follow you."
Pretty amazing when you look at what he said. You've got to somewhat fake it concerning the confidence you have. Pretty interesting to hear him admit that.
The reason he says what he says is there is no way your organization will follow you if you don't have confidence. Confidence can only come from certainty. Certainty comes from knowing where you're going to end up. So in a way, he's saying in times of transformation, business leaders do a lot of faking in their confidence levels.
How can this be a good thing? There is a key to this working. The key is that we've got to be at least heading in the right direction. If that isn't there, we can feign confidence all we want, but we won't reach the destination.
The other key to this is the understanding that there will always be corrections while we're on the journey. We don't lock in when we aren't sure of the final resting place. That will kill a business.
When we talk about confidence being feigned, this doesn't mean we don't have confidence that we'll make it successfully through the journey and end up where we should, it means the confidence we have isn't in something specific; we only have a general direction we head toward.
The opposite of confidence in this case isn't insecurity, but rather unsurety. What Grove is saying is we need to show confidence in the unsurety, not become insecure. People won't follow if there isn't a perceived surety that they'll get there. We've got to give them that perception, even when we don't know that exact place we're heading.
Other Andy Grove Resources:
Andy Grove's Rational Exuberance
The Digital Age . . . driven by the passion of Intel's Andrew Grove
The History and Influence of Andy Grove
Andy Grove enters new post-Intel role as activist capitalist
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