"Assume any career moves you make won't go smoothly. They won't. But don't look back."
One of the most paralyzing habits by business leaders, and anybody for that matter, is the tendency to look back when things don't go smoothly.
Many times we make a career move, leaving a good job behind for something better, then when we get to the destination, we find it wasn't anything like we hoped it would be. That type of experience is an important time in anyone's life. How you respond to something like this will determine the type of professional person you'll become throughout your career.
There are two important things Grove admonishes in his statement. The first is don't think things will go smoothly because you've been recruited or accepted for a new job. As he said, things will never go that smoothly. Assume the worst.
Second, once you accept that reality, when you start to experience those rough times, don't look back. It's the looking back that can destroy a person. Second-guessing ourselves does nothing to help our current situation.
The best thing we can do for ourselves in these circumstances is to forget what we came from. It does no good to do the comparison thing that will so easily be the thing we do once things aren't measuring up to what we thought we were entering into.
Not only will it make it harder to flourish in your current job, but it could end up making you worthless to the company as you continue your trek to the past in your heart and mind, while not giving yourself to the present issues at hand.
Any career move will be a transitional period, and transitional periods require adaptation and adjustment from where you've come from. It's not any more complicated than that.
What usually happens is we begin to compare things we're doing now with things we did in the past, and their not lining up with one another causes us consternation. Most the time if we just let things go and flow, we'll find these times of discomfort don't last that long, and we can move on ahead without too much difficulty.
The best way to handle it it to keep our eyes focused on where we're at and what we're doing, rather than entertain wishful thinking about wishing you were back somewhere in the past. Remind yourself that you left for a reason. Whatever that reason is should take you through these difficult times of transformation.
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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