"A closed mind is a trap door to the abyss."
It's not that often that you hear a CEO or business leader say things like, "I don't know what to do. What do you think?"
As Grove had known, "Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) has always been one wrong answer away from disaster," and so was consistently interacting with people and taking seriously the things they had to say.
Our businesses are in the same place, and so we must also take the attitude of openness that Grove willingly embraced.
There are two sides to an keeping an open mind: One is that we must be open to the right kind of input. There are a lot of people with goofy and silly ideas, and allowing them to influence us can have a detrimental effect.
The way we filter ideas is through the foundation, purpose and culture of the business. It has to make sense in those areas or is just loose idea fodder without any positive value to the company.
Second, within that context, we must be open to all and any ideas that work within who we are as a company. We can't be in love with the processes we've implemented in the past to deal with specific circumstances we've encountered. If we are, we'll try to force the new realities of the marketplace within those paramaters and lose a lot of potential before us.
So we have to have close minds to things that disrupt our core business, but at the same time be open to anything that can help up execute that purpose.
The two work together in tension with one another. If we disgard our core purpose, we could end up in anarchy where we lose our identity. Some people mistake that for having an open mind, but it's really having a lazy mind, not willing to work through the hard challenges.
If we close the door to openness based upon our core business purpose, we relegate ourselves to the uncompetitive garbage dump, sitting in rotting debris as we resist any type of change that we must make to remain relevant to our customers.
We need to work with both together. Andrew Grove knew this and lived it an Intel, so must we.
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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