Andy Grove : Knowledge,Discipline & Execution

Harvard Business Review's Working Knowledge has an interview with Harvard’s Richar Tedlow, author of the book, Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American. The book gives a glimpse of Grove’s style of management outlining Grove's approach to management. The publisher’s claim that Tedlow has built the book around a year-by-year, blow-by-blow account of Intel's ups and downs, punctuated by Grove's contemporaneous musings, drawn from his private notebooks. Some of the points that Richard makes about Andy Grove stands out. He points out that for Andy, putting common sense on a pedestal as against the "uncommon nonsense" epitomized by the "virtual" cheering at parades in his ealry days mattered more. Grove's career has innumerable lessons for the business executives of today and tomorrow. Grove is an autodidact—a man capable of teaching himself a remarkable variety of new skills. Writing down his thoughts plays an important role in this process of teaching himself. Grove's experience growing up in Hungary became a foundation for the "Intel way." What Hungary was, Intel was not. Intel culture emphasized knowledge over power, common sense, and respect for ideas. The act of writing contributes an important element of discipline to his thinking. Pointing out that he has an uncanny ability to abstract himself from a decision in which he is deeply, emotionally involved and view the problem as an outsider would he adds that this ability to view issues that for others would be fraught with emotion in a clinical fashion, has led to some of his most astute decisions.

Grove’s upbringing and his far reaching decisions in every stage of Intel’s growth is known to all – he is amongst the best known name in recognizing the power of knowledge. I particularly liked Richard’s observation that for Grove, writing down his thoughts plays an important role in this process of teaching himself. He adds that the act of writing contributes an important element of discipline to Grove’s thinking. How true – blogging is useful to me on a number of counts – two things stand out – helps me to create a wider and deeper view, helps in articulation and more than anything else it enforces a discipline.