Andy Grove
The revolving door test
Become your own successor
Only the Paranoid Survive
Intel was built on memory chips and nearly died of them. What was said in one office in 1985.
What actually happened?
By 1985 Japanese makers had driven memory prices through the floor, Intel had lost money for several quarters, and the argument over whether to hold the business had run for a year. Grove asked Moore: if we got kicked out and the board brought in a new chief executive, what do you think he would do? Moore answered without hesitating: he would get us out of memories. Grove looked at him and said, why shouldn't you and I walk out the door, come back, and do it ourselves? Intel amputated and went all in on microprocessors.
A successor's view is the same machine with the feelings removed
A new chief executive sees exactly the data you see. One thing differs: no sunk cost, no credit from the old days, no this is what we were founded on. The test borrows his eyes, and the answer usually turns out to have been there already, held under by feeling.
Stuck on cutting a line you raised yourself, ask what a parachuted successor does in his first week. If he cuts it, the only open question is who swings the axe.
Walk out and walk back in. Both steps count
The precision of the image is that it has two halves. Walking out sheds the old identity; walking back in executes under the new one. The first alone is avoidance, seeing clearly and not moving. The second alone is butchery, cutting without having changed your mind.
Announcing a new direction while still measuring everyone on the old business is walking back in with your head left outside. The change happened in the memo.
Doing it yourself is how you keep the people who do it
The half of his sentence that gets dropped is by ourselves. Wait for a board to bring somebody in to do the identical thing and the company bleeds two more years first. Do it yourself and the pain is the same, but the memory is we turned, not we were rescued.
The same cut announced by the founder who takes the blame leaves a different organisation than one made by an incoming team. The first team will turn with you again.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a business you have feelings about is bleeding steadily and you cannot bring yourself to act.
Ask first: what would my successor do with it in his first month? Does that answer contain any information I do not have — and if it does not, the only thing stopping me is feeling.
Where it goes wrong: using the test as a switch for turning off responsibility, cutting and then disowning the cut. Or playing successor with everything, until the patience some things need gets cut too.
Lines to keep
If we got kicked out, what would a new chief executive do?
Why shouldn't you and I walk out the door and do it ourselves?
The first thing to overcome is your own emotional attachment.
Same situation, other people are asking
I built this line and I can't be the one to end it.Pulling out would look like admitting I was wrong.I can't cut something I built · all 2 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.