Quotes from Andrew S. Grove

A manager must keep many balls in the air at the same time and shift his energy and attention to activities that will most increase the output of his organization. In other words, he should move to the point where his leverage will be the greatest.

An imaginary composite index can be applied to measure an environment's complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity, which we'll call the CUA factor.

As a supervisor, you have to be very sensitive toward the various money needs of your subordinates and show empathy toward them. You must be especially careful not to project your own circumstances onto others.

Let's apply our model to the work of a new employee. What is his motivation? It is very much based on self-interest. So you should give him a clearly structured job with a low CUA factor. If he does well, he will begin to feel more at home, worry less about himself, and start to care more about his team. He learns that if he is on a boat and wants to get ahead, it is better for him to help row than to run to the bow.

This is why promotion from within tends to be the approach favored by corporations with strong corporate cultures. Bring young people in at relatively low-level, well-defined jobs with low CUA factors, and over time they will share experiences with their peers, supervisors, and subordinates and will learn the values, objectives, and methods of the organization. They will gradually accept, even flourish in, the complex world of multiple bosses and peer decision-making.

Here I would like to propose Grove's Law: All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a hybrid organizational form.

A team will perform well only if peak performance is elicited from the individuals in it. This

The Lesson is, we all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change

Remember too that your time is your one finite resource, and when you say "yes" to one thing you are inevitably saying "no" to another.

Businesses fail either because they leave their customers or because their customer leave them !

Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.

strategic changes doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calender

The absolute truth is that if you don't know what you want, you won't get it.

The person who is the star of previous era is often the last one to adapt to change, the last one to yield to logic of a strategic inflection point and tends to fall harder than most.

if you're wrong, you will die. But most companies don't die because they are wrong; most die because they don't commit themselves. They fritter away their valuable resources while attempting to make a decision. The greatest danger is in Standing still

But in the end self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate action, or being overruled. And everyone in your operation should be made to understand this.

In Technology, whatever can be done will be done

Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more Successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing

How can you motivate yourself to continue to follow a leader when he appears to be going around in circles?

Here I'd like to introduce the concept of leverage, which is the output generated by a specific type of work activity. An activity with high leverage will generate a high level of output; an activity with low leverage, a low level of output.

Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.

People in the trenches are usually in touch with impending changes early

You need to plan the way a fire department plans: It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.

My day always ends when I'm tired and ready to go home, not when I'm done. I am never done.