Andy Grove became president of Intel in 1979 and CEO in 1987. Leading them through their most turbulent and successful periods…

His leadership style was one of paranoia. Believing the more successful you are, the more people want to take a chunk of your business.

He firmly believed the prime responsibility of a business leader is to guard constantly against other people’s attacks and to ingrain this same attitude within your team.

‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ was written by Andy Grove with exactly this mantra in mind.

Andy discusses 10X events that happened in the computer industry, and how they created strategic inflection points. With some organisations benefiting, whilst others folded.

Throughout his own leadership of Intel he was paranoid of these 10X events, and details how he narrowly avoided disaster on numerous occasions within Intel.

Strategic inflection points are moments in any business when massive change occurs, brought on by market disruption or other forces outside of your own control.

Intel went through many of these inflection points. The most notable when Andy took Intel out of the memory business and gambled their entire future on producing microchips.

It’s a book about accepting and embracing change. Looking how major landscape changes can be used to your advantage, rather than them causing your demise.

Which is very topical given we’re all in the middle of a strategic inflection point. With the business landscape likely to be changed forever due to the global pandemic.

Although an old book. The learning’s within it are absolutely bang up to date. And I suggest all business leaders and managers should read it, as it may just help you right now.

‘Only the Paranoid Survive’ gets a thumbs up & 5 stars.

If you’ve got any questions about the book, connect & message me on LinkedIn or drop me an email to darren@mytotalofficesolutions.com

You can watch all our business book reviews at https://mytotalofficesolutions.co.uk/business-book-reviews/

…thank you & see you next week.