- January 27, 2026
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The top leaders at Intel, the dominant chipmaker of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s, faced a big-time quandary in the mid-80s. The industry was at a crossroads, something akin to what Blockbuster and Kodak would go through in the 1990s and 2000s.
The challenge the company was up against was succinct: CEO Gordon Moore and President Andy Grove had to choose between putting the company’s resources into what it had done so well for so long — memory chips — or shift to microprocessors. The latter products were more expensive, complicated and harder to make, though Intel was successful at it in a limited run. This now-or-future debate also came as the company fended off Japanese competitors.
Moore and Grove debated the merits of each side for a year. Then, Grove writes in his 1988 book, “Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company,” the pair’s “aimless wandering” and “downbeat mood” came to an end. “I turned to Gordon,” Grove writes, “and asked, if we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do? Gordon answered without hesitation, “He would get us out of memories.” I stared at him, numb, then said, “Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?
Grove and Moore’s decision worked: Today Intel is one of the 200 largest companies in the world, with a market capitalization of $111 billion.
The road it took to get there, for the executives to realize their “get out of our memories” epiphany, is a core focus of a new leadership book by L. David Marquet and Michael Gillespie, “Distancing: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions." Marquet, a former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine commander, is a part-time Sarasota resident and now three-time leadership book author, while Gillespie is an organizational psychologist and professor at the University of South Florida-Sarasota-Manatee campus.
The book, published in August, is a deep look at the concept of psychological distancing. Not just the high-stakes example laid out by Grove and Moore at Intel, which Marquet and Gillespie detail in “Distancing,” but the power of, when facing a choice, to step back and say, ‘what will I think about this in six months?’
“Distancing,” Marquet says, “is a 'superpower' to cut through cognitive biases, emotional traps and situational blind spots…distancing helps everyone in their day to day lives make better decisions.”
A sub-theme in the book that should resonate with leaders at any stage of their careers is how to recognize when you are too self-immersed to make a strong self-distancing decision. In other words: you can’t get out of your way. This could be from confirmation bias, ego or some other mental block.
Marquet, in an interview, mentions companies like Blockbuster, Blackberry and Kodak, “classic cases in business where CEOs have stuck with what got them there to the demise of the company.” It’s the anti-Intel approach.
Marquet has another example of self-immersion, this one more costly: “Hikers going up Everest don’t make the decision to turn around even though they’ve passed their self-determined turnaround time,” he says. “They end up dying.”
The book details another instance of when self-immersion had deadly consequences. This happened July 6, 2013, when the pilot of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 attempted to land a Boeing 777 in San Francisco. The pilot was being evaluated, and things were going unexpectedly bad. The plane was not behaving as expected, the authors write, because the pilot and the evaluator misunderstood the autopilot. That led to “critical stressors that trigger a deeply immersed state. At a critical moment (the pilot’s) brain filtered out critical 'four red lights' indicating a failing approach. This immersed blindness led to a crash and three fatalities.”
The authors expand on this point.
“If being self-immersed is our default state, which distorts our view of reality and results in poor decision-making, then we can intentionally choose to exit self-immersion and take a distanced perspective to get out of our typical ways of thinking, out of our off tendencies and biased worldviews,” they write. “We need to step away from the problem and remove ourselves from the situation so we’re able to look at it objectively — the way a coach might — and decide what to do. Distance gives us the necessary perspective and reframes the situation and the way we process it mentally so we can make better decisions for ourselves and for our organizations. When immersed, we are our practical selves. But when we are distanced, we are more like our ideal selves, understanding which decisions will best support and align with our values.”
So how do you fight against self-immersion in decision-making? How do you get out of your own way? The authors recognize that challenge, suggesting to look at times when you feel under stress, being evaluated, anything public, anything where you might receive feedback or criticism for past work or decisions. These include a team retrospective, a negotiation or a feedback session, Marquet says. A sense of urgently needing to respond (more like react) is also a signal to step out, he adds.
Yet the mind can play tricks, and habits, patterns (and biases) don’t die easily, so this requires practice. “In those moments when you feel an urge to immediately respond, the decision making apparatus that allows you to pause and distance gets short circuited,” Marquet says, “and even if you are able to summon it, your brain will still try to convince you that you don’t have time for distancing.”
Marquet, in the book and an interview, contends you do have time for self-distancing.
A 1981 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Marquet, 65, served in the submarine force for 28 years and captained the USS Santa Fe, a fast-attack submarine, from 1999 to 2001. The assignment was a turnaround task: The sub had poor engineering scores and even worse re-enlistment rates. Marquet, in previous interviews and in his 2012 book, “Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders,” says he learned from that experience great leadership wasn’t connected to barking orders, but to discretionary effort — the extra work an employee puts in beyond what’s required, driven by purpose over obligation.
His work paid off. The Santa Fe won performance awards under his leadership; reenlistment numbers increased from three one year to 33 the next year; and at least 10 Santa Fe officers went on to command other subs in the fleet.
Marquet, in promoting this book, says a key moment in connecting his leadership approach to distancing came once he got comfortable with not having every answer. “I would try not to answer questions even when I thought I knew the answer,” he says. “So the team would come to me with their solutions.”
Next, says Marquet, he would use specific distancing questions, such as 'What would you do if you were me?' or 'What would your six-month-from-now future self wish we'd use today?’” That led to clarity and better decisions.
“As a result, I adopted a 'learning vector' mindset, viewing inspections and challenges as not just about the grade (which felt performative) but also as opportunities to learn and grow, which reduced overall mental stress and the need to know all the answers,” Marquet says in a book promotion Q&A. “This often allowed me to maintain a 'super calm' demeanor during real problems. I would slow my speech and start speaking more quietly. This was crucial, as calmness is contagious and prevented the transmission of anxiety to the team, allowing them maximum use of their prefrontal cortices.”
