Retired nuclear sub captain on how to reframe, remain 'super calm'

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?