Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught and How You Can Learn It Anyway (J-B Warren Bennis Series) by Dov Frohman

Author:Dov Frohman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781118899472
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-12-12T14:00:00+00:00

Going Through the Window

Success always appears inevitable in retrospect. But at any number of points in this long multiyear process, things could have gone wrong. Indeed, occasionally they did. For example, a few years later, in 1993, we negotiated a new package with the Israeli government to expand the Jerusalem fab—only to see the deal fall through when, at the last minute, Intel decided to build its next fab in Arizona, not Israel. (It was that decision that forced us to modernize the original fab.) But we stayed flexible, all the while not taking no for an answer, and we won the next round in 1995 when we got the go-ahead to build a second Israeli fab, this time in the town of Qiryat Gat, in southern Israel near the Negev Desert.

When we established the Qiryat Gat fab, I had to go through the same political fight as I had when we were negotiating for the Jerusalem site. There were the same critiques and the same opposition—only this time, because the investment (and therefore the amount of government subsidy) was so much bigger and the process was so much more public, it was an even tougher conflict. But in the end we won. And Qiryat Gat is where Intel is building its third Israeli fab today.

Andy Grove used to say, “The thing about Dov, if he can’t come through the front door, he goes through the window.” It’s true. I don’t take no for an answer. I’m always trying to find that opportunity in the middle of whatever the problem or challenge or crisis of the moment may be—and take advantage of it. Effective leaders are good at finding random opportunities—and then exploiting them.

Notes

1. Robert A. Burgelman, Strategy Is Destiny: How Strategy-Making Shapes a Company’s Future (Free Press, 2002), p. 90.

2. Tim Jackson, Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Chip Company (Dutton, 1997), p. 106.

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