Andrew S. Grove > Quotes

“The Lesson is, we all need to expose ourselves to the winds of change”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive

“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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Businesses fail either because they leave their customers or because their customer leave them !”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“The absolute truth is that if you don’t know what you want, you won’t get it.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“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”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“strategic changes doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calender”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“In Technology, whatever can be done will be done”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.”
― Andrew Grove

“People in the trenches are usually in touch with impending changes early”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“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”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“How can you motivate yourself to continue to follow a leader when he appears to be going around in circles?”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“As we throw ourselves into raw actions, our senses and instincts will rapidly be honed again”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“My day always ends when I’m tired and ready to go home, not when I’m done. I am never done.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive

“Remember that by saying “yes”—to projects, a course of action, or whatever—you are implicitly saying “no” to something else.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“We must recognize that no amount of formal planning can anticipate changes such as globalization and the information revolution we’ve referred to above. Does that mean that you shouldn’t plan? Not at all. 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.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world. You need to accept ownership of your career, your skills and the timing of your moves. It is your responsibility to protect this personal business of yours from harm and to position it to benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody else can do that for you.”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive

“It's harder to be the best of class in several fields than in just one”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“Selectivity - the determination to choose what we will attempt to get
done and what we won't - is the only way out of the panic that
excessive demands on our time can create.”
― Andrew S. Grove

“When a person is not doing his job, there can only be two reasons for it. The person either can’t do it or won’t do it; he is either not capable or not motivated. To determine which, we can employ a simple mental test: if the person’s life depended on doing the work, could he do it? If the answer is yes, that person is not motivated; if the answer is no, he is not capable.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“You can be the subject of a strategic inflection point but you can also be the cause of one”
― Andrew S. Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career

“Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information. Writing the report is important; reading it often is not.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment worth $2,000, you shouldn’t let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“[..] in the work of the soft professions, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between output and activity. And as noted, stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.”
― Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management

“Accept that no matter where you go to work, you are not an employee - you are a business with one employee, you. Andy Grove, CEO, Intel”
― Andy Grove