Losing Faith: How the (Andy) Grove Survivors Led the Decline of Intel's Corporate Culture [Hardcover]

Bob Coleman & Logan Shrine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2007

What has happened to Andy Grove's Intel? A Wall Street Journal article dated November 1, 2006 stated that Andy Grove "won't talk about current goings on at Intel. He does, though, talk about its past and wistfully. He helped make Intel one of the world's greatest brands; for most men, that would be the prelude to a retirement full of self-satisfaction. Instead, there is much regret that Andy Grove's Intel wasn't able to use its brand name for even one other great thing besides microprocessors." The cult of Andy Grove consisted of a core set of values expressed as certain behaviors that Grove himself forced on employees long before the Intel values were formally published and put on employee badges. What many outsiders don t know is that management s actions within Intel's corporate culture were inconsistent with the published values. After Grove's departure, this gap between management behaviors and the published values was amplified, establishing the impetus for the decline of Intel's performance-based corporate culture. In light of Intel spending over $10 billion on 35 acquisitions, its diversification strategy lacked an overall execution plan for tying it all together and making it work within their existing business and economic models. Intel s lackluster stock market performance over the past six years has not prevented many investors from hoping that the stock will once again repeat its past stellar performance. The world has changed and the business model that made Intel the behemoth that it is today may have lost its relevance. More importantly, the culture that in the past fueled Intel s growth has now become ossified. In contrast to Andy Grove's reticence about the current Intel, the authors of Losing Faith share their objective observations on the post-Grove Intel, with its cultural anomalies that attempt to explain why the company has not been able to successfully diversify beyond its Grove-led dominance in microprocessors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Like prophets in pinstripes, the authors of Losing Faith take readers inside Intel for a first-hand look at the inner workings of this famed leviathan, the world s leading semiconductor manufacturer. What we find inside is fascinating, but--like the innards of a whale--not always pretty, for among other things, this book reveals blubber: layers of corporate blubber. Coleman and Shrine show how Intel, once known for its entrepreneurial egalitarianism, has become a sluggish, ineffectual bureaucracy dominated by cronyism. Their incisive analysis of the company s cultural changes under each of its CEOs gives particular weight to the legacy of Andy Grove, who led Intel through a period of phenomenal success in the 1990s, but nourished a culture of intimidation that had pernicious effects. Losing Faith offers astute diagnoses of Intel s ailments and clear prescriptions for restoring it to cultural health; both should be welcome in this precarious economic climate. Although critical and at times scathing, this is an even-handed book that seems generous in spirit. To my mind, Losing Faith is a work of courage, for it takes courage to speak truth to power--especially from the belly of a whale. --J. W. Graham, PhD.

About the Author

BOB COLEMAN and LOGAN SHRINE are industry veterans who have a combined 35+ years of work experience, including over 15 years at Intel. They hold advanced degrees from top-notch universities and have served in leadership positions within a variety of professional associations and nonprofit organizations.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Losing-Faith.com; 1st edition (February 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979168104
• ISBN-13: 978-0979168109
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #583,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They tell it like it is!, March 20, 2007

By 

Richard Martin (Lacey, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Losing Faith: How the (Andy) Grove Survivors Led the Decline of Intel's Corporate Culture (Hardcover)

Based on my 18 years at Intel ('79-'97), the authors do an excellent job of accurately describing the Intel culture throughout Intel's 38 year history. They explain the good and the bad and the ugly. This book can be a wakeup call for Intel and all of its employees and shareholders. The abuse of power during the Grove era comes with a price (what goes around, comes around). The advice that the authors provide is right on!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good insights, but misses important parts of Intel, May 6, 2007

By 

S. Wilkie (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Losing Faith: How the (Andy) Grove Survivors Led the Decline of Intel's Corporate Culture (Hardcover)

I worked at Intel for 8 years, so the book was very interesting to me. The insights on the lack of management development to tackle new businessnes (like networking) rang true to me. Also, the description of how to culture evloved to take on huge projects with poor results was a good insight.

The book completly fails to talk about the Technology & Manufacturing group which continues with amazing progress to shrink transistors economically. Intel leads the world in bringing new processes to high volume. The book also completly misses the differing cultures in the key design centers. Some design centers have had dramatically differing success than others over the past 15 years.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You Reap What You Sow, September 29, 2007

By 

Teddy Dover "sarge" (Peabody, Ks) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Losing Faith: How the (Andy) Grove Survivors Led the Decline of Intel's Corporate Culture (Hardcover)

This is a good read regarding the decline of the Intel Corporation. The book is based primarily upon the complaint that the corporation's employees are not held accountable for their actions and failures, especially when the actions are not in compliance with the corporation's own written codes of conduct and behavior. The authors attack the typical band-aide approach to many of the corporation's problems (which are primarily outside the technical fields of microprocessors, and deal with the supply and customer service side of the corporation). The book targets Andy Groves successors as CEO and Chairman of the Board -- their managerial style, lack of technical expertise in particular, and lack of involvement on a more personal level.
The book addresses the culture of those employees who survived the Grove tenure and their attitude of "entitledness" and the discord between these survivors and more recent employees. The book addresses a form of "careerism" (my term, not the authors)among the established managers. The authors criticism sounds a lot like the criticism found in some books about the Army officers "ticket punching" during the Vietnam era -- heck, it sounds a lot like the successfully promoted folks at the hospital where I work.
The authors play with kid gloves when the subject of Andy Grove comes up. They only more than hint that his "in-your-face" management style directly contributed to Intel's decline. They do not even discuss the Pentium debacle under Grove and the public relations disaster that ensued.
The authors also lightly touch upon the technical competence and backgrounds of Grove's successors, and this is important since they are not the technical geniuses that founded or nurtured Intel (Noyce, Moore, and Groves)-- most of their experience is not discussed but it is in marketing and other non-technical fields.
This is another good book discussing the ills of big corporations that lose their way in a fast changing world and fail to keep pace, especially after a level of arrogance rises within the corporation -- is Intel falling from its lofty heights just like IBM did -- is Microsoft not far behind. Stock holders should look closely at the trend of mis-management and the subsequent loss of billions of dollars (especially in bad acquistions and lack of overall business planning) that could have been paid out in dividends. Stockholders should hold the board of directors more responsible for rubber stamping poor CEO and chairman of the board's decisions/performance and not holding them more accountable.