Reddit reviews Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

Impossible to name one. Books only had significance for me when they addressed a particular lifecycle that the business was in.

• Zero to One, when I needed the extra push to quit my job and focus on my new business full time.
  
  
• Walt Disney’s biography, when I was in the grind, feeling sorry for myself.
  
  
• Crossing the Chasm, when we needed to operationalize the business to scale.
  
  
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, when I needed to fire our first VP.
  
  
• Only the Paranoid Survive, when I needed to learn how to disrupt myself.
  
  EDIT: Lots of requests for more books as they relate to 'business lifecycle'. Also, linked all of these on Amazon. Here ya go:
  
  
• Blue Ocean Strategy, when we realized positioning ourselves as a competitor to others was the wrong approach
  
  
• Your Strategy Needs a Strategy, when planning things out years in advance kept us committed to the wrong plan for too long.
  
  
• Accounting for Non-Accountants, when I was just getting started and needed to learn how to read a financial statement :)
  
  
• The Art of Acting, when I needed to give a convincing presentation for the first time.
  
  
• Co-Active Coaching, when I needed to learn how to actively listen to employees (this lead to me becoming an executive coach).
  
  
• Understanding Michael Porter, a master class on business strategy.

Plot twist: They never were.
That's why they started cheating their customers, bribing the whole industry and defrauded the public in the first place.

In lights of this some age-old yet ever so up-to-the-minute quote from Andy Grove, one of Intel's former CEOs and likely the man who influenced Intel's character (as a company's profile) the most;

> “I worry about products getting screwed up¹, and I worry about products getting introduced prematurely². I worry about factories not performing well³, and I worry about having too many factories⁴. I worry about hiring the right people⁵, and I worry about morale slacking off⁶. And, of course, I worry about competitors⁷.”
^— ^Andy ^S. ^Grove ^· ^CEO ^of ^Intel ^Corp. ^from ^1987–1998 ^in ^›Only ^the ^Paranoid ^Survive‹

He was right on point – since Intel has managed to fulfil every single one of this man's worst nightmares …

• ¹ Intel managed to screw up most of their own products → Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, ZombieLoad and alike
  
  
• ² Intel managed to introduce products prematurely and over-hasty → Skylake-X as the competitor against Threadripper
  
  
• ³ Intel managed their factories to not perform any well at all → 10nm™
  
  
• ⁴ Intel manages to have too much factories → Their maintaining-costs eat them up alive
  
  
• ⁵ Intel managed to fail hiring the right people on time for making the crucial impact → Like Jim Keller, way too late
  
  
• ⁶ Intel managed their company's in-house moral slacking off → Playing dirty ever since, no real intention to innovate
  
  
• ⁷ Intel managed to lose their foundry- and process-leaderchip they had for a quarter of a century, also → AMD
  
  What this man also said, was that …
  >“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
  
  In hindsight you can safely say, he pretty much predicted Intel's way the company will go years before it actually happened.
  Intel has managed to act against every golden rule their CEO said is crucial for a company to stay competitive – as they perpetrated their utmost worse fault and with that this very cardinal error: Becoming complacent.
  
  So, while Intel's story was already taught as an prime example for incredible success in business classes ever since, their lasting complacency also will be going to be told too – as the worst prominent one for how destroying such a record-scoring successful business afterwards.
  
  One company, a single book, another decision – and how you're going to make the most of it. Or likely don't.
  
  ----
  ^Read:
  ^25IQ.com ^• ^My ^views ^on ^the ^Market, ^Tech, ^and ^Everything ^else ^– ^A ^Dozen ^Things ^I’ve ^Learned ^from ^Andy ^Grove ^about ^Business ^and ^Strategy
  
  ^Yale.edu ^• ^Yale ^School ^of ^Management ^· ^Harvard ^Business ^Review ^| ^School ^Publishing ^– ^Universal ^Lessons ^every ^Manager ^can ^learn ^from ^Andy ^Grove's ^Paranoia ^(PDF, ^2.5 ^MByte)
  
  tl;dr: Intel's executive floor mistook a healthy portion of scepticism and sound wariness (read: business' watchfulness) with paranoia.

http://www.amazon.ca/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/0385483821

gratitude for what is rather than what one desires is on the money.

one of the insights articulated by JP--although a bare-bones observation from a clinical perspective--is the formidable extent to which we're hard-wired, from top to bottom, to ignore 95% of what's going spectacularly well & focus on the 5% that's not so hot & happening.

everything from perception structures to interpretive cognition to motivational states kicks our ass toward general dis-satisfaction--this is amply explored in part 14 of the personality series.

from an evolutionary perspective, this makes all the sense in the world. fixation with what's "not right," or what might be "not right," or what could potentially be a threat, makes for a constantly re-adjusting, re-formulating, agile piece of biology. in an environment where starvation, predation, social conflict & generally speaking, death lurk just around the corner, it's ideal. pace andy grove, in a tooth & claw theater of endless competition, only the paranoid survive.

but it's a manic, utterly insane default in our contemporary setting of comfort & safety where starvation, predation & conflict are no longer significant factors. it used to be that biology drove us into anxiety about being alive, now we're anxious about LTE signal strength & if the color of our shoes sends the right social cues on a first date. it's absolutely fucking debilitating.

so i find /u/LimbicLogic's note on "centering" to be spot on. there's a tremendous benefit to actively managing the default, frenzied ratio of 95% discontent/5% satiated to something that more accurately describes the actual reality of our condition.

practically, this can take place in a way that doesn't resemble formal prayer. it takes practice & discipline, but one can learn to note when a negative emotion intrudes--frustration, sadness, anger--and parse it in a way that expands awareness of what's happening into a balanced, "centered, if you will, manner.

a trivial example:

i'm frustrated by a co-worker's incompetence tinged with malice. why am i frustrated? because my workload has increased, having to make up for their carelessness or refusal to complete certain tasks. but wait: is my job something that's objectively difficult to contend with?

let's enumerate the facts: i'm gainfully employed for almost 5 years with a fortune 100 company. my compensation rates well for people my age, i have a great degree of flexibility in scheduling & great benefits. an overwhelming proportion of the work i do is not cognitively demanding to the point of stress. an overwhelming majority of my co-workers are supportive & fun to be around. there are significant career track opportunities.

so: should i be frustrated by an insular & peripheral event, if it's an act of incompetence tinged with malice, which it may not even be, a fraction of a fraction of my complete experience with my job? or should i snap back to a sense of tremendous gratitude for desirable, rewarding, flexible employment?

https://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/0385483821

He wrote a book called "Only the paranoid survive" about Intel and the pc industry in its early days. It's a very good read if you want to know more about pc history.

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385483821/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_X3m8wb9J53T30

You have yet to establish that I'm a conspiracy theorist, but good attempt to establish an ad hominem :)

Regardless, for business purposes, it would serve you well to be paranoid. Go read this book.

> I'm honestly having trouble trying to determine what you are even arguing here.

I was curious why you was curious. Because you will hardly get the real breakdown on expenses because its clearly the corporate secret thing that only CEO stuff fully aware of etc. Whatever.

PS. You could be intrested in this book. Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company

Very nice and light read on the relative topic. I enjoyed reading it.