Are You Brave Enough to Take THIS Step?

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Are you brave enough to take the step you need to take?

Around the world a decision is shaping up.

At some point we will have to decide whether to try and resume life the way it was before COVID-19 or embrace the perspective that we are opening back up in a different world.

Are you tracking this development?

The section that follows takes a very short look at a history-making change.

In order to think well about your own situation, it might help to think about a development in another industry.

The Setup:

INTEL was founded in 1968 and for 20+ years was the dominating player in the computer memory industry.

In the early 90s a series of events brought them to a crisis that forced (or enabled) them to make a game-changing decision.

They could continue to fight it out in the memory business.

Or they could pivot and devote all their efforts to the development of microprocessors.

The easy decision would have been to stick with what they knew how to do.

The hard decision would be to abandon what had worked and instead enter the unknown.

In his best-selling book, Only the Paranoid Survive, former CEO Andy Grove told the story of his fateful conversation with Gordon Moore (a co-founder of INTEL).

Here is a key line in their conversation:

“If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do? Why shouldn’t we walk out, come back in and do it ourselves?” Andy Grove, Former CEO, INTEL.

Most likely, the primary reason you and I know about INTEL is that they made the right decision. They made the enormously difficult decision to abandon what had worked for 20+ years and put everything into a new trajectory.

How it applies to you and me:

I think we are going to have conversations around the world about what to do "when we reopen."

And I think some decisions will be made based on what is the expected thing to do.

And other decisions will be made based on what is clearly the right thing to do.

Further reading on assumptions:

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