Tecate, Morrowinder, Alan, Andyk,
Thanks for your responses.
Frequency of failure tell a story about the quality of execution or inability to hide poorly executed projects. My post is not as much about Grantsdale, as it is about last few years. Andyk has tried to make a point in his post that the frequency is no different from early 90s and Morrowinder pointed out that there is just more scrunity now than before. While I disagree that there were as many execution problems as in the early 90s than now, coming under more scrutiny when you are #1 is inevitable. Being #1, you are under an added burden of proving your execution and quality more than others. There is little chance you are going to be able to change that dynamics, even though it may sound unfair. Intel has to address the issue about the perception of execution (either execute better, or hide poorly executed projects better).
I think it makes perfect sense to measure against better execution (in the case early 90s). Back in early 90s, was I asking for more ? Of course. I was wondering why Intel isn't doing as well as CISCO or DELL. Why sell yourself short by measuring against competitor like AMD, when there is even better example of execution? Investors demand more (Tecate calls it whine) and poke holes where there is room for improvement. This is not a fan club, it’s an investment forum. Greed and continuous improvement is the name of the game. You don’t justify and find excuses when you have your hard-earned money invested in the company. Its not sufficient to be #1 with 15% semi market share (especially when you haven’t improved your position much in the last few years). It’s all about growth and more growth, if you are an investor.
Alan,
While I understand there more experience with failure help succeed second time around, it sounds to me like a 2nd order gain from a 1st order loss. Projects are of course not ‘easy’ for the team doing it, but I am questioning your acceptance of failure so easily and am questioning the lack of ‘paranoia’ culture with that additional edge Intel had (I mean specifically in the core-competency groups). Regarding FDIV bug that created wonders of Intels reputation, it was a case of pure luck and co-incidence. I bet that no project manager is told to fail to create recalls in their product or create FDIV bug to gain popularity. 9 out of 10 times you will come out ahead with good execution in the first place. Agreed that Intel Brand value continuous to grow, but the question here is if they are #4 now, could they have been even better off, had there been better execution ?
What good does demand for perfection do in a business world ? For one, it creates a culture of no-excuse deliverables. It’s puts people on a healthy edge to perform, where failures is not an acceptable option. Its sets a psychological bar higher than in a culture where mistakes are ‘understandable’ and as a result, you are more likely to deliver closer to perfection.
So, why am I invested up to my next in Intel ? Among many other things, Intel Execs ability to be brutally honest with their own execution in the past (No, I am not reading much into what the Intel PR says to the outside world – That’s just about external damage control). After execution problem in 1999/2000, Barrett came out saying that they simply “dropped the ball” and Andy Bryant recently said they “blew it” last year with Flash price increase. Then they went about addressing it. There seems to be a lot more emotional investment by many posters on this thread to be truly ‘honest’ with Intel execution and Intels ability to perform even better. I truly believe that they can do much better than they have been.
JMO, of course!
Maui.
