An Insider's View of Constructive Confrontation at Intel

I have always been a big fan of Andy Grove and of Intel’s constructive confrontation approach. But, as with all effective management practices, the use of this approach may be difficult to sustain in practice and over time.  A former Intel insider, Logan Shrine, wrote me this morning about his book about the demise of the Intel culture (written with Bob Coleman) called “Losing Faith”.   

Logan's comments, prompted by my positive comments about Grove and constructive confrontation in my book, are pretty interesting:

“Intel has what's called "constructive confrontation" that was instituted as part of the Intel culture under Andy Grove.  As an ex-Intel employee who had worked there under Andy Grove and also under the two subsequent CEO's (Barrett and Otellini), I can tell you unequivocally that constructive confrontation was a license for assholes to be assholes and express themselves (one most likely thinks of engineering stereotypes).   It wasn't there to police them, but to give people carte blanche to express those behaviors.  There is and has never been (during my tenure) any consequences for managers who are assholes at the company.  As someone who worked at other Fortune 500 companies before joining Intel, I can say without question that Intel's culture is dysfunctional and anomalous to what's considered acceptable behavior in any other corporation that has any semblance of a human resources structure.   

Now, you are probably thinking that I'm a bitter ex-Intel employee.  I'm not.  In fact, I'd like to attest that what made Intel's culture operationally perform was when everyone was treated equally under constructive confrontation and people exercised their right to constructively confront other people when they witnessed a clear violation of Intel values.  Although I would not condone Intel's form of this behavior at any other company, it worked at Intel when the culture was egalitarian in its enforcement of the practice.  What changed in the culture (I talk about this in my book, "Losing Faith: How the Grove Survivors Led the Decline of Intel's Corporate Culture") is when the managerial ranks put themselves "above" the values and practices of the culture - in effect, considered themselves "entitled."  Once this occurred, there was an obvious and visible change in the hiring practices to bring people in who wouldn't "question" management or the behaviors that were in antithesis of the published values.  Managers didn't confront other managers, subordinates didn't question their managers (even when some of their decisions didn't make sense or were self-serving instead of benefiting the company), and people became confused and disillusioned.  This led to breakdowns in process and project execution and subsequent declines in operational efficiency and performance.

This sounds like a most interesting book, and Intel is a company that I’ve always followed closely and been fascinated by, I just ordered a copy.

In addition, I want to emphasize  (whether they are doing it right at Intel or not), a large body of research shows that groups are more effective when they fight in atmosphere of mutual respect – with performance that trumps groups that don’t fighting over ideas,  or worse yet, engage in vicious personal conflict -- something I talk a lot about in Weird Ideas That Work.  If Logan is right, it appears that Intel is swerving toward less constructive conflict, and that the culture is losing its edge in other ways. But I would be curious to hear about Intel from other knowledgeable insiders, former insiders, and anyone else who knows Intel well their reactions to Logan’s note and his book (if you have read it, of course).

Comments

[SST]

I worked for Intel from 1995-2004 in Fab15 and Fab20. Constructive Confrontation does work when there is mutual respect and maturity between the conflicting parties. Intel lost it's culture during the transition to the Ronler Acres site. The focus became cost savings and personal development courses were no longer seen as value added. This created a wave of new hires that were never assimilated into the Intel culture and thus began the transformation. At Fab15, Engineer's/Op's Manager's and SST's worked together as one unit and created "The Best Fab on The Planet". It was truly a "Great Place to Work". During the transformation to Ronler Acres, upper management decided to hire New College Graduates to run their fabs rather than promote the personnel who ran the equipment for years and were the real experts. This new wave of Engineer's/Op's Manager's were the epitome of what's happened to the USA. They came in and were concerned with one thing, themselves! They came in with their mouths wide open and their ears and eyes shut. Clearly displaying their ignorance and displaying an air of entitlement. They didn't embrace the SST's and treated them like second class citizens. Constructive Confrontation was no longer a valuable tool because the SST's became resentful and distrustful of management and the Engineer's/Ops manager's no longer respected the input from the "equipment experts". The result was poor quality and constant struggles with equipment and processes. Shortly before I decided to leave Intel, I spoke with my manager about these trust issues and the answer's I received were "I got to feed my family, so I got to do what I got to do" and "we pay you to put up with this". I had enough of the nonsense at that point and moved on. Much happier now.

[JenK]

I am an engineer who worked for Intel from 96 to 98 and I thought the constructive confrontation concept was great. It most certainly did not give assholes the right to be assholes... the whole point was to be "constructive", hence the title.

At that time, one of the main concepts of the Intel culture was that everyone was equal. There was great emphasis on the team concept and management consistently claimed there was no hierarchy of power. Obviously, that's not reality, however the behavior really did reflect equality at that time. It seems to me, the problem does not lie with the constructive confrontation concept... It lies instead with the abandonment of the equality concept.

[TonyG]

I just started reading the book about the "No AssHole Rule".

Great statement,

we must overcome this history because we must have the positive results of creative, collaborative discussions of conflicting views by intelligent, well meaning individuals

and the question from JMG3Y:

So in re-launching this group as a new team rather than a dysfunctional group, what should we put to paper for ground rules (and what should we do)?

I can only say that i was once one of those assholes that thought that I was entitled.

The people I worked for cared enough to re-educate me in a way that cured me from that arrogant attitude of entitlement.

They Fired me!

Sometimes words on paper is not enough.

[Wally Bock]

There is a "business macho" culture in some companies that values tough talk and confrontation. When you hang around people who come from those cultures, they tell stories about put-downs, rudeness and such in the way that other companies tell customer service stories. Those cultures grow assholes. This is all passed off as "candor" or realism or truth telling but it gives license to jerks to act jerklike.

[JMG3Y]

Any suggestions for what to incorporate into the ground rules of a re-orienting, self-directed team to stimulate the necessary creative conflict but squelch the a**hole behavior? Previous (and unfortunately consistent) behavior by some group members led many to retreat to silence and distrust, which was tolerated by the administrators and the culture. Now having been given a new charge (you gotta fix this among yourselves), we must overcome this history because we must have the positive results of creative, collaborative discussions of conflicting views by intelligent, well meaning individuals. So in relaunching this group as a new team rather than a dysfunctional group, what should we put to paper for ground rules (and what should we do)?