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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (104157)	6/8/2000 6:56:00 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Hi Thread, RE: "On another subject, Intel's paranoid culture" A top-down confrontational culture may work well when the person at the top is one of the world's smartest/most knowledgeable/best chief technical officers. When he's not there, then what? I recall reading that decisions are now getting pushed down to the divisional or team level. Without the big technical chief and with growing product teams, team performance is increasingly dependent upon soft skills, like cross-team collaborative communications, not only hard skills like bulldozer confrontations which may prevent executives from listening to teams. "Awareness" is dependent upon soft skills (like listening) and the ability for a culture to promote, value, and measure soft skills. A confrontational paranoid culture may find it difficult to engage in intuitive marketing skills (soft skills), or listening (gatherer) of market needs. Collaborative implementing and communicating of plans are the friendlier softer things which enhances cross-team communications and team performance and keeps goals aligned and everyone in synch (with the market and with each other). It also creates an exciting creative positive energy, which can be powerful when channeled into delivering high-quality products when balanced by a firmness for deadlines and closure. However, are these important soft skills valued in a confrontational environment? The network biz operates in a more cooperative culture, and could be one of the reasons why network companies appear to be able to absorb acquisitions quite well. Can Intel make a cultural shift which might be needed in order for it to succeed in the future? Or, is the network business turning into a high-volume manufacturing type-of-business where a manufacturing-type-of-confrontational environment might succeed? Maybe. Maybe not. Let's examine this. There was an article which said Andy visited an acquisition and the article said the folks there hid something which was part of their culture because he was coming. Maybe he should have told those folks that he erred by creating a feeling they had to hide who they are, that maybe he erred by creating a feeling they couldn't keep their own culture, because just maybe Intel's culture won't work for some of the new markets? OTOH, when you look at the phenomenal turn-around story which Itanium is, you begin to see that Intel execs are quite smart in their ability to be flexible enough to completely change and value intuitive awareness over bulldozer confrontation since the later only works if the person at the top is in charge of all the products and is the world's best chief technology office. My vote is that Intel can do it. Best, Amy J