Truth 56. Open questions ignite inspiring answers

In his 1996 book Only the Paranoid Survive, Intel CEO and cofounder Andy Grove told the story of how in the 1980s, he posed the following question to his partner Gordon Moore, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do?” Moore’s answer was quick and decisive: The hypothetical CEO would get the company out of the memory chip business. So Grove proposed that they “fire” themselves, return as their own replacements, and do just what the new CEO would do. So they did, transforming Intel into a microprocessor maker. And that’s why today most of us have “Intel inside” on our computers.

Good questions help us do our jobs better. Journalism students are trained to write ...

Get Business Productivity Strategies for Success (Collection) now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.