Little Black Book

We're ramping up for some big training in IT this year. Everyone will go through CMMi training. We're all likely to get re-trained in the program life cycle (PLC, also known as the program/product life cycle). The goal is to reduce all big projects into smaller "chunks" of six months or less. We're not as efficient as we should be and we need to get better at estimating and hitting delivery dates. And having a common language to use for projects and deliverables would be helpful.

This all sounds fine, but it's not clear to me what problem we're trying to solve with CMMi. CMMi isn't a process, and it doesn't teach project management. Perhaps I'll learn better how this will help when I go through the training, but right now I can't really see the connection between the problems we're trying to fix and the actions we're taking. People at most corporations tend to like new things. CMMi is hardly new, but it's new in terms of embracing a way to manage and measure process in IT at Intel.

The PLC training makes sense, and I think most people in IT need to understand it. Despite what you hear about PLC being a planning framework, it's not. It's a series of steps required to get decisions and funding from your management. It basically says you need to do some research to get a clue, turn you clue into an idea, turn your idea into plan and explain why it adds value, then get it appropriately funded. It's really just a check-and-balances process. Once you start to look at it that way and follow the process, you'll start getting more decisions approved. Tip: be sure to use the PLC graphic in your presentations to show where you are in the process. There's and cool new graphic that's identical to the old one in every way except the graphics look more expensive. (They guys who revamped Intel's logo must have had some extra time on their hands.) Middle and senior managers in IT have a Pavlovian response to this diagram and you score points just for using it. And you get extra credit if you actually understand it, although it's not a requirement.

A few years ago in the eBusiness group things were going along fine strategically, but not so well tactically. Projects were missing delivery dates, quality was not good, resource and spending estimates were poor for most programs, and customers were generally not happy. I may get into the details of this in a later post, but for now just assume this is a fair assessment of how things were going. In the midst of what some might have viewed as a crisis the group's ability to meet customer expectations, deliver, the Sr. staff were focused on strategy. In particular they spent a lot of time working in succession planning - figuring out who in their groups could replace them, and who would replace those managers.

The VP had read a book called The Leadership Pipeline and was encouraging her staff to read it, and some of them encouraged their staff to do the same. It's a good enough book. But what I found funny (and a little sad) was the way some managers would leave this book out on their desks, or occasionally carry it with them from meeting to meeting. I sat through many meetings looking at copies of this book wondering why someone had brought it into the room. I never quite figured out why people carried their books around, but I decided that these were likely the same people who wore wore calculators on their belts in college to be easily recognized as one of the clan.

So what the heck is my point? In the middle of a situation where things were going badly, the VP decided that her staff should focus on something they were already doing pretty well. They didn't focus on project management, or estimation skills, or look at who was making program management mistakes and why. They didn't question how to react when resourcing came up short, because the answer was obvious. They didn't question much about the management aspects of delivering technology, just the leadership.

I don't think the IT is going down the same path with CMMi that eBusiness did by focusing on strategy rather than tactical issues. But I think they could be missing an opportunity to fill a knowledge gap in the organization, and to help solve many problems rather than just a few. But I'm going to make you wait for the answer until my next post. I'm guessing many of you know where I'm headed.

Regular Song

Some of you are asking about my intentions with this blog given my diminished posting rate. And someone posted this comment to my lone January entry:

Excuse me, but why do you blog if you never actually blog? You actually have some interesting insights that others at Intel fail to share, but a monthly posting is about as effective as Paul having someone write his blog entries for him.

That's a fair enough question. I know that I won't keep readers without writing regularly. My intent is to post at least once per week - a goal I am clearly not meeting. It's largely a matter of time. I've been balancing some unexpected life events and some travel for work. I also spend a fair amount of time on these posts, and if don't finish one it could me many days before I can get back to it. Finding uninterrupted blocks of time to finish my posts has been a challenge.

But those are excuses. I'll do my best to write more regularly. I have plenty of topics started, but they don't always develop the way I'd like them to. During the recent lull I started a couple of posts that were intended just to get something out there, but I wasn't comfortable posting just to post.

Thanks for the interest. I'll try to keep up a more regular pace.

Focalization #3

I'm getting a fair number of questions about the focal process this year. People aren't sure if it's very different, slightly different, or completely different from the previous process, or what this means to them. From am employee perspective focal is about the same. You should have recommend some names to your manager for 360 feedback. You should have done a self-assessment, and by now most of you have reviewed a summary worksheet or draft of your final review with your boss. Employees are now in the waiting period where their manager has likely completed ranking and rating, but they won't know anything until after April 1. For me the process as an employee was about the same this year. The only difference was that my boss wanted my to write my complete review rather than a worksheet.

For managers things are significantly different. Previously managers would go into a room and discuss every person in a rank group, usually between 8-20 people, but sometimes smaller, sometimes larger. Different rank managers used different processes for going through a session, but it was invariably a long, painful process. You needed to represent a years worth of accomplishments for am employee in 2-3 minutes. These sessions were a real power play, with managers negotiating, influencing, and doing a lot of acting to try and get their people ranked and rated fairly. Most managers tended to do a good job. There was usually some asshole in the room who thought his people were more deserving than everyone else's. But with a good rank manager and/or HR person in the room, things were usually kept in check. Depending on the size of your team and the number of rank groups they fell into, you could spend 1-5 days in R&R sessions. I usually spent at least 40-50 hours preparing worksheets, and other 30-40 hours writing reviews. Then there was additional time for figuring out pay increases, dealing with last minute budget or stock changes, and other stuff. It was not unusual for me to spend 3-4 weeks of time working on R&R.

Things could tend to break down in R&R sessions where there was an uneven distribution of power, influence, and bias in the room. I had one boss who insisted on being in all our R&R sessions as an "observer" so he could direct the outcome. It was similarly bad when the rank manager had some obvious bias and would help influence the result rather than just facilitate. The worst rank sessions were those in which the rank manager was representing their own employees. I was actually in one session where two of those happened: our boss was in the room to observe, the rank manager was representing his own people, and both of them had an obvious bias toward the rank manager's team. They were aligned on the result they wanted to see, and the rest of us were working hard to bring a sense of fairness to the session. This was an extreme case, but it's a good example of what's been wrong with the focal process: it often had more to do with a manager's political and influencing skills than the performance of their employees.

This year managers are ranking and rating people on their own. I ranked my team as an in-tact rank group. I had someone at the top and someone at the bottom. Some people are outstanding, some are not performing very well. We are being held to a distribution within our teams - I can't have an unlimited number of outstanding employees, or promotions. And I am expected to identify a percentage as poor performers. This is still a difficult task, especially for those with small teams. But it's far easier than spending days lock in conference rooms with other managers, influencing and arguing to try and get the right result.

We had one 3-hour meeting with my boss where we reviewed each other's results and and rolled up summary for the team. My boss needs to hit a distribution as well, and we didn't. So we had some conversation about who else could or should be given a poor performance message, and who really didn't deserve to get a promotion. Some of the old behavior came out, and some managers were overly defensive about their people. That's always going to happen. Doing this in 3 hours vs. 3 or more days was a huge improvement in process and efficiency, and yielded about the same result we would have gotten with the old process. And we still aren't quite done and will need to spend another hour or two working on our distribution. But considering what we used to go through, it's big improvement. Focal isn't perfect, and still takes up more time than I would like. I credit Paul with challenging the old process and for allowing these changes to take place.

Been gone a while

It's been exactly a month since I posted, which is far longer than I expected. I took some post-holiday vacation and have spent much of the time since digging out and preparing for focal. I should get back on track and post some of my wip writing over the next few weeks.

I bought a new PC over the holidays just because I felt compelled to own the latest, greatest Intel offering. I really wanted a Quad, but couldn't justify the cost and don't really have the need. I suppose I can always upgrade to Quad processor in the future, especially given how quickly prices seem to come down on new processors. As a consumer, I think it's great that Intel processors are relatively cheap. By "cheap" I mean that the performance I'm getting from my new Core 2 Duo is stellar compared to a Pentium that costs almost as much. I did a fair amount of reading before buying, and was surprised to see that tide has decisively turned toward Intel processors among every group I could find, even the overclocking crowd who have been AMD evangelists for years. While reading our Q4 earnings I got to thinking about how we've essentially abandoned two great brands (Pentium and Intel Inside).

Q4 results were posted last week. It was a good news/bad news kind of announcement, and overall I think were somewhat disappointing relative to the success our products have had. Earnings were in line with expectations ($9.7B) and earnings-per-share were $0.01 higher than expected. Gross margin was up slightly, but not quite as much as expected. We set a sales record in Q4, and the average selling price (ASP) of processors was up. Overall it was clearly a good quarter. The outlook for Q1 seemed a little timid to me, which is why stock is down. If sales are up and ASP is up, why isn't our margin increasing as fast as we expected, and why is the Q1 outlook lukewarm? One analyst thinks it's because pricing is too low. The idea is that Intel is willing to sacrifice revenue to win back some market share, and Paul made a comment to this effect during the earnings conference call. I'm not smart enough to tell you whether or not it's wise to sacrifice revenue for market share, but it's clearly good for consumers.

Given how good the press is for Core 2 processors, I'm left wondering if part of the problem is due to brand recognition. Pentium and Intel Inside used to be plastered all over everything. Now it's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, which is hard to memorize, hard to pronounce, and confusing to think about. "Did you say Core tutu? What's a core?" are questions I've gotten from friends. Actually, I don't get those questions from friends until I prod them by asking what they they've heard about the new Intel products. After they ask "what products?" and I tell them Core 2 Duo, they look at me like a dog trying to decipher which direction a sound is coming from. "Core what?" is the typical response. Core 2 Quad might be easier, and I hope that a year from now we're selling only Quad processors so I can quit try to explain (badly) what "2 Duo" means. I hope someone is working a brand strategy for the next series of processors that will be as simple and popular as Pentium was.

I'm guessing that we moved away from Pentium because we needed to convey that our new processors were truly new, and built on a different architecture. I'm not sure why we abandoned Intel Inside, other than we were re-branding everything. I don't have any problem with Leap Ahead as a slogan - it's sounds good. The problem is that Inside had to be one of the most recognized logos in the world. We've spend years training consumers to ask for "Pentium" by name. People simply aren't going to ask for a "Core tutu" when buying PCs, and it wouldn't matter because that product will be replaced by Quad processors or something else. What we've lost is the word association that can be used for a whole class of products over many years. I don't think it was wrong or bad to move beyond Pentium, but we haven't replaced it with anything else that consumers can relate to.

RIP Pentium, you served us well.

All I Want For Christmas...

I've been to three holiday parties where most of the attendees were Intel employees. One thing is certain when you get together with a large number of Intel people: there is going ot be a lot of work discussion. After having heard some stories and spoken to many employees outside of my typical circle, here's are some things I would like to see changed in 2007. These are small items, which could easily be delivered.

1. No more monthly status reports (MSRs) in IT.
Out of all the things I could ask for, you're probably wondering why writing a monthly status would be such a big issue. Well, it's because it's a time consuming task that is completely pointless. My December MSR was due on the 7th of the month. For October and November it was due on the 10th. How can you label a status report "December" when 75% of the work it covers was done in November?

Most of Intel quit writing MSRs at least a year ago. They had degenerated into personal marketing documents that everyone sent around to everyone else, and that nobody particularly wanted to read. You send an MSR to your boss. He combines all those from his team, adds his own stuff, and sends one to his boss. And so on up the chain until you see MSRs from the top level managers. But all this rolling up of status reports takes time, and each management layer wants a few days to work on their own MSR. In no reasonable scenario can I conceive how an MSR needs to be due before the middle of the month.

Since my November MSR was also due before the 10th, I do have about a full month's worth of accomplishments in my December status. But by the time the IT VP rolls out his status, some of the work I mentioned in mine will be about 7 weeks old. What's the point? We take time to write a report that nobody really reads, and that doesn't give any critical information. If you need some project indicators, have people roll those up monthly or quarterly. We all have quarterly goals. If you want a brief status against those, I'd be happy to comply, especially since I'm already doing that anyway, in addition to my MSR.

And now let's get to the part this whole nuisence that really bothers me: we're supposed to be in the middle of a big corporate efficiency effort. How is having everyone write a brag sheet every month and then taking 3 weeks to roll it up to the top levels helping to run the company, or in any way efficient? I'm sure some of you are thinking "but how much time could it take. Just scratch out a few lines and call it good." Here's a summary of two conversations I recently had with my manager about MSRs:

Boss: We're getting complaints that people are spending too much time working on their MSRs. Look, these should be really simple and straightforward.
Me: Well, I know you like it a certain way, and doing that takes time. I'm spending at least 45 minutes on mine.
Boss: That's way too much time. If you can't do it in 15 minutes you're spending too much time on it.

2 weeks later

Boss: Your status really wasn't very good this month. It took me a long time to parse out what you had written for my own status report. I need you to do a better job writing your status so I don't have to spend as much time on mine. Ideally I could just cut and paste what you wrote into my status.
Me: OK boss, sorry about that.

JJ, please do us a favor and kill off status reports in IT.

2. Allow people to attend staff meetings for their managers.
This is a new one for me. I just learned about this at a party this weekend.

There is a long (and good) tradition at Intel of managers picking someone on their team to cover for them when they are out. This allows the manger to feel that things will be taken care of, and it's a great opportunity for someone on their staff get better exposure, visibility, and experience. It's often used as a way to groom people. So if an IT staff member had someone on their team cover for them, that person would typically attend IT staff meetings and be interacting with their boss's peers.

But the CIO has apparently decided that he doesn't want anyone attending IT staff meetings who is not already on IT staff. The reason he gave was that someone covering might feel intimidated and not speak up, and they they might not know the answers to some questions. That's absolutely true. But it's also the whole point of having someone cover. It's an opportunity for them to see how they might intereact with more senior managers. It doesn't matter if they have all the right answers. If a permanent member of staff doesn't know the answer to a question, do you kick them out? No, you ask them to find the answer.

He said that instead, he would prefer to have staff members find peers, other IT staff members, to cover for them. Who has a better chance of looking out for a group of people: someone who works for the manager, or someone who is competing with that manager? I think the CIO and his staff might be overthinking this. This is simply one of the silliest management decisions I've ever heard of, and the more I think about it, the more silly it sounds.

There is of course the concern about someone hearing something when covering for their boss, but that is handled easily by just asking the person to step out of the room if the discussion or agenda moves to a topic they should not hear. We do this all the time, and it's just about that easy: "Bob, could you please step out while we discuss focal results? Check back in an hour to see if we're done." This is typically only necessary when discussing focal, salaries, or HR issues.

Following the CIO, most of IT staff also decided that none of their staff should cover staff meetings for them for them either. (Interestingy, I haven't heard about this from my boss.) So those of you in IT who cover for your bosses, you won't be attending any staff meetings for them any time soon because you might hear something inappropriate, because you're too intimidated to answer questions.

The reasons given for this policy don't make any sense. It smacks of JJ not trusting us and putting up a firewall between his staff and the rest of IT.

3. Sr. management to speak honestly about why no Sr. managers were fired this year.
For much of the year, Intel employees have been asking via blogs, in open forums, and coversationally why the people responsible for overstaffing Intel aren't being held accountable. Initially there were no answers. And then we starting getting some vague answers like "we all made mistakes, and we learned from them." This is just bullshit. The problem could have come from the very top; maybe Craig sent unresonably high staffing goals. And I don't expect the board to do anything about that. But there are also dozens of mid and senior level managers who blantly practiced empire building. They schemed and oversoldelse to grow their groups to the largest possible size for their own good, not for the good of the company.

Go find those managers with less than 100 people calling themselves "Director" of something and you'd have a good start on rounding up the worst offenders. Since senior people obviously aren't getting fired or demoted, it would be nice to know who is being held accoutable for the mess that was created.

4. Quit telling us how hard it was to fire people.
This last one is really easy. Senior mangers, including Paul and many VPs, need to quit mentioning how hard it was to fire people this year. I'm sure it was hard. But you know what has even harder? Actually getting fired. Next to that would be knowing that you may be fired, but having to wait 4 months to find out if you needed to start looking for another job. Those of you saying "it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do" never had your jobs at risk, and you're probably the people responsible for creating the situation that required the lay offs. You guys don't get to play the sympathy card. So please stop doing it.

Assorted things

I always have several posts partially written. Right now I've got about five going, and you should some some of them here soon. In the meantime, a few miscellaneous items.

My Focalization posts were referenced in the Mini-Microsoft blog. This guy (or gal) writes a nice blog with many topics that are familar to those of us at Intel. I've added this blog to my short list of links to the right not because he referenced my blog a couple of times, but because I think many of you will enjoy reading it.

Intel just created a bunch of new VPs - 13 to be exact. I don't know how many VPs Intel now has but it seems like the percentage of VPs is increasing. As far as I can tell, these people aren't changing jobs or getting more responsibility. I'm not sure what the VP title means at Intel now. Is it just a retention tool? There were some frustration expressed on the internal blogs about promoting people who were likely responsible for creating the mess to required us to fire people (downsize) this year. I don't know what adding additional VPs means, if anything.

I added a feed for comments over there on the right, just below the feed for posts. Not sure why I didn't do this earlier, but now those of you using a reader can get comments there as well.

Some questions from the mailbox:

Q: why do you think it's ok to use people's names in your blog. Isn't that an invasion of their privacy?
A: I try to only use names of people who are already known publically. When I discuss the Intel CIO or other execs, they are already known. I won't intentionally mention any one by name who isn't a public figure. I suppose this puts the new IT VP on notice that his name my be showing up here. (I've never seen any behavior from this guy that I would use as an example of bad behavior here, so he's probably safe.)

Q: Why do you think you have the right to write this blog.
A: That's a good question. Part of my answer is another question: why do you think I don't have the right to write this blog? My goal is not to harm Intel, but to talk about working there openly. I won't reveal any secrets, and my goal isn't to cause Intel harm. Given that, I think it's reasonable for me to blog on these topics.

Q: Why are you blogging anonymously? Wouldn't your blog have more impact if Intel knew who you were?
A: I don't know if it would have more impact. I'm choosing to blog anonymously for several reasons, some of which I've written about. The bottom line is that I know there would negative consequences for some of my writing. There not be any formal HR action, but there would be negative reaction that would impact my career. I also don't want to spend time talking to other employees about this blog at work, for their sake as well as for mine. And lastly, if people knew that I was blogging it would likely impact my ability do my job. My management and others may choose not to share information with me for fear that it would end up here, and my ability to influence could be diminished. The bottom line is that I can see some downside and not upside to disclosing my identity.

Focalization #2

There were a couple of good comments to the last post. If you haven't read them, please do so, as they give some good background relevant to this one.

As one of the comments mentioned, focal has changed recently and rank groups are more focused on in-tact teams. The advantage to this is that you don't have managers of other organizations gunning for you rather than their own people. The disadvantage is that your manager now has to hit distribution numbers with his own people rather than going after someone else's.

The basic idea of focal is that the top people get rewarded well, the bottom people get a strong message, and everyone else in the middle gets about the same (typically mediocre) raise and stock package. For the sake or argument, let's say that top 15% of performers get 2-3x better annual compensation, and that the bottom 15% get nothing. That means that the 70% in the middle are treated about equally. The difference in effort between someone who ranked at the 84th percentile vs. the 16th can be huge. But they will get about the same compensation.

My recommendations for focal:

1. Know your peers and know your boss. Focal is all about you being ranked relative to your peers. If you want to be competitive, you need to know what they're doing, how well they're doing it, and what your boss thinks of them. I'm not recommending that you act duplicitously, just that you pay attention to what people are doing and the team interactions with your boss.

2. Know where you are, and where you want to be. Don't work to be near the top. An "almost there" doesn't count at focal, and working your butt off to get near the top will often result in frustration. If you aren't competitive enough to be at the top, or don't want to work that hard, being in the 40-50th percentile is the sweet spot. This generally keeps you far enough away from the bottom that nobody is questioning your performance, but it doesn't have you working as hard as those in the 90th percentile for no additional reward. Knowing exactly where you will fall is nearly impossible, but you should be able to gauge yourself relative to your peers after going through focal or mid-year one time.

3. Write a good work sheet. Over and over I see people turning in crappy, overly verbose summaries of their own work for focal. Your boss will get 2-3 minutes to explain to other managers what you did for the year, and the results and impact it had. They'll also get to cover 3-4 items - no more. So when you summarize your accomplishments, focus on impact. Don't write about what you thought was important, or on what you did particularly well, but what other managers will think was important to Intel. It's all about the result and the impact. If you can put a real dollar figure or some other quantifiable metric, it's even better. If you didn't quite hit expectations for an item, either don't mention that or have a good explanation. If you did better than expected, flaunt it. "Conceived of and drove the xyz project to target and removed redundant servers in Oregon. This resulted in 47 servers being identified and shut down. The program target was $125K in savings, but Bob's efforts resulted in $300K savings for support, maintenance, and licensing." This is short, specific, and demonstrates that you not only hit a goal, but exceeded it.

4. Take advantage of bad mid-year reviews. Not all groups do a mid-year review, and in those that do everyone hates it. But getting a bad performance message at mid-year is far better than getting one at focal. Your boss has an obligation to help you be successful, so if you have a mid-year performance problem, they will work with you to turn it around before the end of the year. It's a reflection on them if they don't. Mid-year documentation tends to be treated informally, so it's far less likely that a future manager will know that you had a performance problem. A formal performance problem at focal will stay with you forever. But here's the real kicker: your boss can take credit for a bad mid-year message at focal. If he needs to have 3 poor performers at focal to hit distribution, and gave 2 messages at mid-year, he only has to find one more at focal. So he hits his target and you don't get a permanent mark.

5. Poor performance messages should not be a surprise. Once focal starts, it can take on a life of it's own and the target goals may force a manager to give a performance message they don't agree with. Or they may think you deserve a performance message, but hadn't mentioned it to you previously. Either way, if you had no idea that you were performing poorly before your review the momentum is in your favor. If you're boss didn't give you an indication that you needed to do anything differently during the year, it's going to be hard to make a performance message stick at focal.

5b. Take advantage of good mid-year reviews. If your mid-year review is good or better, you should expect to have the same review at focal, unless something has changed. If you find yourself in a situation where you did OK at mid-year and poorly at focal, your boss really needs to have given you some indication of this. If not, you have a good argument for reversing the bad message.

5c. Use the open-door policy. Intel has an process that allows you to speak to HR or your boss's boss when you feel you've been wronged. People rarely take advantage of this at focal, but I've seen it work over and over. It won't change a poor performance message that you deserved, but if you were treated unfairly, there's a good chance of it being changed. And people often think that their manager will hold it against them for escalating. That could happen. But sometimes your manager is frustrated at being forced to hit a target, and would welcome HR overturning the poor performance message they delivered.

6. Make a job change if needed. If you're in a group where you can't be competitive, consider finding a group where you can. I've had peers that made me look positively below average no matter how hard I worked. I've also been the rock star in other groups. This is usually up to luck or circumstance, but when possible don't move into a job where where you be the weak link.

Focalization #1

I'm going to post a couple of entries about the annual review process at Intel, known to employees as "focal" or R&R, which is an acronym for Ranking and Rating. My goal is to explain how focal works, what problems I have with it, and to give some tips to employees to better deal with the process. Some of this material is going to be obvious, some of it may not. I've been on both sides of the focal equation for several years (as an employee and a manager).

For any non-Intel readers, focal consists of collecting information on each employee from several sources, going through an evaluation process where they are ranked and rated based on their performance, determining compensation, and then giving feedback and results to the employee. A manager collects information from the employee themselves, from peers or stakeholders the employee recommends (and possibly some they don't recommend). They then complete an short written assessment of the employee using that information and their own observations. A manager theoretically has a fairly well rounded view of an employees accomplishments, strengths, and improvement areas from several sources. People are grouped by job function and/or manager into "Rank Groups", and the managers representing the people in a group sit down in a room and go through the written evaluations. Basically, you end up ranking people from the top to bottom (largest to smallest contribution). Being at the top is always good, but being at the bottom is not necessarily bad. For example, if you are junior relative to the others in the rank group, you would expect to fall toward the bottom.

Employee compensation is largely determined based on how well employees performed relative to their peers in similar roles and at similar pay grades. So if people in similar jobs at similar pay grades ranked higher than you did, there would be questions about why you feel below your peers. Similarly, if you were ranked above your peers, you would appear to be doing a better job. At a high level, I think this is a good process that generally does a fair job of evaluating performance. But in practice, there are several pitfalls, and it tends to encourage and reward some bad behavior on the part of managers. I don't know of anyone who likes it.

Your performance is determined based on how you stacked up relative to the other people in your rank group, not by an arbitrary measure. There are some obvious implications to this: if you work with a bunch of overachieving geniuses who live to work, you're going to have a harder time competing than if you work with a people not as highly skilled as you, or who don't work as hard.

Intel pushes the idea of target distributions for rank groups. In general the top 10% of the rank group is considered to be doing better than everyone else, and the bottom 10% is considered to be doing worse. It's a little more complicated than this, and the percentages may be different, but the idea is that a distribution needs to be hit. It's considered a target by HR, and very few people at Intel will tell you that it's a hard target.

I've worked in about 5 different groups at Intel, and had a dozen managers. All but two of them have insisted on hitting our distribution targets in focal. In practice, these distributions are almost always hard targets that need to be hit. Finding high performers is easy - the highest ranked people at a given pay grade are usually your top performers. You start handing out higher ratings to them until you meet your quota. Then you start looking for poor performers. Sometimes you have an obvious candidate or two. But with smaller rank groups in particular, you may not see anyone who deserves a bad performance message.

Because each rank group rolls up organizationally, each org manager will look across rank groups for an average. But if they aren't hitting their numbers, managers are going to be asked to find more poor performers.

This explanation turned out to be longer than I expected. What you need to understand about focal is that just doing a good job may not be enough to get a good review. If you're doing a good job, and everyone you work with is a doing a great job, you'll be at the bottom of the pack. My next entry will cover some ways to help manage this and how to prepare for the process.

Vote Beeblebrox!

I've got a couple of posts just about ready to go, but was sidetracked for a couple of weeks doing some volunteer election work in the evenings. I was primarily making calls to encourage people to vote, helping them to find polling places, and answering any other questions. The organization I was calling for had us make calls in areas where races were close, to people who were registered but unlikely to vote. Calling people cold is not a very rewarding experience, but overall I'm glad I participated in the process. After having made several hundred calls, I'll offer the following state-specific observations based only on my experience:

Florida - generally cordial about the calls
Massachusetts - the most willing to talk about actual issues
Ohio - I spoke to a lot of angry people
Connecticut - Most people didn't answer the phone
Missouri - probably the best answer rate, and people were generally polite
Pennsylvania - people were guarded but cordial
Virginia - better than Ohio, but overall not happy people

I don't have much data, but people in Ohio and Virginia just sounded completely worn out by the election. I suspect they are tired of being in the in the national spotlight, and are tried of being polled, advertised to, and harassed. I got a few comments like "this is the ninth time someone has called me!" In all states about 10% of my calls were to people who actually wanted some information about how and where to vote. This about the same percentage who told me clearly that they "didn't give a fuck about my election" and slammed the phone down.

I also learned the following:

• People don't like to be called at home
• People really don't like to be called at home after 8:30pm
• People really, really don't like to be called at home after 8:30pm to be told they should vote

I'll try to find a different way to help get out the vote in '08.

Missing Pieces

Some fallout that I didn't anticipate from the recent layoffs at Intel was that large gaps would start appearing in some areas. The recent layoff actions were skills based, and on paper the people with the lowest skills match to those Intel needs were let go. I know of several groups under 100 people that lost 40-75% of their people. When cutting this deeply, you're obviously going to lose highly skilled people along with those who are less skilled.

Within the teams I work with, which includes IT and some business groups, I'm starting to see that a percentage of the people let go were doing undesirable, low visibility, but nonetheless critical work. Now that people are gone I'm asking their managers how these tasks are going to get done. The answer is inevitably "we're working on it." The high visibility, sexy, fun stuff is already covered, but some of the ugly work that requires heavy lifting seems to have been dropped. It some cases it appears that managers either didn't know anything about this work, or they didn't value it. The gaps I'm seeing now are largely mundane background tasks that just seemed to magically happen.

We all know the "go-to" people in our workplace, whether it's Intel or any other company. Some people reliably get stuff done, and some don't. There are people who will see a gap and fill it themselves because they think it's important, because nobody else is doing it, and because they can. They'd rather just get it done than ask for permission, or ensure that it's prioritized, or wait for extra resources to appear. And I'm not talking about people who drop more important work to do what they want, but those who shoulder some extra work because nobody else has done so. Given the number of critical people that are gone and the number of gaps, I'm starting to wonder if the layoff process isn't seriously flawed. Keeping the right skills is important. But we're not adequately recognizing and valuing initiative, teamwork, and someone's willingness to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

Our value system for work often seems completely backwards to me. Year after year, I see people working on well funded, high profile projects get more praise, recognition, and rewards than those working on the more banal, day-to-day tasks needed to keep the company running. Anybody will work on the new stuff. It's far easier to work on something fun and interesting than it is to do KTBR (keep the business running) work. Working on highly visible projects is a reward in itself, so in effect we're doubly rewarding people who are working on the good stuff, and doubly penalizing people who work on KTBR.

Actually, when I look at some of the gaps that are emerging, I'd say that we're triple penalizing these people. The third penalty is that that we let them go because their "skills" didn't make them competitive enough. Willingness and ability to do this work is a skill, and one we've undervalued. I'll dig into this more deeply in my next couple of posts as I discuss Intel's infamous annual review process.

Parallax Blog

I almost can't believe that I'm going to blog about blogs, but I am. While I hate to divert eyeballs away from my own blog, I will risk it to mention a few recent blogs and blog entries that offer a different view of Intel and this blog. For any of you who haven't seen or read about it, Intel has some IT folks writing external blogs. And most amazingly, IT asked Jeff M. to be one of these bloggers. Jeff is known for writing an internal blog that is insightful, sardonic, sometimes hysterical, and that often pushes right through the envelope.

Josh of the (non-anonymous) TinyScreenfuls blog has decided to entertain all questions about Intel. You may want to swing by and see what kind of responses he's getting and posting. I expect it will generate a lot of interesting traffic. Kudos Josh.

And PentrinoIV of The Unofficial Intel Blog wrote a post about my post about this not being a free speech zone. I guess opinions are now like blogs, as everyone seems to have one.

I have to wonder (conceitedly) if the external blogs, and especially the inclusion of Jeff as a blogger, has anything to do with the rest of us out here blogging. Is it possible that someone at Intel decided that if people are going to read about Intel, that it may as well be on intel.com? I have no idea, and I tend to doubt that there would be a direct cause and effect. But if there is, that's the best impact I could hope for.

And to answer a question I got in email, I don't know any of these bloggers personally. And while I appreciate the image, we don't all hang out together at Starbucks in our sweatpants, laptops open, blogging away in a caffeine fueled, techno-speaking geekfest. (And yes, I know it's possible for me to know Pentrino VI and not realize it since we're both anonymous. One thing you learn working with a ton of smart, competitive people who specialize in logic [aka nerds] is that if you aren't exact and explicit, you get called on it.)

Leader of the Pack

Leadership is a funny thing at Intel. Ask most people about leadership and they'll give you fairly simple definitions, most having to do with others following willingly. But having followers doesn't seem to fit into the Intel definition of leadership. Over the last few years, Intel seems to be defining it as how well "leaders" can implement their management goals, tamp down dissent, and make projects look successful regardless of their actual state. To me, all of these seem to describe something other than true leadership.

There are clearly some management components to leadership, particularly in the corporate world. We need to work toward common goals. We all need to help make Intel successful. But just doing what you're told doesn't require much leadership. Being given positional power and authority does not make a leader. Any manager can order people to do something. It's how willingly they execute your orders and wishes that determines your leadership abilities. As does how you communicate, manage dissent, and allow people to develop and take risks. Leadership is about influencing people, winning trust, and gaining confidence, not giving orders. I see far to many managers (and some senior managers) managing only with their authority, rather than with leadership and influencing skills.

Intel managers sometimes hold "all hands" meetings where everyone in an organization is invited to attend. They are held to convey important messages, and to allow the group to engage in Q&A with their leadership. As Intel has been going through the recent efficiency efforts and lay-offs, these all-hands meetings have become more frequent. Over the past 8 months or so, the all-hands meetings in my group have been mandatory. Our general manager has decided that attending these meetings is not optional, and his assistant is tracking attendance. I wonder if it's ever occurred to him that if he's doing a good job, and is truly leading, that he wouldn't need to force people to attend. We should want to hear what our leaders have to say, and would welcome the opportunity to ask them direct questions.

I've noticed the same thing with our quarterly business update meetings. (These are meetings that Intel holds to review quarterly results and give business group updates.) These presentations are usually given by VPs, and some have made them mandatory. My first few years at Intel I looked forward to these and willingly attended. But then a few years ago they starting being uninteresting, and than they degraded to being difficult to sit through.

It took me a couple of quarters to realize the the problem was not the meeting or the materials, but the presenter. My group went from working for a dynamic, interesting, humorous VP to someone who was arrogant and seemed to go out of her way to alienate 1/2 the organization during these meetings. Quarter after quarter, at least 50% of the audience would leave feeling dejected, neglected, angry, and confused. And the worst part was that she seemed to be oblivious. She was only connected with specific people and projects, showed obvious favoritism, and simply wasn't a very good presenter. And in case you're wondering, I was usually in one of the groups that got her recognition. But it didn't feel any better to be falsely recognized than it did to be overlooked. After every meeting I wondered how this person could have been put in such a prominent leadership role, and how she could remain there.

When I spoke to one of her direct employees about this, someone tasked with trying to improve group morale, I was told "she doesn't always get the people aspect of her job." Then why the hell is she the one standing in front of 500 people giving a presentation? Why does my current general manager think it's necessary to force people to come hear him speak? Is he afraid to find out the if he doesn't make these meetings mandatory that we won't show up? If a leader calls a meeting and nobody attends, is he really a leader?

Intel clearly needs leaders who can deliver the work that needs to get done. But leaving a trail of disgruntled people in your wake should be a factor. If a large percentage of your organization doesn't want to follow you, or feels perpetually dejected, that's an indicator of poor leadership, regardless of your results. And if you look more carefully, you'll see that those with disgruntled people aren't getting nearly the results they could be getting with better leadership.

A couple of years ago I had a manager tell me during my annual review, for the only time, that my leadership abilities were in question. He had acknowledged that I was innovative, that my team willingly followed me, and that I focused on results over bureaucracy. And then he told me that all these things were irrelevant to leadership, and that true leadership was implementing his boss's visionahead of everything. More than anything else, I wanted to hand him a dictionary.

I don't know if this attitude about leadership at Intel is fostered anywhere - I've certainly never seen it documented. But it seems to be too easily tolerated. This kind of rigid "following" mentality, and a lack of consistent metrics to quantify leadership ability are allowing too many poor leaders to remain in sr. management positions. These people may add value to Intel, but they have no business leading us.

! Free Speech Zone

I've been doing some unexpected traveling which has kept me from posting regularly. I'll try to get a few posts in this week, but first I need to do more housekeeping. I'm still behind on e-mail, so if you haven't gotten a reply from me yet please be patient.

Moderated comments are enabled on this blog, so they don't become visible until I OK them. I can either publish them or ignore them, but I can't edit them. I went with moderated comments rather than just allowing them to automatically post due to a concern about people mentioning non-public figures sharing confidential information.

Over the weekend someone submitted a comment that I won't post. The commenter was recently laid off and was making a point about why he may have been targeted. I was sorry to read that he was redeployed, and his point was valid. But then he went on to make an judgmental comment about an unrelated group of people. I considered publishing the comment then responding to to it, but I caught myself. Anyone is free to think or write whatever they want about other people, but this isn't the place to do it. I won't post my political or religious views here and I won't allow them to be included in comments. This isn't a free speech zone.

A few have asked about getting an RSS feed from this blog, so I added a subscribe button on the right. There is also an email subscribe option for those who want it. I would opt to use something other than my work email address for this. Note that won't see any of these email addresses and won't do anything with them if I did.

Do the Right Thing (#1)

During my time at Intel I've experienced a lot of good and some not so good behaviour. I've seen people role model good working values and do the right thing many times. I've also witnessed some bad behavior, and I intend to discuss both over time. I'll start with an exchange that took place a few years ago and, for a number of reasons, was eye opening to me.

A short preamble: I've thought about whether or not I should share these experiences. They're all historical, not current. And I don't expect to change what happened or their effects. But I'm hoping to shed some light on how things can work at Intel, and how individuals can impact them. Keep in mind that any less than ideal behavior I describe is typically exceptional, and is based on the actions of specific people, not corporate policy.

I was a new manager in a staff meeting. I knew most of the other managers on the staff, and we worked for two guys who both managed the team (two-in-a-box). We were discussing the upcoming focal sessions (Intel's annual employee review process). A few weeks earlier we had gone through a skills assessment exercise which was used for downsizing in some groups. Many employees were concerned that the skills exercise would be used as part of the focal process, which would have been a big change.

To address these concerns, HR had made it clear to all employees, especially managers, that the skills assessments would not be used for focal, that people would be evaluated with the standard process. Below is a discussion that took place in this staff meeting. The two bosses were middle managers who I'll refer to as "MM 1" and "MM 2." They considered another manager on the team a cowboy, so I'll call him "CB."

MM 1: To get through focal more quickly, we're going to use the skills assessment scores as a starting point for ranking. It's just a starting point, and rankings can change as we talk about people. Any issues with this?
CB: Well, we're not supposed to be using the skills matrix for focal.
MM 1: Why not?
CB: Because we told people we wouldn't use it.
MM 1: How will they know? Are you going to tell them?
CB: No, but we told people we wouldn't do it.
MM 1: Well, MM 2 and I have talked about this and we think it's the most efficient way to get through focal.
CB: But we're not supposed to do it.
MM 2: I don't see why not.
CB: Because we told people we wouldn't.
MM 2: But they won't know. All they care about are the focal results, and this will help get us done faster.
CB: I'm not sure it's legal.
MM 1: What are you suggesting?
CB: That we don't use the skills data for focal.
MM 1: We'll have to re-design our entire focal process.
CB: If someone challenges their focal results it's going to be a problem.
MM 1: Will you be ok if we call HR and get them to approve it?
CB: Sure.

MM 1 calls our HR rep and gives some background, then asks the question:

MM 1: So can we use the skills data to get first cut at ranking, just to get started?
HR: Absolutely not.
MM 1: But we're not saying that ranking won't change, we're just using it as a starting point.
HR: We told people we wouldn't use the skills matrix for focal. You can't use it.
MM 1: Can we compare our ranking to the skills data to see how it matches up?
HR: No. You can't use the skills matrix for focal.
MM 1: Not even for validation?
HR: No.
MM 1: Ok, thanks.
MM 1: I think we should still use it.
MM 2: I don't think we can. We need to redo our focal process.

I was surprised by several things. I didn't expect someone to challenge their manager(s) and hold their ground. I didn't expect the managers to continue to argue for a something that was clearly ethically wrong. I was shocked when one of them recommended continuing with the plan after being told they couldn't by HR. It didn't occur to me at the time, but looking back I'm surprised that nobody else spoke up, including me.

Watching this conversation unfold was a great lesson for me. Someone took a stand to do what was right, when there was nothing in for him. In fact, all he could gain from this was the ire of his management but he did it anyway. As I've matured at Intel I've tried hard to be more like CB, and it's not easy. When Intel is laying people off, who wants to be seen as the person who tells their manager that they aren't acting ethically. It seems easier and safer to be politically correct.

Intel is far better off when we challenge each other to do the right thing. Bad personal ethics can only exist if we allow them to. But doing this can be risky, and I haven't found the perfect balance between speaking out and being successful.

MM 1 and MM 2 are still middle managers at Intel. CB left Intel a couple of years ago, as did the HR rep who agreed with him.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

Both a good day and a sad day as an Intel employee.

There is some excellent press about Paul's presentation at the Intel Developer Forum taking place in San Francisco. Also some pictures and other info. Paul announced that we'll be shipping quad core processors in November. And a large part of an an AMD's law suit (du jour) against Intel was dismissed by a federal judge. Paul showed off some Teraflop processors. Overall a good news day.

The more I see Paul out doing these events, the more I like him. He seems to be a charismatic guy and is good with the press, which to me is as important as having the ability to run the company. Will we see Paul sitting across the table from Larry King anytime soon?

It was a sad day at Intel as I heard about some cuts starting to take place. This will be happening over the next week or so, and as I've said before, it's hard on everyone. It's worst for the people who are let go, but also bad for the people who have to tell them they're going, and for the rest of us watching friends leave. Chins up, guys.

A couple of additional housekeeping notes: I'm traveling and am still working on some other posts. I've got some e-mail from several readers that I won't be able to return until later this week. Thanks for your patience.

Please Mr. Postman

I'm working on a few posts that should be ready to publish shortly. In the meantime, I'll cover some housekeeping and address some email questions I've gotten.

A few of you have asked why I'm blogging externally rather than using the internal blog system at Intel. There are few reasons for this. First of all, I like that Intel has an internal blogging system for employees. There are several blogs that I read regularly. I'm not sure where the exact boundary is between acceptable or not for blogging internally, but I can almost guarantee that I'd be crossing a line with this blog. There's one particular funny, popular, insightful blog inside Intel that recently retracted a post that poked fun at the CEO after an open forum meeting with employees. It was a humorous, insightful, and well written post. The blogger said some things that many of us were thinking, but was far funnier than most of us were in our own heads. I didn't think any less of the CEO after having read it, and actually was impressed that Intel would allow someone to post that blog entry. But then it was gone shortly after being posted.

Did someone ask the blogger to take it down? I don't know - he wrote that he removed the post voluntarily. I'm guessing he removed it after having a conversation with his boss or HR. I say this because, as a fellow blogger, I doubt he would have written and posted an entry he was not comfortable with. And why would a smart, funny guy retract a smart, funny post? Btw, I fully support some boundaries - clearly you can't let employees say anything they want on an internal blog. But it's determining where that gray area is that causes a problem, and that one retracted post was an indicator for me. So that's why I'm writing out here and not in there.

I've gotten comments from a few non-Intel people who are reading. One from an Intel spouse, and a couple from friends of Intel people. They seem to appreciate the perspective they're getting here. This wasn't intended, but if this blog helps give non-Intel employees a better perspective, I think it can only be helpful.

I was asked about the post that disappeared for a while last week. I don't know what happened, but it was moved to my blog drafts folder. This may be a quirk of the blog software, or more likely something I did. While I will edit for punctuation and readability after posting as needed, I don't plan to remove any entries, or heavily re-edit (as I did with one post). My posts will stay out there, and I'll make corrections or address issues in subsequent entries if needed.

A couple of folks asked whether or not they should be reading this blog from inside Intel. I can't really answer that, as it's a personal choice. Like many employees I tend to access the Internet infrequently during the day, and I think it's considered acceptable. Please do what you feel comfortable with.

The Blue Badge of Courage

There are two recent articles published on the internal company web site that I found interesting. Both are positive, well written, and give good information. My reactions to the two articles could not be more different. The first was a Q&A with the VP running the company wide efficiency effort (our CFO). It was only a few questions, and they were soft but direct. I thought the answers were good. I think he gave a fair overview of what the efficiency team is trying to get done, explained the reasoning for several actions, and talked about the long time line and the anxiety it's causing. Overall it was well done, and acknowledging that it's stressful for employees shows empathy, which reduces employee stress. I appreciate the information he provided, and better about the effort efficiency overall. I was happy with the message and appreciate the CFO answering those questions.

The other was an article about decision making. It was a good description of what's happening to improve decision making across the company. But it was missing any mention of a large, possibly the largest, issue I see with decision making: delegation. How delegation is handled obviously varies from manager to manager. But it seems that over the past few years managers have been less willing to delegate true decision making. Too often I've seen managers delegate and then overrule the decisions that get made. Thinking about delegation got me thinking about trust, and courage.

Here's a tip for those managers who delegate decision making authority and then change their employee's decisions: that's not delegation. True delegation requires trust, and some faith in your employees, and risk taking on your part. You have to be willing to let your people make decisions you don't like, and let them figure out how to deal with that. And maybe help them deal with it. I'm obviously not talking about irresponsible delegation, or decisions that put the company at risk. When overruling decisions I've heard some managers explain "you made the wrong decision." No, they didn't. If you delegate a decision, then the decision that gets made is the right one, by definition. If you already know the answer you want, you shouldn't delegate, you should dictate. Saying "Go do this" is perfectly acceptable, and far more efficient than saying "go make a decision, but only the right decision."

A few years ago the eBusiness group (now part of IT) determined that decision making was a big problem. Many people in the organization were complaining about it, and it bubbled up to the VP and her staff. One problem was that decisions made by the staff were too often being reversed later by the VP, and there was a rebound effect on the organization. An even bigger problem was delegation. People were told they were empowered to make decisions, but they were often overruled by the staff or VP, so it often seemed like there was little real empowerment below that level.

After hearing enough complaining about this, the VP assigned someone to look into the decision making problem and come back with a recommendation. After a couple of months a whole new decision making system was rolled out that included formal tools and training. We all took the training and were advised to use the tools. This led to me having conversations with my manager like this:

Me: We lost of one our QA people. I'm going to move an engineering guy over to cover. I think the schedule will be ok.
Manager: How did you decide to do that?
Me: It makes the most sense. This guy understands QA, he's ok with the move, and it will keep us on schedule.
Manager: Do you use the decision making matrix?
Me: What? No. This is the right thing to do. QA is the critical path.
Manager: You need to use the decision making matrix. Please go through the process and get back to me.

This is an extreme example, but my boss was determined to have us use a new, cumbersome process to do what we were already doing well. I don't know what he really thought about the process - I suspect he was doing it because he was told to.

Allowing true delegation requires courage, and faith in your people. The courage to let people make decisions that could make you look bad. The faith to trust that they want to make you look good. The same kind of courage is needed to question using a new process that seems stupid and inefficient. It takes the same courage to let people speak their minds about their work environment, or their management, knowing that they may say things you dislike. And the faith to trust that they'll write the truth, perhaps help others feel better, and maybe allow people to laugh a little in the middle of a tough day. These things take courage.

Blog's Labours Lost

I was writing a long post about managers admitting mistakes. I had it 90% done but did something stupid and lost it. I am apparently destined to re-learn the lesson about saving drafts of my work many times. I'll get it rewritten in a day or two, and for now will share a few other items.

There was an interesting article about Intel culture in the Oregonian a couple of weeks ago. It's a good article, but I don't agree with all of it. It's a short read.

Traffic to this site is fairly low. But I'm still surprised to be getting any traffic at all. The visitors I am getting can probably be attributed to the generosity of Josh and PentrinoVI IV. I thanked them both privately for mentioning this blog on theirs, but wanted to do so publicly as well. Thanks guys! I recommend checking both their blogs if you haven't yet (they have permanent links in my Other Interesting Blogs section).

Things are starting to heat up as we approach the next round of cuts. I've had several conversations lately with people from one sub-group that is going to get hit hard. (I'm choosing not to say which group out of respect for them.) They've all be told that about 75% of their ~100 person group is going to get laid off, and they don't know yet who will be keeping their jobs. These guys know their chances are not good, and are scrambling to line up temporary assignments or find something outside of Intel. Most impressive is that the people I've spoken to are philosophical about it. They all want to find something else, but none of them are angry or bitter. Real pros, these guys.

We'll see more and more of this over the next couple of weeks. Some people will take it in stride, some won't. No one way of reacting or handling this situation is better than another. Those who are laid off need to get through it the best way they can. Most people just want to work and go home to their families. I don't have any sage advice to offer. As I said in a comment to a previous post, this is hard on everyone at Intel, and doubly so when you start seeing people you know and like being impacted.

I appreciate you reading, and especially appreciate the comments I've gotten. I had originally posted a longer version the "Don't Speak" post which read much better and had more impact, but I thought it was too long and whittled it down. Someone had read the original before I edited it, and commented that they were unimpressed with shorter version. So going forward I'll worry more about content than length. Let me know what you think and I'll consider making adjustments.

I Dig Everything

I had to step out at lunch to mention that this blog has been dugg by one of you. Four votes and one comment isn't exactly going to get it moved to the top of digg.com, nor is the fact that I'm targeting a fairly narrow audience. But I appreciate it anyway.

Working for the Middle

Intel is going through a large efficiency exercise. Those of us who work there have heard all about it for months. There's been some press about it as well. Intel makes good money, but the stock has been flat for a while. Sales are only ok, but will get better as the new processors gain momentum. But earnings are down, so cutting expenses makes sense. Given Intel's employee population explosion over the past few years, cutting some jobs seems reasonable, particularly in areas that appear to have redundancy.

But there are several things about the efficiency effort I don't get. In a recent IT open forum meeting, our CIO mentioned that the "efficiency team" (I'll address this more later) looked at Intel's IT expenses relative to those of other companies and found that they were higher than average. He said the upcoming cuts would help to get us in line with the average for IT spending.

When I heard that, I thought it sounded fine. If we're spending more in IT than similar companies, then we're probably over spending. It sounds right. Right? But that word "average" kept sticking with me. Average. Hmmm... And then it occurred to me: why does Intel want to be average? What at else at Intel is expected to be average? Do we hire average people? Do most people work average hours? Do most of us have average passion about our jobs? Do we produce (or want to produce) average products? Why do we want IT average costs to influence what Intel spends on IT?

I'm not advocating that Intel necessarily needs to spend more than the average on IT. And I'm not saying that knowing what the average is, and knowing what we spend relative to it is a bad idea. But to use the average as a target seems inane. We hired a consulting firm to help us figure out efficiency. We sent the new CFO off to work with them for months. He took two IT staff members and had them working on IT efficiency for several weeks. And the best these guys could come back with is that our spending should be average? I can't help but ask: What the fuck are these guys thinking? How is this leadership?

Intel should spend what it needs to spend to make the company successful. If the board, and the CEO, and the CFO don't want to spend what we should, then make the hard decisions needed to cut back on IT services. But let's do it intentionally, for specific reasons, and know exactly what we're getting. Perhaps Intel has good reasons to spend more than average. Maybe IT services are a strategic advantage, so spending more gets us more productivity. Or maybe the exact opposite is true, and we should be spending less. It doesn't matter, provided that Intel determines what it needs to spend to do the right job.

It's possible that the CIO was using this as a reason to justify the upcoming layoffs, and that this really wasn't how the IT budget was determined. And if he was using this to try and soften the blow, or give some reasoning for the cuts, it didn't work. At least not for me. I want to know that Intel is looking hard at the company and choosing where to spend and not spend money, not just copying others. Do we want to spend an average amount on marketing too? What about finance, HR, and legal? In some of these areas, I have not doubt that Intel can be below the spending average if we work at it.

There are two key messages I'd like to give the CEO, CIO, and CFO: Striving to hit an industry average target seems like the easy way out to cut spending. The second is a recommendation: don't ever tell Intel employees that the goal is to be average at anything, even spending.