Lila Ibrahim, who held a series of senior positions at Intel over nearly 2 decades, gave insight into a period of turmoil at the company in the mid-XNUMXs.
Interviewed on stage at Slush XNUMX in Helsinki on the topic of 'being avant-garde in a culture of responsibility', Ibrahim recounted a case where former Intel CEO Craig Barrett sacrificed his reputation to stabilize the ship.
"When I was in this Chief of Staff position, there was a time when the company was not functioning properly and there were a lot of infighting and accusations," he said.
To deal with these "distractions," Barrett sent out an internal memo taking responsibility for the inconvenience, knowing it would be leaked to the press, he said.
When Ibrahim asked Barrett why he was quick to admit the negative press, he replied: “It's my responsibility as a leader to be accountable and get people to focus on what they can bring to the table, what's most valuable.
A lesson in leadership
While Ibrahim did not go into great detail or name Barrett explicitly, he is most likely referring to the series of manufacturing issues that caused a faster version of the Pentium XNUMX processor to be delayed in XNUMX.
The company also missed its goal of reducing the unit cost of its chips by XNUMX% that year. Intel Chairman Paul Otellini, who later succeeded Barrett as CEO, blamed the failures on "vicissitudes" in the business.
According to Ibrahim, Barrett had fallen on his sword to let the company go ahead with its plans.
Now working as an operations manager at artificial intelligence firm DeepMind, alongside Demis Hassabis, Ibrahim says he learned a valuable leadership lesson from Barrett's approach to problem-solving and accountability.
“My style of COO is someone who is a servant leader of the organization, the mission and the creator. Sometimes you have to compromise and accept responsibility.
"to cover risk taking, which is the only way for an organization to succeed; not by condescending, but rather by taking calculated risks.