It took a lot of hard work and some tough love for Pat Gelsinger to make his way to his dream job as CEO of Intel (INTC). After Gelsinger started at the company in 1979, he made it his mission statement to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, helping Intel become a leading US tech company, not to mention a household name. But he couldn’t have done it without his no-frills mentor and some bumps in the road along the way.
Gelsinger likes to say that he put the silicon in Silicon Valley. And after witnessing a systematic decline in US chip making following a long period of outsourcing to China and other countries, he’s looking to achieve that once again by bringing semiconductor manufacturing back stateside.
The charismatic CEO sat down with Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita at Intel headquarters to speak about how Intel is bringing chip manufacturing back to the US, and how he became the leader that he is today. He attributes a lot of his success to his mentor, Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel. Gelsinger was taught to give tough feedback to his employees, as well as maintain a level of honesty to build trust.
Intel’s success is being reflected in the market and its stock price as it continues to recover back to levels where it once stood as the leading developer in technology. As Intel continues to make strides, it’s bringing with it the US semiconductor industry as a whole.
Lead This Way is a new series that features big interviews with the business leaders shaping our world today. In these one-on-one conversations, we reveal how their approach to leadership helped them become Wall Street titans.
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PAT GELSINGER: I am asking the team at Intel to go on the biggest corporate transformation, maybe in the history of technology, maybe in the history of the last 100 years. We are transforming this company.
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AKIKO FUJITA: Pat Gelsinger's vision and drive put the silicon in Silicon Valley. Intel chips are in everything-- laptops, smartphones, even cars. He not only helped build one of the biggest and most consequential companies in the world, he also helped change the course of computing as we know it. But Intel hasn't been without its challenges, with stiff competition and manufacturing snags.
It's no secret, the US semiconductor industry has fallen behind, especially to foreign competitors Pat is making it his mission to put Intel and the US chip industry back on top. And he's doing that by drawing on his own leadership skills, largely shaped by his mentors, past disappointments, and an undying passion for the job.
There are very few CEOs who start at a company at 18 years, who as I understand it, write out a mission statement saying, this is my dream job to become the top position in this company. And here you are 40 years later. What do you think as you walk in through those doors every day?
PAT GELSINGER: This is the place I grew up. I joke that I went through puberty at Intel. The industry needs a great Intel, like the technology role, rebuilding manufacturing, the seminal piece that plays for manufacturing in America for the economic benefit, for the national security implications of it. We got to make this work.
AKIKO FUJITA: Intel was hit with the perfect storm in 2020. Already behind in manufacturing, the company got caught up in the global chip shortage and pandemic-induced halt to global trade, causing Intel's stock to fall. Since then, Gelsinger has worked to rebuild Intel to its once iconic status and position at the front of technological development. And he plans to tap his mentors' no pain, no gain mentality to make it happen.
Let's talk about the journey you've taken to get here as CEO. You found somebody within the company that really guided you along. And I wonder if you can talk a bit about your relationship with former CEO Andy Grove. What did you learn from him that shaped who you are today?
PAT GELSINGER: Well, Andy ended up being the seminal figure. Everybody who I've seen who's become a great leader can point to key mentoring influences because we all get stuck at points in our career or aspects of our personality that need to be sharpened, or as I like to say, it's a diamond in the rough. And Andy, you know, I joke that mentoring with him was like going to the dentist without novocaine, right? He was tough. He was hard. You know, he would drive you to be better. And I mentored with him for 35 years. And he complimented me four times.
AKIKO FUJITA: What did that tough love teach you about leadership?
PAT GELSINGER: I'm far less hesitant to give people the tough feedback that they need. And I think often, leaders are a little bit reluctant to really give that, oh, maybe I'll offend them, or maybe they'll quit and leave. But you became so endeared to Andy because you knew he had only one objective-- to make you better. And when you have somebody who's giving you pure, unadulterated, blunt, and often harsh feedback, but you know that their only objective is to make you better, wow. You've just got to be challenged by it and motivated to be that much better.
AKIKO FUJITA: That blunt feedback didn't just motivate Gelsinger, it propelled him through the ranks. In 2001, he was tapped to become the company's first chief technology officer. But nearly 30 years after he started at Intel, Gelsinger was pushed out as CTO. He then became the CEO of VMware, where he honed his leadership skills.
PAT GELSINGER: I was crushed. I was devastated in it. But that then began a journey of, I'll say, rebuilding my own character, right, really looking more deeply at why that might have happened. What I could have done differently. And when I came back as the CEO of Intel, I brought a whole set of new experiences and a much deeper, better leader personally as a result of being crushed, learning in new environments, and now having the opportunity to come back to my dream job.
AKIKO FUJITA: I recently heard you say that you've got three key factors that you think are-- number one, key to success, but also that guides you in your leadership. I think the acronym is MAPS. How did you come up with that?
PAT GELSINGER: Well, mentoring had always been a key piece to me. Always. So the M had been there since the early days when Andy picked me out and started to challenge me. And as I came back to Intel, the A became pretty profound-- audacious goals and this idea that you really are looking at things that are beyond you. I have no idea how I'm going to get there. But I'm going to keep working to put myself in positions that allow some of those goals to come true.
And the last one P is passion, right? What are you passionate about? Because if you're living and working inside of your passion, the days are short as you progress. You wake up each day just so enthralled by that opportunity. And this idea of working on technology that touches every person on the planet, yeah, that's my passion.
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AKIKO FUJITA: Gelsinger will need to draw on that passion for technology in order to take on what could be the most audacious goal of his career-- bringing chip manufacturing back to the US. In the '90s, the US was what? Manufacturing roughly 40% of the world's chips. What happened?
PAT GELSINGER: Yeah, a couple of things happened. The view was, hey, we can outshore manufacturing. There's this emergence of the foundry model in the industry. Let's have somebody else do the hard job of manufacturing. And all of a sudden, we're realizing, wow, we've put ourself as a nation, as the Western world into a very precarious situation.
Hey, I'm excited to be part of this effort to say, no, we need balanced, resilient supply chains for the world. We will build world class manufacturing and technology. Manufacturing and innovation are coterminous. You must be doing both of them together if you are going to be a leading technology provider in the future.
AKIKO FUJITA: Finally, if we can bring it back to your personal story. You talked about the importance of having a mission statement-- having goals that may not be attainable, but aiming high. How has that mission statement changed for you?
PAT GELSINGER: I look at my mission statement about through the lens of my eight grandchildren. It's about what do I want to do that lives long beyond me? If I could be, right, looking back at Intel 20, 30 years from now, that I could see a company that is thriving, growing more impactful after I've gone, also that I could look at the US and be able to say, we've created millions of new manufacturing jobs. And that overall, the US remains at the front end of innovation in all the key areas.
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