Intel Just Forced Out Its CEO. It’s a Brutal Lesson Every Leader Should Learn

Pat Gelsinger was supposed to save Intel. That was the promise when the company named him to the top job back in February of 2021. A respected CEO and former Intel engineer, Gelsinger checked all the boxes and showed up with a plan to restore the company to its former glory. Not long after he took over as CEO, Gelisnger told an audience his thoughts about the company’s focus moving forward: “We’re bringing back the execution discipline of Intel. I call it the Grovian culture that we do what we say we will do. That we have that confidence in our execution. That our teams are fired up. That we said we’re going to do x, we’re going to 1.1x, every time that we make a commitment. That’s the Intel culture that we are bringing back.” I don’t think anyone would disagree that Intel’s culture was a problem. And, I don’t think anyone would disagree that if there was anyone who understood the culture of Intel, it was Gelsinger. He spent a good part of his career at Intel and—notably—was the architect of the 80486 processor. He had also come as a highly respected CEO, having been voted the best tech CEO while he was at VMware. If there was a company more in need of being saved than Intel, I can’t think of what it could be. Under Gelisnger’s predecessors, the company had faced major delays in its advanced chip processes. It had also fallen far behind its biggest competitors, especially TSMC However, Gelsigner did not turn the company around. In fact, it’s not clear whether Gelsigner has succeeded in any meaningful way in restoring the elusive “Grovian culture,” but I’m also not sure it really matters. Instead, on Monday, the company announced he was out after the Board grew impatient with his plan to turn around the iconic chip manufacturer. According to Bloomberg, Intel’s Directors gave him the option of retiring or being fired. It’s a dramatic, though not altogether surprising, turn of events for a CEO who—for a number of reasons—couldn’t live up to the promise of fixing a company where he had spent most of his career. Look, I have no idea whether Gelsigner was the right person for the job, though it is hard to imagine someone with a better overall resume. When he arrived, it definitely seemed like it. Instead, he saw the company fall further behind, culminating in its removal from the Dow Jones stock index after 25 years. Today, the company’s market cap is less than half what it was when Gelsinger took over, while, at the same time, its biggest competitors have skyrocketed. Nvidia, for example, was worth $350 billion the day Gelisnger became CEO. Today, it’s worth $3.3 trillion. It seems, from the outside, like Intel is in a very messy place. It’s a company that, for almost every business reason, shouldn’t exist. Right now, the main rationale for keeping Intel afloat seems to be that it’s critical to national security to have an American company making computer chips. I think that’s certainly true, but it’s just not clear that Intel is going to be that company. I’m not sure that Intel can—or should be saved, but that’s not the point. The point—and the real lesson here—is that it really doesn’t matter if you keep your promises if you make the wrong promises in the first place. Just doing what you say you’ll do isn’t actually enough. It’s equally important that you be doing the right thing. You have to be doing something worth doing. Or, said another way, you don’t get bonus points for keeping the wrong promises. EXPERT OPINION BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST @JASONATEN