Book Review: Swimming Across

The Chicago Tribune

5 November 2001

Business
Intel's Grove unearths risk-taking roots
Elizabeth Corcoran
Special to the Tribune Elizabeth Corcoran is the Silicon Valley bureau chief for Forbes magazine
1194 words

(Copyright 2001 by the Chicago Tribune)
For most Americans, the horrifying events of Sept. 11 shattered our brash confidence in the safety of our homes and offices, leaving us angry, disoriented and wary. For immigrants who fled to America to escape persecution in their native land, however, these feelings are achingly familiar.
They have lived such nightmares before, and survived. And there is wisdom and solace in how they did it.
Among them is Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel Corp. In "Swimming Across," a new memoir of his childhood in occupied Hungary, he opens the blinds on a seldom-discussed part of his life: growing up in Hungary in the 1940s and 1950s amid Nazi and Communist rule.
It is a remarkable book, both for what it says and for what it does not. There are no pop-psychology embellishments of what his experiences meant or how they shaped him into the person he became: a salty, tough manager, a fierce and tireless competitor and yet, a careful observer, listener and a risk-taker.
War-torn childhood
Born Andras Grof, an only child in a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest in 1936, Grove was 5 when Nazis seized control of Hungary. His father, like other Hungarian Jews, was conscripted into the army as a laborer.
Grove and his mother went into hiding. She drilled him on a fake Slavic name, cautioning him not even to urinate around other little boys because his circumcision might give them away.
That sense of always watching served Grove well through his years of management at Intel. Years later, competitors would marvel that Intel was relatively unscathed by the kinds of antitrust investigations that rattled partner Microsoft, even if Intel's business tactics seemed equally tough.
Credit Grove for carrying his early lessons close to his heart: When around an unfriendly regime, keep your head down and mouth shut. In 1996, he laid out his business philosophy in a crisply written book "Only the Paranoid Survive."
Grove's phrase became another Silicon Valley buzzword. Executives would nonchalantly declare they were "paranoid" about their competition--knowing about as much about real gut-wrenching paranoia as most of us know about climbing Mt. Everest. It's one thing to worry; it's another to live with the coiled tension that comes from growing up in a totalitarian state and seeing innocent people become victims.
Grove replays his childhood memories like simple home videos-- without special effects or sophisticated retouching. One day from a window, he spots German soldiers herding people out of a Jewish house. "They all had their hands up in the air, even the little kids who were being carried by their parents. It all seemed very orderly. Tears started to stream down my cheeks."
Grove never says "this is why I'm paranoid," or "this is why I am suspicious of government."
But what other lesson can a child possibly draw?
After the war, Grove's detailed descriptions of his daily life take on a sort of Hungarian Norman Rockwell glow: He obsesses over swimming and girls. He chafes at his parents' insistence on private English lessons.
Yet the message that Grove learns over and over from living in a repressive regime is a dulling one: Don't stand out. Don't be noticed. Go with the flow.
Years later at Intel, Grove became infamous for engagements called "constructive confrontation." Grove might bawl out a colleague for moving too slowly or for reaching the wrong conclusion. All that shouting was fine. He judged those sessions a success when they resulted in a fresh approach.
Directness at any price
How did Grove come to prize frankness above all? He had seen the corrosive effects of passive politeness during his youth. Directness, even when brutal, was worth any price.
Grove conveys this lesson, again, only by implication. He describes the epiphany he experiences in late 1956 as he leaves Vienna via train, heading toward the West. "After all the years of pretending to believe things that I didn't, of acting the part of someone I wasn't, maybe I would never have to pretend again."
While still in Hungary, however, Grove learned to take risks. He is lucky in that he has a strong guide. As tens of thousands of Hungarians fled the country in late 1956, Grove agonized about what to do. Then one December afternoon, an aunt who had survived Auschwitz burst into the apartment he shared with his parents. "She came right over to me and without any greeting said, `Andris, you must go.' I stared at her. `You must go,' she repeated, `and you must go immediately.'"
He left, ultimately recreating himself in America.
Twenty-nine years later, Grove and Intel's then-chief executive Gordon Moore would confront Japanese competition in memory chips. Although Intel's business plan for years had been built on these chips, they were draining money out of the company by mid-1985.
Grove asked Moore what would happen if the board kicked them out and brought in a new CEO. "Gordon answered without hesitation, `He would get us out of memories,'" Grove wrote in his 1996 book. Grove responded, "Why shouldn't [we] do it ourselves?"
A dramatic shift in direction
That conversation paved the way to Intel becoming the dominant maker of microprocessors for personal computers.
Quitting memory chips was as scary and yet as pivotal for Intel as leaving Hungary had been for Grove. Both were "inflection points," a term Grove uses for a profound period of change, a signal of the beginning of the end.
"Swimming Across" culminates with two inflection points. With the push from his family, Grove flees to Vienna in December 1956. Yet his most dramatic moment occurs when he learns he has not made the list of people granted papers to go to the U.S.
After years of coping, he now acts. He races across town to track down the panel interviewing refugees, pushes his way through a line and starts talking. "The words poured out, not eloquently or coherently, but I talked and talked as if I could overwhelm their objections by the sheer volume of my words."
Action worked. Within weeks, he was on a boat headed to the U.S.
At the end of the book, Grof changes his name to Grove and a U.S. green card is in sight. He makes plans to head for graduate school in California. Andras Grof would never have become the chairman of one of the world's most influential companies if he had stayed in Hungary and kept his head down.
And that is the first half of the story. Learning how Grof became Grove is an excellent start, but it whets our appetite for more.

Swimming Across: A Memoir, by Andrew S. Grove, Non-Fiction/ Life Stories, Hardcover $26.95, 304 pages, WARNER BOOKS.

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