The greatest leader the semiconductor industry ever had was Bob Noyce, co-inventor of the IC, co-founder and founding CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor, co-founder and founding CEO of Intel, founding CEO of Sematech, known to the industry as: 'The Mayor of Silicon Valley'.
Noyce's father, and both his grandfathers, were Congregationalist ministers. Congregationalists are Dissenting Protestants who loathe, hierarchy whether religious or social. In
When Noyce set up Fairchild and, later, Intel, it was a natural instinct for him to constitute them as egalitarian, open communities.
In the early days of Intel, Noyce was asked by a new recruit if there was a company organization chart.
Noyce drew a circle on a piece of paper. Around the circumference he wrote the names of the Intel glitterati: his own, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, Bob Graham, Les Vadasz. In the middle of the circle he put a dot.
The dot, explained Noyce, was the recruit. The names on the circumference were people with whom he might need to make contact to get his work done.
Years later, at a Sematech company meeting which consisted of executives drawn from many companies across the industry, one exec complained that his job title didn't reflect his responsibilities,
Noyce's reply was that anyone who was dissatisfied with their job title could change it to whatever they wanted it to be.
Quite a few Sematech execs put in formal requests for a change of title.
Now that so many semiconductor companies are run by non-semiconductor-savvy CEOs, they might reflect on whether Noyce's success in the semiconductor business has anything to teach them about leadership style.
Isn't that called something like ... anarchism?
For this to work, I think it needs great people, isn't it? But speaking of this, is it more just these great people or the way they were managed that made the company so successful?
You're right. The people were very bright, and for all the bright ideas to get recognised, there needed to be an environment where a bright idea was appreciated no matter who it came from.
So the theory was that a bright idea from a recruit was given as much weight as a bright idea from the boss. So that people would have no fears or inhibitions about expressing their ideas.