Change

You're seeing it when a company announces a major restructuring but six months later everyone is still operating exactly as before. The formal structure changed, but the informal systems — habits, relationships, incentives — held the old state in place.

You're seeing it when a superior technology struggles to gain adoption because the existing ecosystem — distribution, training, integrations — creates massive resistance to switching. The market's equilibrium resists the change.

When you need organisational change, start by understanding why the current state persists. Change the incentives, defaults, and structures that hold the status quo in place. Don't just announce the new direction — dismantle the scaffolding that supports the old one.

Grove navigated one of the most dramatic corporate changes in history — pivoting Intel from memory chips to microprocessors. He didn't just announce the shift; he systematically dismantled the forces maintaining the old state. He redirected capital allocation away from memory, restructured reporting lines, and reframed Intel's identity from a memory company to a processor company. His famous "strategic inflection point" framework was built on understanding change dynamics: the environment shifts, the old equilibrium becomes untenable, and the company must find a new one before the old one collapses. For founders, Grove's lesson is clear: change succeeds when you alter the system's underlying forces, not just its surface declarations.