Success Quote by Andy Grove

Speed is Grove's quiet religion here, but he frames it less as macho hustle than as a structural fact of modern capitalism. "Have to" does the heavy lifting: this isn't a preference or a management fad, it's compulsion. The line suggests a world where hesitation is punished not by critics but by physics-like market forces. Pressure doesn't just increase; it arrives sooner, compressing the time leaders have to interpret signals, align teams, and commit resources. The clock, not the competitor, becomes the main antagonist.

The context matters. Grove built Intel in an industry where product cycles shrink, standards shift, and yesterday's breakthrough becomes today's commodity. Moore's Law wasn't merely a technology curve; it was a governance problem. When change accelerates, the old corporate posture - deliberate consensus, long planning horizons, layered approval - stops being "careful" and starts being negligent. Grove's broader message (famous from Only the Paranoid Survive) is that leaders must develop early-warning systems and the nerve to pivot at "strategic inflection points" before the data feels complete.

There's also a subtle rebuke to comforting myths about leadership as timeless wisdom. Grove implies that character is not enough; tempo is a competency. If pressure comes faster, then leadership becomes less about grand vision and more about shortening the distance between information and action: building organizations that can decide, learn, and correct in public, repeatedly. The subtext is unforgiving: in fast markets, being right too late is indistinguishable from being wrong.