Aicha Evans on Embracing the New Wave
Aicha Evans is the senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Intel Corporation. She’s responsible for driving Intel’s long term strategy to transform it from a PC-centered company to a data-centered company. In this episode, we explore:
- Why organizations need to constantly evolve and how Intel is embraces change.
- The central role the customer plays in co-creating the product to be delivered.
- How finding her own professional voice allowed Aicha to contribute more to the world.
- The importance of hearing another person’s perspective, and the things that stand in the way.
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Full Transcript
Michael: This is Michael Bungay Stanier. This is The Coaching Habit Podcast, and as some of you all know I’m a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100. It’s a group of really talented, amazing, interesting people, and me as well that Marshall has gathered together. One of the joys for me is getting to meet and know a little the people that I would otherwise come across. And one of my guests today is exactly that sort of person. This is Aicha Evans. She is the senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Intel Corporation. She is responsible for driving Intel’s long term strategy to transform it from a PC centered company, the way we all the way we think of it, to a data centered company. As well as, I’m going to be interested in finding out more about this, leading rapid decision making in company-wide execution of that strategy. Previously, Aicha was the general manager of the communications and device group responsible for driving wireless engineering for multi-com products and intel platforms, including modems, RF, WIFI, GPS, Bluetooth, and FM, LTE, WLAN, WONE, as well as merging wireless technology such as 5G.
Aicha, it’s so nice to be talking to you. It’s been about a year since we first met. It’s nice to be connected here with you again.
Aicha Evans: Definitely. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Michael: My pleasure. Now we’ve kind of given people a hint of what you are up to, but at Box of Crayons one of the things we talk about is trying to help people in organizations do more great work. Work that has more impact, and work that has more meaning. As you think about what you are up to at this moment, in this very senior role in this big well known company, how do you think about great work for you these days?
Aicha Evans: I think about impact. That’s my compass. It is a great company. It’s accomplished some amazing things. It’s been successful not just from a financial standpoint, but in terms of how it transforms the world. We forget this is the company that went from the mainframe to the PC, and then the desktop I should say, and took that to the laptop, and then took that to the notebook, to access to the internet. I always say to people, imagine the world without what we did. I’m sure it would be very different. We have a competency in computers. Things keep evolving, and now, there is a next wave and what are we going to do about it? And what are we going to make possible for the world? That is something I am really excited about.
Michael: The way I read it in your bio this transformation from a PC-centric organization to a data-centric organization. That doesn’t feel like a small challenge.
Aicha Evans: You know what? It’s not a small challenge, but I always say it’s good to be lucky too. We are going, I’ve been saying for probably three, four years internally and externally that … it’s sort of like the computer used to be at work, right? Like 20 years ago, you had email at work and whatever. Then it came into our home. Then it married with automation. Then we became mobile meaning we had the computer in our hands wherever we were. One of my big things now on an airplane, especially on a long haul, when I see WIFI I’m like don’t even look at it because you are not connecting. You can actually have powers of not being connected. Yippee!
Now we have the era of the machine. The machines are going to be smarter. They are coming. They are going to be in all aspects of our lives, whether it’s the personal assistant, whether it’s robots, whether it’s autonomous driving, whether it’s drones, even the way things are made in manufacturing. So there are going to be smart, they are going to be learning and self-learning, they are going to be communicating with each other, and all of that is basically based on two things data and communication, meaning communication technology. Because the machines don’t have eyes, but they have cameras. That’s their virtual eye. They can’t talk and listen, but there is speech recognition, right? They can’t make decisions, they don’t have our brains. I still say the human brain is still the most amazing computer you could even dream of.
They are baby brains. In doing things we are going to have to input data into them and output data or take the output they give us. But they are cranking on that data they are learning, they are training, they are inferring, they are making decisions. So this leads not just to machines in terms of mechanical machines, but it almost leads to an era of autonomy and agency. And then how are we going to interact with these things? And what happens to ethics? What happens to rules? Policy regulation? What happens to displacement in terms of how we live life? And so to me this is exciting, and data centric that’s what that means … It’s basically understanding that the computer is moving from your basic device or data center to the inclusion of autonomy and agency via machines that are going to be in the middle of how we live, how we learn, how we love.
People tell it’s impossible to just go to a bar and meet somebody. Everything happens through an app right now, and if you are not willing to that you are not going to be dating. Right? And so how we play, how we live, how we learn. That’s why it’s a big jump, but the timing is perfect. We’re catching the wave at the beginning of it, and I think we are uniquely positioned to deliver within that way.
Michael: Aicha, I am swept along by your passion inside me and around, and I can truly hear it your voice. I’m curious to know, as I read your bio it’s not simply the case of seeing the strategy and seeing the future and seeing the opportunity for Intel. But part of it is around how do you engage the organization around that? How do your execute against that strategy? As much as you can tell us, I’m just curious to know what have you learned almost from what it takes to engage people on a strategy like this? Because I can imagine that some parts of the organization who are excited about it because they see it themselves and they are like, we need to be there, we need to be catching that wave. But at the same time when you pivot and shift like this that creates threat for the way we’ve done things in the past. How do you help to engage the organization around this, so isn’t just an enthusiastic conversation in the board room it actually happens throughout the organization?
Aicha Evans: I thought we have a choice. As a company and as the shepherds of this company, we need to decide who we want to be going forward. Our founders are not here anymore. A couple of them are even deceased. And so it is up to us. And the reality is, and I don’t mean to be scary or anything like that. But the reality is that for a company of our size to have been this successful at a previous wave, the likelihood, and you can look at MBA case studies, that we are going to part of the next wave is less than 10 percent. And a lot less than 10 percent.
Michael: The innovators dilemma, right?
Aicha Evans: That’s exactly right. So now we can decide. Do we want to be counted as one of the few companies that has gone from wave to wave, and there are only a few, or do want to treat this company like it’s just a place we come to work? There is no steady state in companies. You either grow or you die. The rate at which you do that may confuse you, because you may not realize you are dying, but basically the choices are clear.
I fought with that, and I say, “Let’s make the choice.” If you we just want to exploit this company … It’s a pretty easy set of decisions. Shrink it, de-superfocus, maximize for our I and so on and so forth, and be a value company. If we think what we are doing is important to the world then we have to embrace this new wave. By the way, lucky us, contrary to the last wave, which is mobile, this wave is really is in our wheel house. Because it requires high performance computers, which we’re very good at. We are not trying to develop a competency that is totally orthogonal to what we know how to do. This is actually a pretty logical next episode in the chapter of Intel.
So first, make the choice. Second, I have to be generous, and I have to be very smart. And this is the case that being smart is more important than being right. So taking the time to really explain to people in great detail what this is? How important it is? What does it mean in terms of their day to day work? What they need to be thinking? What needs to continue to be exploited as is in the short term versus what needs to change, and how it would change?
I’ll give you can example. We with the PC and probably the data center we achieved a state of general computer, general purpose computer nirvana. X86 can just do a lot of things and do them very well.
Michael: That’s beautiful, yeah.
Aicha Evans: And all the time, and we earned that by the way. Now in this age of autonomy and agency, you are dealing one day with a mattress company, the next day you are dealing with a manufacturing company, the next day you are dealing with a retail company, the next day you are dealing with surgeons that are trying to breakdown some sequences. And so, general purpose is probably not going to be working. So understanding the type of accelerators that have to be married with general purpose computers in order to do very specific functions and specialty driven analysis and algorithms to serve a particular segment, developing the skills set of listening to the customer, understanding what they are trying to achieve, developing together what does that mean from a computer communication network and standpoint; and then, co-architecting what needs to be delivered at what stages for them to be able to get the value that they are trying to derive. When you put it in those terms, actually, people are extremely excited
Michael: I’m excited. I want to join working at Intel now. I don’t even fully understand what’s going on, but I’m like sign me up for this.
Aicha Evans: We’re hiring. Come on over.
Michael: Perfect! Hey Aicha, let me switch the focus. This feels like it could be another podcast in itself seeing this transformation and understanding this call to action. But I want to turn the focus to you, because I’m curious about your journey and what it’s taken, and what you’ve learned to get to where you are now as the chief strategy officer? One of the sayings I love is inspiration is when your past suddenly makes sense. When you are like, ahhh, that’s why I made that decision, I had that boss, I had that experience. It kind of makes sense of this place of where I’ve arrived to right now. And on the way I think for most of our journey’s we’ve had these crossroad moments. Moments where we’ve gone I could do this and I could do that. And the choice we made has been one that has propelled us along that path. So, I’m curious for you when you think back on the path you’ve walked so far, were there one or two crossroad moments that really stood out for you?
Aicha Evans: Yes. The first was very early on. I am from Senegal, West Africa and I bounced back and forth between Senegal and France. I was educated in a French educational system. At a very early age, I think it’s around sixth grade so you’re around 12 or so, and then right before you enter high school so around 15 or so, you have some mega decisions to make. You actually have to start deciding what … There is a conversation with your teachers and your grades, and what have you. Literally, when you look back are you going to go the science track, math, physics, and what have you. Or are you going to go the liberal art way and that’s from literature to economics to business and all that stuff.
I remember telling my teachers and my parents I want to do both. At the time I didn’t really think about it. It was truly just a personal dilemma. But as I look back I think … Look, I love engineering, I love building things. Just yesterday, I can’t remember where I was and something was broken and I started debugging and saying, “You know we should do this.” And there was somebody who knows me, she was like, “Wow! Always an engineer at heart.” There is just something about building things, fixing things, creating things. But I’m also very passionate about humanity, about society, about human beings, which is why I love philosophy. I always contend that there is a reason some of the greatest philosophers are some of the greatest mathematicians. Engineering towards the goal of improving society and humanity and making us better is one key moment and very important.
And the reason I’m mentioning that is then my second point. When I first came into the professional world, I copied what was around me, meaning extremely analytical, borderline antisocial, a little bit of command and control, which I admit this is one of my diseases. If I admit it maybe we can do something about it. And then somewhere around three years into it I finally realized that I was short- changing myself, but more importantly I was short-changing what I can contribute to the world potentially. That the marrying of engineering and impact on society, and really having the courage to go after things that are meaningful and that truly advance things is what I’m good at, and I should embrace it. If that means I am more of an extrovert, if that means I am more social, if that means I marry people and engineering that is actually strength and not something I should be ashamed of or worried about.
The third element of your question is I work hard. Because you hear things all the time, you’re weird, you’re different.
Michael: You’re confusing me.
Aicha Evans: You’re confusing. Well, You are not technical, because if you’re technical, if you saw people and impact oriented you can’t possibly be technical. Or you’re technical and you’re faking that you care about people. And that has been a very hard thing to navigate. This is something I deal with up until today, and especially when there is failure, and I’ve had some spectacular failures, by the way. You can quickly have a one on one with yourself and you have to stop what I call the negative spiral. Because maybe they are right? But at the end of the day I know they are not.
Michael: Beautiful. That’s a great piece in both of those you are kind of looking at the way things can become binary. You know, it’s either this or it’s that. And saying, actually rather than this or that I want it both. I want it and, this and that. I can see how that’s part of what makes you a strong strategic thinker, which is you get to see both the mechanics of it and the visual of it at the same time.
Aicha Evans: Yeah. That’s how I feel.
Michael: So Aicha, we met in the context of being called as coaches to the world through Marshall’s work. I know your job description is chief strategy officer, but I’m sure for those you lead and influence and you work with you show up in a coach like way. You guide people, you mentor people, you nudge people, and I’m always curious to know the tools or the models or the process that people love. The ones that I almost always drag this out of the drawer, because it’s so good and it almost always works. I am wondering if you have a favorite approach or tool or model, whatever it might be for when you are coaching or leading or mentoring somebody?
Aicha Evans: Yeah. I mean the first thing I try to do, and I learned it from Marshall, I try to understand things from their perspective, and listen from their perspective. And it’s hard, right? Because I have a tendency to listen and to judge at the same time. Or to develop answers at the same time. And it’s like, “It’s not about you, lady. This is about John”. And it’s both ways. Maybe they came to me with something specific or maybe they are very important in what I am trying to achieve and therefore, I need their support. Understanding things from their perspective, getting a little bit of a feel for how well they know themselves, i.e. their compass. Because it’s back to triggers … This is a book from Marshall. It’s quite important. If you know yourself then you will understand your triggers. And then comes the choice what are you going to about those?
Another tool is even in the … And this hard … This why I have a little Buddha poster in my conference room that basically says, “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” I try to understand if we disagree it’s not necessary their issue it’s our issue. Unless I have decided that this person is just a loser, and if that’s the case why am I talking to them? So let’s figure out a way to eliminate them out of the situation. But if they are important and we need to get to the same place, or I need to help them with something, or they need to help me with something. Really understanding why is it they think the way they do? Why it is that I am not able to convey my point? Is it because I am being egotistical and I don’t want to accept that they have a better point? Is it because I am not explaining myself clearly? Is it because I haven’t defined the necessity of us understanding each other, i.e. the common goal and why it’s important?
Starting with that foundation and with a lot of generosity it’s something that is baseline. Because from there usually, if you have that established, you have a very strong foundation and then you can solve anything, including by the way, it’s not worth arguing about. I am going to go their way. It’s not really material to the final outcome.
Michael: I don’t need to win this argument. There is a bigger came to play. I love seeing the patterns in everything that you talk about which is so much of it recognizing and overcoming this it’s either this way or that way. And going how do we break down the binary approach and thinking of a third way, an alternative way through this. It’s wonderful.
Aicha, it’s been wonderful talking to you. Thank you for sharing, knowing you insights and the current story of Intel, which is exciting to hear. But also giving us some insight into your journey and how you show up in the work as a coach. Thank you very much.
Aicha Evans: I appreciate it. Thank you.
