Power and leadership are closely related, he says, noting an important distinction. I look at it this differently. In a knowledge organization, you can take power away, but you cannot give power to somebody. I can be kicked out and whatever power I had inside Intel is gone from one day to the next, but nobody can give me the power to influence thousands of people's actions. The politician needs, most of all, the vote.
Leaders make decisions.
For Grove and his colleagues at Intel, none was tougher than Intel's move in the 1980s away from making semiconductor memory to the microprocessors that power computers and other intelligent devices. In retrospect it was brilliant. At the time, as has been well-chronicled, it was wrenching. It was just coping with the facts and judgments of the picture, of the decision necessary. It may be more work, but it's not more pain.