Killer Results Without Killing Yourself

The late morning is spent in a teleconference with other Intel plant managers around the country, planning how to deal with upcoming products and expansion plans. During this hour, little of the rebel is on display. Still, there are moments when Marsing frowns, runs a hand through his hair, and looks like he's ready to cut loose. But in this meeting, at least, he never does. The Zen training helps.

Later there's a meeting with a new hire, a retired military safety officer, who's been brought on board to set up a crisis management program at the plant. The man is visibly nervous and expects a grilling. But Marsing puts him at ease by turning the tables and asking what he can do to help. The new safety officer looks relieved. Not only has he been put at ease; without knowing it, he's been given a first glimpse of the Marsing style.

At 5 p.m. the day comes to an early finish; Marsing returns phone calls, and reads and writes e-mail messages. In between, he tries to explain his management philosophy -- something, he admits, he's never really been asked to do.

"Look," Marsing says, pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose, "if you had equipment running at only 10% efficiency, you'd apply engineering to get that performance up. It's the same with people. If your employees are showing up at work with only a fraction of their possible efficiency, then you need to ask yourself: What is it about their job, their attitude, and their work environment that's doing that to them?"

To Marsing, the point is not only productivity but also diversity: the more disparate the experiences and skills of team members, the more adaptable and dynamic the organization. But that's not the way most companies look at it. "What most companies want is homogeneity," Marsing says. "They want 150 trumpets playing in unison. But homogeneous teams have blind spots; they move like a herd and often in the wrong direction. What's needed instead is complexity, the team as a jazz band that both harmonizes and improvises."

But what prevents this "true-to-yourself" model from producing as much stress as the "two-faced" model it replaces? One answer can be found in Marsing's own career. After all, he had to learn to balance his own maverick streak with the greater benefits of becoming a team player. And that is precisely the attitude he tries to convey to those around him. They are free to be themselves on the job, to work regular hours, to spend time with their families and their community. But the bottom line is Intel's competitive success. And if that means they have to compromise to deal with workmates, they know that those workmates are also bending halfway to meet them.

It's neither an elegant model nor an empirical one. It doesn't even have a name, though "Middle Path" conveys Marsing's belief that the organizational solution for the future is one that steers between Taylor's model of employees as identical cogs in a machine and the anarchy of rampant individualism in a Balkanized company in which people have no sense of common cause.

Here's how Marsing looks at it: "If the goal is to maximize profits, then it seems obvious to me that the best way to get there is to have happy people who are motivated to work. And the way you do that is to bring together different types of people, allow them to be themselves, get them behind the larger corporate vision, and then give them room to create. Above all, if you want breakthrough thinking and innovation -- and you definitely do in this business to survive -- then you have to cultivate those aspects of each employee's personality where it will come out."

Dave Marsing's Dance

It's early evening when Marsing pulls into the carport of his home. As he stands on the driveway amid Elliot's scattered toys, he rejects on the path he's taken since those terrible days in the hospital.

For the first time, his voice betrays excitement: "Imagine if you could build a company that was capable of learning from all its experiences, as well as from other companies' experiences. What you'd get is a new kind of asset: corporate wisdom. Now, combine that with the kind of compassion that accepts employees for who they really are, that motivates them to reach their potential, and you'd have something truly extraordinary. Just think what a company like Intel, 35,000 highly intelligent people, could do if it ever reached that combination."

Is Marsing the model for the future of Intel? "Well, I'm not sure if it's possible for everybody to be like him," Mike Splinter says. "But I will say that if he keeps challenging the way we do things, he will have a large influence on future management methods at Intel."

For his part, Marsing has no doubt he will succeed. "This is the perfect place to do all this because the risks are so great. I think of it as an interesting dance. If you sit on the sidelines, you don't do anything. But once you're on the dance floor, you have a chance to change the steps."