Lisa Su

Who

Lisa Su was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States as a child. She earned her bachelor’s, master’s and PhD in electrical engineering at MIT, then did semiconductor research at IBM and held senior roles at Freescale. She joined AMD in 2012 and became CEO in 2014, when the company was struggling. Under her leadership AMD rebuilt its processor line and became a major player in high-performance and AI computing.

Operating rules

Run toward the hardest problems. She has said that early in her career she learned to volunteer for the difficult assignments others avoided. That is where you learn fastest, and where the real opportunities hide.

Make fewer bets, and commit fully. Rather than spread AMD across many markets, she focused on a new processor architecture, Zen, that took years to reach customers. The first Ryzen and EPYC chips arrived in 2017 and turned the company around.

Earn trust by delivering on the roadmap. Customers who build their products on your chips need to believe your schedule. Her reputation rests less on bold claims than on doing what she said she would do, on time.

Stay understated. She speaks plainly and lets results carry the argument. In an industry full of big personalities, calm became part of her credibility.

What I borrowed

She shows that an engineer’s habit of breaking a problem into parts can become a way of running an organization. My 12-week sprints and quarterly reviews are a small version of her habit of setting a plan and reporting honestly against it.

What I won’t copy

Bet-the-company concentration. A turnaround leader sometimes has no other choice. In my own life I concentrate my effort, but I keep my finances diversified.