John Chambers - Connecting the Dots: Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World

I used to think the best time to have a book about yourself is after youre dead. I dont like to sing my own praises and Im all too aware of my weaknesses. I also know that anything I have accomplished in my life, from overcoming dyslexia to building Cisco, has been because of the team of people around me. For 20 years, I had the incredible privilege to lead a company that connected people to the internet and changed the way we work, live, play, and learn. I view myself as a coach, as someone who builds great teams, and as an adviser. I love to teach. What changed my mind about writing a book wasnt so much the lessons of the past as the opportunities of the future. Were on the cusp of a revolution that will take the impact of the internet and not only multiply it but play out faster than any disruption weve ever seen. Within a decade, some 500 billion cars, fridges, phones, robots, and other devices will likely be communicating online. As an investor and adviser to startups worldwide, Im incredibly excited by the potential for new technologies to foster longer lives, safer communities, and greater global prosperity, as well as to create hundreds of millions of new jobs. But I also now understand the fears because this disruption will be so brutal that 40-plus percent of businesses today wont be here 10 years from now. Were already seeing that impact start to play out in political movements, job losses, and broken business models. Meanwhile, the people at the forefront of this change often seem tone-deaf to the downside of this disruption and unaware of the risks that they face.

A good friend once told me that you cant describe a company or a leader as great until they have gone through a near-death experience and come back. Steve Jobs did it with Apple, as did Jack Welch at GE. In 2000, Cisco was the most valuable company on the planet. We had grown 65 percent every year for a decade and I was treated as a Silicon Valley celebrity, complete with paparazzi following me home from restaurants and praise in the media as Americas best boss and top CEO. A year later, after the dot-com crash had wiped out a quarter of our customers and 80 percent of our stock price, my face was in the media for a much different reason. We survived that crisis and five other downturns that could have killed our business, as it did many of our competitors. We learned how to reinvent ourselves again and again.

That ability to reinvent not only your company but yourself is the critical skill for every leader in the digital age. It doesnt matter if you are leading a company of 2 people or 200,000 people: You have to learn to be fast, flexible, and ahead of the curve. What really set us apart at Cisco were four key strengths: an ability to anticipate and get ahead of market transitions, innovation processes that could be replicated at scale, a strong culture that was focused on customers, and a network architecture that gave us incredible flexibility to innovate and move into new markets. None of these things happened because of dumb luck or the bosss winning personality. These practices start with some of the fundamental values and lessons that I learned from my family while growing up in West Virginia. They incorporate what I have learned from many great leaders both inside and outside Cisco, and theyve been honed through practice and some pain. I watched my first two employers, IBM and Wang, go from being giants in the industry to failing, and learned why. You have to compete in the moment but also rise above the short-term wins or problems to think 3, 5, and even 10 years out to pursue bigger and bolder dreams.

At Cisco, we were sometimes too early or we took on too much, but the reason we ultimately stayed on top is that we focused on connecting the dots. We developed a playbook for everything from how we acquired companies to how we managed people, how we dealt with customers to how we digitized countries. Far from slowing us down, these tools allowed us to reinvent the company toward where the world is going instead of where it is today. Its a powerful skill set that can make any team unbeatable. Whenever I learn something thats really powerful in my life, I want to pass it along. Ive had the opportunity to share a number of these lessons with others and I have seen how they work again and again across a range of situations. Thats why Im writing this book.

The opportunities over the next few decades will be staggering. Every person on the planet has the potential to compete. The average seller on eBay does business in seven countries. With digitization, anyone can innovate and leapfrog the competition at a scale and speed thats unprecedented. Theres no entitlement, not even for Silicon Valley. Im now working with entrepreneurs and leaders in the United States, India, France, and other parts of the world who could lead the next great wave of innovation. Through JC2 Ventures, I am investing in and working with startups to help them scale to become the next Cisco. Some of them wont make it, but I believe that many of them will, creating jobs and opportunities far beyond the scope of anything we can picture right now. What will differentiate the winners from the losers wont be technology or capital but leadership and a willingness to learn. The lessons and practices that helped me are proving to be powerful for many of the people I coach. As an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Ive seen how visionary political leaders can transform their countries into startup nations. At JC2 Ventures, a company I co-founded to invest in startups and help leaders scale, Ive seen how the playbooks I used at Cisco can work in businesses as diverse as cricket farming and drone security.