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 can’t 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 America’s “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 doesn’t 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 boss’s 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 they’ve 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. It’s a powerful skill set that can make any team unbeatable. Whenever I learn something that’s really powerful in my life, I want to pass it along. I’ve 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. That’s why I’m 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 that’s unprecedented. There’s no entitlement, not even for Silicon Valley. I’m 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 won’t 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 won’t 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, I’ve 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, I’ve seen how the playbooks I used at Cisco can work in businesses as diverse as cricket farming and drone security.
Candidly, I get more credit than I deserve. My success is due to the incredible passion, discipline, innovation, and teamwork of Cisco’s people. Every CEO likes to say that. In my case, it’s definitely true. I’ve worked with many generations of chief financial officers, sales leaders, engineering heads, and other leaders who knew far more about their areas than I ever could. I was lucky to have the most brilliant engineers in Silicon Valley work with me to build products that really changed the game, and I had a job that allowed me to interact with leaders worldwide who inspired me with their vision and taught me how to lead. Most important, I have had Elaine, my best friend and wife for more than 45 years, and our two children—Lindsay and John. They have inspired me, supported me, and put up with my foibles and the frustration of a family member whose passion for the job never turns off. My immediate family treated the people of Cisco as part of our extended family, which reinforced a culture that’s hard to capture in the pages of a book.
A lot of people have come to me over the years, asking me what I’ve learned from my successes and mistakes. One thing I’ve learned is that talking about success is way more fun! The other is that making those mistakes made me stronger. But they don’t make you stronger if you keep doing the same thing instead of adapting to a new reality. The setbacks and the tough times should force you to take stock in your strengths and find new ways to win. When I look back on the incredible competitors who later disappeared, I realize that most of them didn’t fail because they suddenly did the wrong thing. They failed because they kept doing the right thing for too long. The biggest mistake we all make is that we get comfortable and we get disrupted because we don’t disrupt ourselves.
I don’t have all the answers and I expect that many of you will disagree with some of the things that I write in this book. In fact, if you agree with everything I say, I will have failed. I like to take risks and I like to challenge the status quo. I hope you find some inspiration or useful tips from my experiences, especially the mistakes. If our paths cross on our journeys, I look forward to learning from you.
THE CONNECTED LEADER (THE MINDSET FOR LEADERSHIP SUCCESS)
I’ll never forget the day I almost drowned. I was about six years old and my dad had taken me bass fishing at Elk River near our home in West Virginia, when I lost my footing on a rock and fell in. As I was pulled under by the current and dragged into the rapids, all I could hear was my dad shouting, “Hold on to the fishing pole!” It wasn’t an especially nice pole, but Dad clearly wanted me to protect it. Every time I came to the surface, sputtering water, I’d see him running beside me on shore, repeating those same instructions: “Hold on to that pole.” Not wanting to disappoint my dad, I tightened my grip and could think of nothing else but the pole. Finally, we got to a spot where Dad swam out and pulled me out of the rapids, pole and all.
We sat for a few minutes to talk about what happened. My dad was a great teacher, who always explained the thinking behind why he did things. He wasn’t angry that I’d gone too far on the rock and fallen in. Accidents happen. He wanted me to know why it was so important that I held on to the pole. As long as I stayed focused on doing that, he explained, I was less likely to panic and fight to get out of the water, which is one of the worst things you can do when you’re trapped in rapids. You have to go with the flow and look for opportunities to get out. I was too young to get myself out, so his goal was to help me manage my fear until he could find a place to rescue me. You couldn’t stop the fear; you just had to manage it.
After we talked, my dad put me back in the water to swim near the area where he’d pulled me out and then we went back to fishing where we were. It was a lesson that stayed with me my whole life and one that was reinforced a little over a decade later, when I went with my youngest sister