Feb 16, 2022

John Chambers is the legendary former CEO of Cisco, a company he
helped grow from $70 million in revenue per year when he joined in
1991 to $1.2 billion a year the year he became CEO to over $48
billion a year by the time he retired in 2015. As a leader John was
always known for far more than just revenue growth, he was skilled
at building an organization that treated people well, including
employees, customers and the community.

In this OODAcast we discuss John’s book, Connecting The Dots, which shares his
insights into leadership including leadership of organizations that
need to disrupt themselves. The lessons of this book can help those
at any stage of a career improve in their ability to lead
innovative companies. John speaks to many learning points in his
career including early lessons on how governments and companies
ignore transitions at their own peril. He draws lessons from lost
opportunities that include things West Virginia could have done
differently, as well as transitions missed by IBM and Wang.

We asked John to elaborate on his ability to spot market
transitions and assess how they should impact business strategy and
operations. This is a skill we are always seeking to improve at
OODA and found his recommendations very consistent with our methods
of keeping our ear to the ground and seeking insights from multiple
sources, then dealing with reality as it is, not as you hope it
will be.

We also ask John for his assessment into the changing economic
situation because of the pandemic. We discuss how his projections
at the beginning of the pandemic played out. We then get his
assessment on what is in store for the coming months, resulting in
advice which should be heard by any CEO seeking to serve. He tells
us agility, a word he used to dislike because it sounded like
marketing, now needs to be the mantra of every CEO.

“Agility is the watchword for leaders today”

John is currently the CEO of JC2 Ventures, a venture capital
firm he founded to invest in and mentor startups he believes are
positioned to become core drivers of economic growth and job
creation in the digital age. We discuss his approach on finding
these firms and mentoring them. The CEO of a key firm in his
portfolio, Guarav Banga of Balbix, was
interviewed for the OODAcast last year).

John concludes with advice for any leader seeking to
succeed:

“You deal with the world the way it is, not the way you wish it
was.”

He also reminds us all that

“The winners are those that do not do the right thing for too
long. The winners are those that are willing to disrupt
themselves.”