Connecting the Dots: Leadership Lessons in a Start-up World
Legendary Silicon Valley visionary and one of the world's greatest business leaders, John Chambers shares the playbook and philosophy that transformed Cisco into a global tech titan and now inspire a new generation of leaders.With numerous start-ups moving from zero to a billion to bankruptcy in a matter of years, it’s clear that sustaining a business in the digital age is no walk in the park. Over 20 years, John Chambers transformed a company with 400 employees and one toaster-sized product (a router) into a tech giant that's the backbone of the Internet. Along the way, he's outlasted and outmaneuvered practically every rival that ever tried to take Cisco on-Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, to name a few-and turned more than 10,000 employees into millionaires, more than any company in history. When Chambers stepped down as executive chairman in December of 2017, he left a company that didn't just shape the first Internet era but is leading the next wave of innovation in areas from cyber-security to self-driving cars.Now, in collaboration with award-winning journalist Diane Brady, Chambers shares the stories and strategies that helped his company win again and again through multiple market shifts. Posing a unique mode of thought proven to attain success, the message of this book is clear; it is not the biggest or the richest players who win, but the ones who are able to stay ahead of the trend by connecting the dots.Both enlightening and practical, this is essential reading to inspire a new generation of leaders.
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First published in the US by Hachette Books 2018
This UK edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
FIRST EDITION
© John Chambers 2018
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A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008297039
Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008297060 Version 2018-09-13
I The Connected Leader (The Mindset for Leadership Success)
Chapter One The Lessons of West Virginia (Disrupt, or Be Disrupted)
Chapter Two Act Like a Teenager and Think Like a Dyslexic (How to Spot Market Transitions)
II The Connected Company (The Playbook for Corporate Success)
Chapter Four Embrace Your Purpose, Not Your Products (How Cisco Beat Its Competitors)
Chapter Five After Disaster Strikes (Setbacks Can Make You Stronger)
Chapter Six My Buyer’s Guide to Successful Acquisitions (Based on 180 Personal Experiences)
III Connecting with Customers (The Playbook for Shared Success)
Chapter Seven Build Relationships for Life (Sell People Only What They Need)
Chapter Eight How to Build a Winning Team (Focus on Culture, Diversity, and Results)
Chapter Nine Get Your Message Out (With or Without the Media)
IV Connecting Beyond Borders (The Playbook for a Startup World)
Chapter Ten Bet on Innovative Leadership (How to Partner with Great Leaders)
Chapter Eleven What Entrepreneurs Want to Know (13 Typical Questions)
Chapter Thirteen Reinvent Yourself (What’s Next for Me—and All of Us)
To my family:
For Jack and June Chambers, whose lessons shaped me For Elaine, whose love sustains me For John and Lindsay, who inspire me For Autumn and Jack, who fill me with joy
And for the people who’ve become family along the way,
from my daughter-in-law Ashley to the employees of Cisco and the startups in JC2. I’ve learned so much and love you all. —John
I used to think the best time to have a book about yourself is after you’re dead. I don’t like to sing my own praises and I’m 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 wasn’t so much the lessons of the past as the opportunities of the future. We’re 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 we’ve 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, I’m 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 won’t be here 10 years from now. We’re 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 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.
