Cisco’s Center for Collaborative Leadership

What led Cisco to embrace a new approach to leadership?
A few years ago, our growth was slowing and efforts to find new markets outside of our core business had mixed results.  Our CEO John Chambers decided to abandon the traditional command-and-control management structure for a more collaborative model built upon a series of boards and councils.  The company needed leaders who were capable of thinking about Cisco’s growth and development as a whole -- rather than focusing on the next great product that their unit would deliver. The goal was to ‘flatten’ the organization and keep us agile and much closer to our customers by bringing together our best people from around the globe to solve key problems.  

Not surprisingly, this initiative didn’t go over well with some of our top executives, and several opted to leave. Faced with a thinned pipeline of talent, John decided to focus on tapping into high-potential talent throughout the organization to build up a leadership foundation for the future.  The Center for Collaborative Leadership was born.

How do you define ‘Collaborative Leadership’?
It’s a spirit of working with people in a way that is much more open and inclusive than the traditional model. It entails constantly seeking input from your stakeholders, both internal and external. Today’s world is so complex that if you don’t do this, you’re going to miss something, and you might not get another chance.  

Usually, ideas are force fed to people; then leaders sit back and wait for changes, but nothing happens. Our Center doesn’t operate as a ‘center of experts’ within Cisco, projecting knowledge outwards to the organization. We collaborate closely with our senior executives to co-create everything we do.  When it works well, it’s like really good jazz.  This approach is not only required in modern business, but in other areas of endeavour such as education, government and charitable organizations.

Why is collaborative leadership so integral to Cisco’s strategy?
Innovation is critical to our competitive leverage -- both as a company and as a partner to many large organizations --and collaborative leadership is a core component of that. We apply it to everything from technical innovation to business model innovation to cultural innovation.  The fact is, with a command-and-control mindset, you will never get the best out of your people. You have to pay attention to their unique needs in order to get the best from them. Being open to different ways to work – the hours people work, and where they work from -- is a cultural thing. Cisco believes that granting flexibility leads to more engaged employees, who are willing to make sacrifices if and when needed.

Your Center focuses on high potential employees (‘HiPos’).  How do you define this term?
We actually service both HiPos and our entire senior executive team – in total, close to 5,000 individuals, but our HiPos are the future of the company.

These are people who have the capability to ascend to senior roles:  they show strong collaborative ways of interacting and building trust; they are dedicated to their own learning and create learning opportunities for others; and they recognize the need to evolve and build capabilities around them to enable that.  HiPos are not necessarily the same people as High Performers: just because you can count on someone to be in at 6 am to turn on the lights without fail, that doesn’t mean she is a HiPo.  We’re talking about people who have the capacity to change the game, who are disruptive in that they are able to conceive of new ways to innovate.  

Once you identify these people, what happens next?
Hipos attend what we call Executive Action Learning Forums (EALFs).  They become part of a team that spends 16 weeks immersed in an intensive leadership experience where they focus on developing both an innovative business solution and develop new leadership skills. Each team member is assigned an internal coach and a Cisco executive who monitors each team’s performance and offers advice along the way. After four weeks of prep work, the team meets in person for a residential week at a Cisco location like San Jose or Singapore or India. This is followed by four weeks of virtual work via our TelePresence videoconferencing technology.  Next comes a midsession week, again at a Cisco locale. Four to six more weeks of working virtually culminates with a completed plan for a prospective business opportunity.  

What sets EALFs apart from conventional leadership development is that they are built on real business goals rather than textbook case studies or theories.  These prospective leaders have ‘skin in the game’, because what they build as a team is presented in person at the end of 16 weeks to our senior executives as a potential business initiative.  Most projects are incorporated into the business and some have gone on to be stand-alone business units.  Teams are basically competing to get a green light to turn their project into a revenue opportunity.  We wanted to create a record of tangible business results where the executives would say, ‘This is great stuff.’ Basically, we’re using our business to develop our executives, and to date, these teams have created billions of dollars worth of opportunities for the company.

What special skills does it take to work across the traditional boundaries of an organization?
The traditional approach in most organizations involves doing things that worked in the past and not taking risks; but we encourage our leaders to work from their own internal compass.  These are people who are willing to do whatever it takes to do the job done well – not just to keep their job. One thing we consistently notice is that about eight weeks into the 16-week program, a lightbulb goes off for them: they have this ‘aha’ moment that their way of operating needs to be different.  For some, this is exciting; for others, it can be very threatening.  Given the risks they will be taking, they need support in order to remain resilient.  The walls separating the business and the modern learning function must be highly permeable.

Those who handle this scenario the best are the ones who are willing to develop the fastest.  Rather than accepting, ‘this is the way things are done’, they are eager to look at, ‘where is the future going?’

To what degree has Cisco embraced Web 2.0 technologies for its day-to-day operations?
Virtually every interaction that occurs within our company -- including this interview -- uses Web 2.0 technologies. They enable a fully flexible work environment – ‘anytime, anywhere’.  As we began to introduce these tools across the company, we made it okay for people to not get it right the first time; we improve as we go.  One tool that we are particularly proud of is our Leadership Channel – an interactive web-based program that enables us to deliver about $85,000 worth of executive education for $3,500 per person.  We recently had Madeleine Albright speak to our executives around the world, and nobody except for Madeleine had to travel on by plane.  Then we had a session with former presidential advisor David Gergen.  He was on Telepresence in Boston, and we had a panel of our executives in California and 1,000 leaders around the world watching, interacting with them and asking questions.  And these weren’t just our young employees from the Millennial Generation -- they were all between 35 and 55.  The Channel also features leadership-oriented content and serves as an online library, chat room and social network for members of the Executive Action Forum.

We were thrilled to have the late CK Prahalad work on this technology with us.  At one point, as we were developing it and fixing some of the glitches, he said, “If you guys get this right, you will change not only how leaders manage and work, but how we teach poor children in Africa.”  These tools aren’t just for playing with. The ‘holy grail’ for us is making conversations about leadership and culture part of the daily business routine.  

As organizations everywhere become more open to their stakeholders, what new skills do leaders require?
We’ve gone far too long with a one-size-fits-all model of leadership. Today, leadership skills are no longer generic – they depend significantly on the industry you are in.  In addition to having the collaborative mindset, leaders must understand the dynamics of their industry in developed vs. emerging countries and be able to hold both models in their mind when creating strategies.  In addition to the ability to appreciate macro and micro components of the global environment, they must also possess the agility to adjust and change course as a scenario evolves.  Lots of organizations still operate in stagnant contexts, but collaborative leadership requires understanding the multiple needs of your ecosystem of shareholders.  Leaders must be more culturally adaptive to the ways people think and operate, and cultural assumptions and biases must be recognized quickly and dealt with.

Many organizations don’t provide full access to Web 2.0 tools to their employees.  What is your message to them?
As we saw with the situation in Egypt last fall, you can’t control people anymore, and you can’t block information from them.  If you don’t adapt, you will basically cut yourself off from talent, because they won’t put up with it.  In addition, any employee can pull out their iPhone and engage with their network; if they are asking sensitive questions, there will be no firewall to protect your company, so it’s much smarter to embrace Web 2.0. The genie is out of the bottle; the question now is, How will you adapt?

We’re not just talking about big companies, either. We recently worked with Lego, the Danish toy manufacturer, which is actually quite a small organization, but it is being very quick to embrace all of this.  The bottom line is that this how business will be done in the future.

[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]