We'll have a sales leader go run engineering. A lawyer go run business development. A business development leader go run our consumer operations. We're going to train a generalist group of leaders who know how to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that's the future of leadership.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of versatile leaders who can adapt and collaborate across various sectors.
John T. Chambers highlights the necessity of developing leaders who possess a broad skill set, rather than specialization. By encouraging leaders to gain experience in different roles, he suggests that this adaptability is crucial for future leadership in a collaborative environment. It reflects the evolving nature of leadership where understanding and working together across functions is paramount for success.
In practice
In a leadership seminar, this quote could be used to inspire new managers to embrace a versatile skill set.
Our success at Cisco has been defined by how we anticipate, capture, and lead through market transitions. Over the years, I've watched iconic companies disappear - Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Wang, Digital Equipment - as they failed to anticipate where the market was heading.
Never ask your employees to do something you wouldn't be willing to do yourself.
There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don't know they have been hacked.
It's connectivity that really makes the industrial Internet work: it's giving the right information at the right time to the right person or right machine to make the right decision.
Widening the talent pipeline sufficiently will require a generational commitment to teaching math and science, providing technical training, and mentoring young people of all backgrounds so they understand the full range of possibilities that a career in technology affords.
Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
I kind of do not like the word chef. Chef, giving you a sense of hierarchy and power. To be a good cook and to be a good leader, it has to come from within and to understand others.
It is an art in itself to compose a starting team, finding the balance between creative players and those with destructive powers, and between defence, construction and attack – never forgetting the quality of the opposition and the specific pressures of each match.
If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I'll walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America, because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.
You don't make a movie by yourself; you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking.
What I've really learned over time is that optimism is a very, very important part of leadership.
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