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.
President Obama has made it his mission that we welcome our troops home with care, and concern, and the respect they deserve. That is how an exceptional nation says "thank you" to its most exceptional men and women.
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
Of all tasks of government the most basic is to protect its citizens against violence.
Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero.
You have to lose yourself in the team and you have to lose yourself in the game
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.
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