John Chambers: Cisco CEO And Chairman

John Thomas Chambers was born on August 23, 1949 in Cleveland, Ohio. The family resided in Kanawha City, West Virginia. John’s father was an obstetrician while his mother was a psychiatrist. Having highly skilled parents is certainly an advantaged. John was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was nine years old. Fortunately he learned to cope with his disability with the aid of a therapist.

John enrolled at the School of Engineering at Duke University from 1967 to 1968. He earned his degree in business and a law degree at West Virginia University and an MBA in finance and management from Indiana University.

Armed with an MBA degree John started his career in technology sales at IBM from 1976 to 1982. He then moved to Wang Laboratories in 1982. John was appointed Vice President of U.S. Operations in 1987. While his career may have been in an upward trajectory, Wang Laboratories was having a different fate. The company’s profit in 1989 reached $2 billion only to experience a $700 million loss the following year. In 1990 John left Wang and joined Cisco in 1991. This was a pivotal move on his part and for Cisco as well.

Cisco was essentially a startup having been founded in 1983. John came in as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Operations. By 1995 he was promoted to President and CEO. John was elected Chairman of the Board in 2006 aside from his role as CEO.

John has helped grow Cisco from $70 million when he joined the company to $1.2 billion when he became CEO to a record-breaking $48.6 billion in 2013.

His outstanding leadership has been cited by many organizations. In 2012 he received the Bower Award for Business Leadership from the Franklin Institute, Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People, “CEO of the Year” by Chief Executive Magazine, and more. Under his stewardship Cisco has been named to Fortune’s “America’s Most Company” list since 1999.

The Right Choice

While Cisco was in place before the internet started to take off, it had a very shaky start as the founders of the company eventually left in not very good terms. The company managed to grow and its then president John Morgridge made a fateful decision, he hired a man by the name of John T. Chambers to be the senior vice president of World Wide Operations in 1990.

This turned out to be a great choice; with Morgridge’s backing Chambers became the company CEO in 1995. Like other tech companies Cisco’s stocks were overinflated; it became the most valuable company in the world in 2001. When the dot.com bubble burst the company’s value went down dramatically.  Chambers resorted to cutting workforce and taking a pay cut himself. He stood his ground and continued growing the company and making strategic acquisitions.

His management skills can be seen in the numbers that he produced. In 1995 when he took over as CEO annual sales was at $1.2 billion, today they are in the $40 billion level.  Cisco has maintained its leadership providing routers and other products that keep the internet humming.  Chambers also became chairman of the board in 2006.

As a sign of continuously adapting to new environment Chambers embarked the company on a new management approach that is decentralized in nature and has been happy to share it with other large companies as well. They have seen increased productivity with this approach. Of course the technologies used to enable this change involve using Cisco products.  Chambers has always been innovative but also keeps his eyes on the ball.