How Cisco Uses Our Chapter 9 Pg # 241 to 'See the Future'*

Since when I started reading out carefully Harvard Business Review (HBR), I have come to respect my course management book (i.e, Management, 9th Ed., Stephen P. Robbins & Mary Coulter). I have appreciated that this book summarizes or states, at least, all those principles on which all of today's successful organizations work and win.

Quoting a small example which I came across in this month's (Nov.) issue of HBR, will make you take my claim more seriously.

Cisco Systems are "the world's largest provider of internet networking." And, Cisco's new CEO John Chambers, who will begin his 14th year at Cisco in January, has always been good at listening. And, so has his company been such that - they have scored loads of capital, merely by listening to their clients and customers, as HBR puts it.

"Cisco is able to predict trends six to 8 years (remember budgeting, forecasting, or projecting is always futuristic) in the highly volatile technology market by recognizing early-warning signals its customers unwittingly give off**." This is what they call "market shifts." And, Chambers, Cisco's CEO, himself abandoned his own old 'command-and-control' style in decision making. (I will share more ideas on this topic in future posts, hopefully.)

Cisco was founded in 1984. It did went in a downturn (i.e, crisis). And it came out. Regained its superiority in Internet Communications Equipment providers. But. Only through seeing the future. And, it has been doing so for long only by listening to its customers.

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Notes:

* Harvard Business Review, November 2008. "The HBR Interview: John Chambers", Heading Topic & Pg. 241 of, Management, 9th Ed., Stephen P. Robbins & Mary Coulter
** Harvard Business Review, November 2008. "The HBR Interview: John Chambers"