Today’s post will look at Cisco, a company that has successfully used social media to collaborate with its publics. Beginning in the late 1990s, CEO John Chambers began to shift the company’s management style from a command and control approach to more collaboration and teamwork.
The shift began as the company started using the Internet to enter orders, as well as handle customer and employee satisfaction. As a result of this shift, Cisco announced that 95% of all their products were never touched by an employee and all orders were entered on the Internet. Chambers claims that this change ushered in a “decade of productivity.”
Following this move to the Internet, the company created ‘business networks,’ which are similar to social networks, and are designed to facilitate a common vocabulary among employees, common evaluation cycles, and resource allocation throughout the company. According to Chambers, these networks include the ‘operating committee’ that runs the company; the ‘councils’ which run $10 billion opportunities; the ‘boards’ that run $1 billion opportunities; and ‘working groups’ that can support the other networks or handle other transactions within the company.
Today, members from each group work together to create ‘operating committees’ for each topic. The shift to implementing these committees and allowing members of each group to collaborate freely on nearly any topic has made the company much more efficient. According to Chambers, it took the company six years to successfully move their philosophy from command and control to this view highlighting collaboration.
A breakthrough came when Chambers realized that he and his executive board had to “lead from the middle” by micromanaging less and acting more as overseers of the multiple networks within the company. With this, there is still an element of command and control in the implementation stage of new ideas.
This viewpoint allowed ideas to flourish within the company, leading to more productivity. A great example of this leadership style increasing productivity has been the advent of the company’s use of teleconferencing. According to Chambers, this idea alone has saved Cisco over $150 in transportation costs since its inception.
Watch the interview below with Chambers to hear him talk about this transition and how it has positively affected his company.
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