Cisco, Chambers argues, is the best possible model for how a large, global business can operate: as a distributed idea engine where leadership emerges organically, unfettered by a central command.
Chambers wants nothing less than a total redesign of the corporation as we know it. Starting at the top: “You won’t have to depend on the CEO anymore.” About those Cisco execs who left, he says he came to realize that “some people need a command-and-control environment.” But that’s not the way of the future: “We now have a whole pool of talent who can lead these working groups, like mini CEOs and COOs. We’re growing ideas, but we’re growing people as well.” In fact, he says, “where I might have had two potential successors, I now have 500.”
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