John T. Chambers: Chairman And CEO, Cisco Systems

John T. Chambers

Chairman & CEO, Cisco Systems

John Thomas Chambers born August 23, 1949 is the executive chairman and former CEO of Cisco Systems .Chambers was born in Cleveland

He holds a Bachelor of Science / Bachelor of Arts degree in business and a law degree from West Virginia University and a master of business administration degree in finance and management from Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Previously, he also attended the School of Engineering at Duke University from 1967 to 1968.

After obtaining his MBA, Chambers began his career in technology sales at IBM 1976–1983 when he was 27 years old. In 1983, when he was 34 years old he moved to Wang Laboratories. There, he became the vice president of U.S. Operations

Always in motion, always running at top speed, chambers put himself in front of large groups, whether employees or customers, as often as possible. He was a relentless competitors, charming, persistent, and that the combination could be very disarming and he was really tough to beat!

Chambers' leadership skills and crisis management abilities were particularly appreciated when he pulled Cisco out of its worst-ever financial performance - a net loss of $1 billion in the financial year 2000-01.The

Leadership Style Chambers was well recognized for his oratory skills. During his early years at Cisco, while addressing a gathering of employees, Chambers said, "The hallmark of a great company is not that you don't hit potholes, because every good company does, but how quickly you adjust and move out of that so that you don't let the pothole consume you"

Listening to the Customer

Chambers believed that the most important thing that the CEO of a technological business could do was to stay ahead of the marketplace; the only way for Chambers to do that was to listen carefully to Cisco's customers. He needed to know not only what they were presently buying but what they would be looking for five, 10, or 20 years down the

Since Chambers had always been more of a salesman than a technocrat, it was important that he had the very best talent in research and development.

Still, he did not simply expect R&D to create breakthrough products. Rather, he wanted them to integrate the products from acquired companies into Cisco's existing infrastructure. Though he was always looking toward the future, Chambers knew that gobbling up the ideas of other companies would leave his team more time to sell its products.

This kind of reactive leadership works fine when none of the competitors have any idea where the market is going either. But what happens when Cisco hits entirely new