The Cisco employees who will succeed at the company will be the ones who thrive at being moved to different business functions - IT, finance, customer service, manufacturing - and can work on any cross-
functional projects. They won't be paid for their current skills but instead be paid for their leadership abilities and willingness to learn new things. That's the new work life at Cisco as it transforms from a top-down organization to one that encourages collaboration and teamwork at all levels, according to a Q&A by Federal Computer Week with Randy Pond, Cisco’s executive vice president of operations, processes and systems.
Cisco encourages teamwork when analyzing a problem and looking for a solution but once that is found the company switches to a "command-and-control" mode, and "that's when we’re telling the managers and leaders, turn off the collaboration and turn on execution," according to Pond. That formula is being deployed in Cisco's engineering group which was previously led by Charlie Giancarlo, but is now run by a team of VPs.
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The End of Innnovation?
I can't help but wonder what this is going to do for innovation and creativity at Cisco. A collaborative environment usually leads to more new ideas and creative thinking. If engineers find the new environment stifling and too structured they may either become less innovative or simply leave. I'm not sure what their logic is in this...any ideas?
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