Wim Elfrink runs his work life like a marathon: Warming up early, moving to a rhythm and digging in until the finish
I am the Chief Globalisation Officer at Cisco. It’s a new role in the company. And I see myself as a path finder. For me, it was very important to walk the talk. You cannot sit in California and dream or talk about it. That’s how we decided to set up our second headquarters in India.
This is not just about India. If we learn how to do this, we can do something similar in China, America, Russia, and so on. Our goal is to create a company for speed and scale. For speed, talent and innovation is needed. For scale, you need a global organisation that works 24 hours a day. So working round the clock is now a part of my lifestyle.
I am 12.5 hours away from the U.S. If you look at my agenda, once or twice a week, I am in conference calls with the U.S. when everybody else in Bangalore is sleeping. I make it a point to sit in on these calls because I have to make a point — we spent a few hundred million dollars building this campus. It’s the role of the business leaders to think about what this campus should do, because we are building this place for the next 10 years.
(This story appears in the 05 June, 2009 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)