Cisco’s Center for Collaborative Leadership serves as an interesting model for organizations wishing to closely link their growth and expansion with leadership development. Robert Kovach talks about Cisco Center for Collaborative Leadership
What led Cisco to embrace a new approach to leadership?
A few years ago, our growth was slowing and efforts to find new markets outside of our core business had mixed results. Our CEO John Chambers decided to abandon the traditional command-and-control management structure for a more collaborative model built upon a series of boards and councils. The company needed leaders who were capable of thinking about Cisco’s growth and development as a whole -- rather than focusing on the next great product that their unit would deliver. The goal was to ‘flatten’ the organization and keep us agile and much closer to our customers by bringing together our best people from around the globe to solve key problems.
Not surprisingly, this initiative didn’t go over well with some of our top executives, and several opted to leave. Faced with a thinned pipeline of talent, John decided to focus on tapping into high-potential talent throughout the organization to build up a leadership foundation for the future. The Center for Collaborative Leadership was born.
How do you define ‘Collaborative Leadership’?
It’s a spirit of working with people in a way that is much more open and inclusive than the traditional model. It entails constantly seeking input from your stakeholders, both internal and external. Today’s world is so complex that if you don’t do this, you’re going to miss something, and you might not get another chance.
Usually, ideas are force fed to people; then leaders sit back and wait for changes, but nothing happens. Our Center doesn’t operate as a ‘center of experts’ within Cisco, projecting knowledge outwards to the organization. We collaborate closely with our senior executives to co-create everything we do. When it works well, it’s like really good jazz. This approach is not only required in modern business, but in other areas of endeavour such as education, government and charitable organizations.
Why is collaborative leadership so integral to Cisco’s strategy?
Innovation is critical to our competitive leverage -- both as a company and as a partner to many large organizations --and collaborative leadership is a core component of that. We apply it to everything from technical innovation to business model innovation to cultural innovation. The fact is, with a command-and-control mindset, you will never get the best out of your people. You have to pay attention to their unique needs in order to get the best from them. Being open to different ways to work – the hours people work, and where they work from -- is a cultural thing. Cisco believes that granting flexibility leads to more engaged employees, who are willing to make sacrifices if and when needed.
Your Center focuses on high potential employees (‘HiPos’). How do you define this term?
We actually service both HiPos and our entire senior executive team – in total, close to 5,000 individuals, but our HiPos are the future of the company.
These are people who have the capability to ascend to senior roles: they show strong collaborative ways of interacting and building trust; they are dedicated to their own learning and create learning opportunities for others; and they recognize the need to evolve and build capabilities around them to enable that. HiPos are not necessarily the same people as High Performers: just because you can count on someone to be in at 6 am to turn on the lights without fail, that doesn’t mean she is a HiPo. We’re talking about people who have the capacity to change the game, who are disruptive in that they are able to conceive of new ways to innovate.
Once you identify these people, what happens next?
Hipos attend what we call Executive Action Learning Forums (EALFs). They become part of a team that spends 16 weeks immersed in an intensive leadership experience where they focus on developing both an innovative business solution and develop new leadership skills. Each team member is assigned an internal coach and a Cisco executive who monitors each team’s performance and offers advice along the way. After four weeks of prep work, the team meets in person for a residential week at a Cisco location like San Jose or Singapore or India. This is followed by four weeks of virtual work via our TelePresence videoconferencing technology. Next comes a midsession week, again at a Cisco locale. Four to six more weeks of working virtually culminates with a completed plan for a prospective business opportunity.
What sets EALFs apart from conventional leadership development is that they are built on real business goals rather than textbook case studies or theories. These prospective leaders have ‘skin in the game’, because what they build as a team is presented in person at the end of 16 weeks to our senior executives as a potential business initiative. Most projects are incorporated into the business and some have gone on to be stand-alone business units. Teams are basically competing to get a green light to turn their project into a revenue opportunity. We wanted to create a record of tangible business results where the executives would say, ‘This is great stuff.’ Basically, we’re using our business to develop our executives, and to date, these teams have created billions of dollars worth of opportunities for the company.
What special skills does it take to work across the traditional boundaries of an organization?
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]