Mohsen Moazami, VP of Cisco’s internet business solutions group, told the Etre conference today that it has devolved its management from 10 top stars 10 years ago to 2,500 to 3,000 people now.
“These people,” he said, “have a say in what happens at Cisco”. And it appears that it will need these number of people because, he continued, it has 30 continuous projects on the go.
He said: “The internet is re-inventing life in every dimension and as such the leadership model of large companies changed. We have moved to a collaborative model of leadership and we can move to mark quickly with ‘adjacencies’.”
He pointed to two examples of companies which had grown large and failed to move with the market. “DEC and Wang missed a major transition. So John [Chambers] keeps us on our toes to market transitions.” John Chambers is the CEO of Cisco,
He said: “Today there are 30 corporate priorities we’re going after. We’re out to prove a new model so we can organize ourselves around 30 big bets.”
Cisco has slashed its own travel budgets by using collaborative systems, he said. “Today there are 5,000 meetings held in Cisco. This has led to a $300 million saving in cost in 15 months.” Cisco has 65,000 employees worldwide and is building a second worldwide HQ in Bangalore.
Naturally he has an axe to grind because it offers what he describes as a RollS Royce approach to telepresencing.
