Top 66 John T. Chambers Quotes

Since I became CEO, 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don’t reinvent themselves will be left behind. I also think that’s true of people. And I think it’s true of countries.

People who might normally have to travel hours to a distant city to see a cardiologist can now do so virtually, through Cisco technology, at their local hospital or health clinic. Clinicians use technology to share patient reports and diagnostic images and collaborate on cases.

Never ask your employees to do something you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself.

In September 2014, the USIBC members indicated an investment figure of $41 billion that was likely to be invested over a 2-3 year period.

Do you have the same vision of where industry is going as the target of your acquisition? If visions differ, you might get together economically for a while, but then you are going to have problems.

Our success at Cisco has been defined by how we anticipate, capture, and lead through market transitions. Over the years, I’ve watched iconic companies disappear – Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Wang, Digital Equipment – as they failed to anticipate where the market was heading.

When I look at the success of the Cisco Networking Academy program, which has reached more than 4.75 million people since 1997, I know it could have never achieved this scale without our partners. Together we provide the tools, equipment and training for our students and teachers.

We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know.

Once you put in backdoors, once you allow a government to intercept anything they want, you have to give it to other governments around the world. Once you do that, there is no privacy; there is no security. There is no protection for democracy.

The political gridlock in Washington leads us to conclude that policymakers don’t have the ability to put the public finances of the U.S. on a sustainable footing.

We’re going to become the number one security company.

The window was open for us to play in the consumer as data, voice, video came together. This is where you have to have the courage to take good business risks because if you don’t, you never win.

Understand what you are acquiring and protect it at all costs. You are acquiring people and next-generation products. You are making an investment that together you can grow faster, make more profits, and take more market share.

As a country, we must come together to provide the training, certifications, and jobs that our veterans have earned and deserve.

I hope that the new leader, whoever they are – and I hope that it will be Hillary – will bring our country back to participation by all groups and will talk about how technology will enable not just 10% of our population, but all of our population.

Government leaders need to ask themselves if they are positioning their country to reap the full potential of the digital economy.

Today’s world requires a different leadership style – more collaboration and teamwork, including using Web 2.0 technologies. If you had told me I’d be video blogging and blogging, I would have said, ‘No way.’ And yet our 20-somethings in the company really pushed me to use that more.

There is no secure data center in the world; they have all been broken into. We can help you prepare for it and minimize the damage when it does occur.

We’re very much focused on full shareholder-value return. We have to get our stock moving. But I won’t do something in the short run that I don’t feel is right for the long run. That, I’ve watched many CEOs do.

This will be the first time in my lifetime I’m voting for a Democrat. I’m going to vote for Hillary Clinton. I’ve already voted.

We’ll have a sales leader go run engineering. A lawyer go run business development. A business development leader go run our consumer operations. We’re going to train a generalist group of leaders who know how to learn and operate in collaboration teamwork. I think that’s the future of leadership.

There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who don’t know they have been hacked.

Widening the talent pipeline sufficiently will require a generational commitment to teaching math and science, providing technical training, and mentoring young people of all backgrounds so they understand the full range of possibilities that a career in technology affords.

When you’re a large company with significant market share, it’s tempting to view market disruptions as a threat, but we view them as an opportunity.

When a market isn’t in transition, gaining market share is hard – you’re fighting to take one or two points of share from competitors.

The number one objective is that people who make the investment in digitization, whether they are governments or service providers, get a reasonable return.

To go back to a 1950s voice mentality with Title II and net neutrality would be a tremendous mistake for our country.

It’s easy for me to see how a business proposition is going to play out, or who our next-generation competitors are, from taking this data point from this customer and another data point from another customer… and jump to Z.

If we’re going to acquire, what are we going to do differently? We came up with six rules of thumb. Whenever I’ve violated two of them, I usually get into trouble.

In 2008, we began an initiative to outsource projects from our Israeli office to three companies in the Palestinian Territories.

Our line of business structure has served us very well in the past, when customer segments and product requirements were very distinct.

I would say my strengths are vision and strategy.

There’s a lot to learn from President Clinton. It kills me as a strong Republican saying it, but he was the most effective president during my lifetime. And when business got out of line, he smacked them.

I had an issue with dyslexia before they understood what dyslexia was. One of my teachers, Mrs. Anderson, taught me to look at it like a curveball. The ball breaks the same way every time. Once you get used to it, you can handle it pretty well.

I have interacted with several top leaders. Modi is among the three smartest leaders I have met.

I think technology can change every country regardless of political party.

At Cisco, we are moving to collaboration teams, groups coming together that represent sales, engineering, finance, legal, etc. And we’re training leaders to think across silos.

Cities, too, are embracing digitization. Barcelona has installed in-ground parking sensors and launched connected public transportation as part of its Smart City strategy.

I think Mr Trump is going to be a good president.

The business community is very comfortable with Romney.

The ‘No.1 IT company’ isn’t by volume, it’s in relation to business customers because those are my customers, not the consumer. Who do they view as their most important partner? That’s my definition of the ‘No.1 IT company.’

I don’t make fun of people. I call people by what they want to be called. What does your best friend call you? What does your spouse call you? It helps you emotionally connect to people.

We will see growth in the U.S., and we will selectively acquire in the U.S., but we prefer to use our global opportunity.

Digital is going to have five times the impact than the information era. Just because you led the first transition as a company or country, that doesn’t mean you will lead in this one.

When a leader doesn’t do his or her job, it isn’t just a problem with the person. They take their whole organization down.

We’re living through the second Industrial Revolution.

I wasn’t always interested in technology. I had been a student for a long time – I’d earned a bachelor’s degree, a law degree, and an MBA – and decided that I wanted to work in a large corporation, focusing on finance and law, in either New York or Chicago.

The definition of success is that the company doesn’t miss a beat. Do I love what I do? Oh yeah – I love it more than ever. You’ve got to have that energy level 24/7. But you’ve also got to make sure the transition is smooth. Being realistic, most high-tech companies haven’t done that well.

When I think about developing solutions, I think about how we can use technology to make a difference.

Every company, city, and country is becoming digital, navigating disruptive markets, and Cisco’s role in the digital transformation has never been more important.

What makes Silicon Valley really work? It’s a unique combination of great educational institutions – especially at Stanford – that generate engineers and a culture that starts companies.

The industry has to learn how to do CEO succession well. If your definition of success is Intel or Microsoft or HP or IBM, that’s not a good track record, and yet they are the most successful ones.

Organized crime and rogue nation states and terrorists are very much focused on the Internet of things. The challenge that goes with connectivity is always security. The bad guys go wherever the return is, and now it’s more lucrative for bad guys to focus on cybercrime than traditional crime.