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.

John T. Chambers

Work Men Leadership

There are two equalizers in life: the Internet and education.

John T. Chambers

Life Education Two

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

John T. Chambers

Yourself Yours Your

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

John T. Chambers

Who Types Type

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.

John T. Chambers

You Wit View

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.

John T. Chambers

Work Men Leadership

If every company becomes a technology company, business models and transitions are going to occur. From a CEO's perspective, this is going to be the biggest technology transition of all times.

John T. Chambers

Time Technology Business

In France, President Francois Hollande is leveraging the next wave of the Internet to jumpstart economic reforms and create jobs for hundreds of thousands of citizens. A historically socialist government, France has had the courage to quickly implement unique partnerships with the business community to drive entrepreneurial spirit and thinking.

John T. Chambers

Men Government Courage

Often, what I tell a new CEO asking for advice, or one of my own new leaders, is the two most important decisions that your team is going to watch is the first person you hire and the first person you promote - because you are saying that's the type of person I want.

John T. Chambers

Your You Yin

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.

John T. Chambers

Wit Wherever Where

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.

John T. Chambers

Travel Technology Health

We know that veterans have valuable skills and experiences that are highly sought after in today's workforce.

John T. Chambers

Work Experience Workforce

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.

John T. Chambers

Men You Vest

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.

John T. Chambers

Technology Science Men

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.

John T. Chambers

Your You While

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.

John T. Chambers

Time Life Will

Everything becomes connected, and cyber security becomes the top issue for CEOs. An average company has 40-60 security vendors, and they have a violation every three months with viruses.

John T. Chambers

Age Wit Virus

The No. 1 country in the world to do business in is which one? To locate where you want to create jobs, where you want to have a great market? It's Canada. Even in Russia, you can build a Silicon Valley outside of Moscow.

John T. Chambers

Great Business You

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.

John T. Chambers

Success Men Years

By exciting citizens about the new digital opportunity, breaking down silos of competing groups to form a truly open innovation ecosystem and shifting day-to-day resources to focus on big long-term investments for the future, countries can ensure that they break through and bridge the digital gap.

John T. Chambers

Pet Men Future

If you agree with everything I have said, then I have failed.

John T. Chambers

You Wit Very

I don't enjoy politics. I like to get things done, and I like Republicans and Democrats, and that doesn't always work well.

John T. Chambers

I learned another lesson from Jack Welch. It was in 1998, and at that time, we were one of the most valuable companies in the world. I said, 'Jack, what does it take to have a great company?' And he said, 'It takes major setbacks and overcoming those.'

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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

John T. Chambers

I think at least my philosophy of leadership is you focus more on the areas you have to improve or the mistakes than you do on your successes. And that's just how I am in real life. I don't want to let down my customers, my employees, my shareholders.

John T. Chambers

It's important to remember that finding a job is only the beginning of a smooth transition to civilian life for our troops - as employers, we must also ensure their ongoing success.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

Almost every move in the market is either a move to align with where Cisco is going or to align to compete against us or to utilize that technology.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

Our next CEO needs to thrive in a highly dynamic environment, to be capable of accelerating what is working very well for Cisco and disrupting what needs to change.

John T. Chambers

We're living through the second Industrial Revolution.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

It's connectivity that really makes the industrial Internet work: it's giving the right information at the right time to the right person or right machine to make the right decision.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

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

John T. Chambers

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

John T. Chambers

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

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers

As a leader, you don't get too high on the highs or let the bumps balance down. Every leader over time has probably equal amount of good luck or bad luck - or, you could argue, has good opportunities or challenges.

John T. Chambers

The business community is very comfortable with Romney.

John T. Chambers

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

John T. Chambers

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.

John T. Chambers