The Eye of THE STORM

Some of the business books are, as they say "unputdownable" Probably due to the nature of their story. For e.g any book on Steve Jobs would qualify to that genre.

The book, "The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Through the Technology Collapse" doesn't fall under that genre, it is not even fast paced, yet would recommend reading this book.

If you are wondering why on earth? Here we go!

The way and circumstances the book was written. As the author himself explains, he was done with the book (around spring 2001) when Cisco was it its peak, nothing could go wrong with the company. It was on its way to become the first trillion dollar company. However before the book went to print, the market cap fell to $135 billion dollar somewhere from half a trillion dollar. The author had to revisit the entire premise, and take a whole new look at the company. As a result, one can vicariously live through the life of a CEO who was hailed as the King of Internet one day and six months later, was in worst kind of exile.

Early history of Cisco. I never realized or knew the name Cisco was derived from San Francisco and the logo was designed by one of the founder, inspired by the Golden Gate Bridge. Seed capital of Sequoia was more like an insurance, in case the debt and working capital couldn't fuel the growth and the Cisco never touched that money.

How the founders could have probably killed the company without adult supervision? You really do understand, building a killer product is different from building a company. Oh, and also the role of a good VC, how good products and individual superstars can carry the company forward to an extent by sweeping a lot of other challenges under the rug. Simply put, the early life of Cisco alone can inspire another HBO series, Silicon Valley! In other words, it gives you a better inside view on the early stages of the hyper growth hi-tech startup company.

John Chambers. He was a dyslexic, when he was a kid. He became a CEO for a public listed company at 45. One can learn what and how to transition a startup in to a good company and then to a great company. Probably, with the good product portfolio and the market growing, one could argue any CEO could have pulled that off or some might even argue, he was at the right place at the right time. But I do think, it was all him. He worked hard to make it happen.

He was not only a good peace time CEO but also a war time CEO. He managed the downturn or as he calls the 100 year flood. Their fall in revenues and growth could have been mathematically impossible, yet, still it happened. (Does it sound like a familiar story? Hello COVID-19 and many other high flying startups) The book gives a better insight on facts, their thinking and thought process on how and why the leadership never saw the dotcom bust, how they could have prepared or foreseen and what they could have done to manage the downturn in a better way.

If you are looking for inspiration to manage your company through these tough times, you should probably pick this book. One caveat to remember is, the fundamentals of Cisco, the products, business model, even strategy and to a great extent, execution was already good enough. The macro economic conditions took them by surprise but they bounced back because their fundamentals were good. If your unit economics were already bad, if you were buying customers with discounts, and something similar in that sort of nature, the wisdom of the book may not be of much help.

Long story short, it takes you on a roller coaster ride of ups and downs of how a terrible teenager goes through the adolescence to become a good and responsible adult and what it takes to be a good parent to make that happen.