My Big Idea for Leaders of Tomorrow: Find Your Breakaway Moment

Shortly after I joined Cisco in the early ‘90s we set a goal that was very ambitious for a company in its early years: to change the world leveraging the power of the Internet. We always believed that we could achieve our goal and we never lost sight of this vision. We didn’t shy away from seeking out and capturing that big idea that would allow us to breakthrough and lead the pack.

Those that will be successful are the leaders that have the courage to think boldly and take risks. My big idea is centered on finding that breakaway moment that allows you to achieve, and doing so in a way that’s replicable and can be used across the business. To do this, I offer the following advice to today’s leaders:

Continuous innovation requires replicable processes. There is no greater example of a true innovator than Thomas Edison, who accumulated more than 1,000 U.S. patents. This type of innovation would not have been possible without a replicable process. Edison was really good at bringing an idea from concept to reality, seeing it through research, development, commercialization and, eventually, scaling it. I believe that, in today’s world, people dramatically underestimate the need to create a replicable process, like Edison’s, that can be applied to a variety of different scenarios, products, and more to achieve fast innovation. At Cisco, we’ve created a process that can be applied across the business with acquisitions, strategic partnerships, country digitization, et cetera, which has enabled us to innovate with speed and at tremendous scale. Other leaders that incorporate this into their skill sets will be able to do the same.

Relationships matter. Breakaway moments can strike at any time and any place, and it’s in those moments that you’ll need the right team and partner network to drive success. It’s essential to think of your ecosystem as your extended family and also your most trusted partners, so you have the inclination to change before the market does and are supported when the moment strikes. Listening to customers and others across your personal network—about what keeps them up at night or what opportunities they are most excited about—is the best indication of the changes happening in various industries. This information has been critical in my career, helping me to decide when to pivot to new product areas in order to capture market transitions before they are obvious and especially before it’s too late. It’s also necessary to spend time expanding your horizons through new relationships. For example, each time I travel, I meet with local startups to exchange ideas and advice, and I’ve found these conversations to be invaluable. Great startups think exponentially as opposed to the way many of us have been trained to think linearly. Leaders who prioritize their relationships and realize that innovation can’t happen in silos will be the ones who get ahead.

Do the right thing, but not for too long - make change a requirement of the job. Those that continue doing the same thing, just improving it slightly every year, will never breakaway. All too often, companies get unseeded because they invest in doing the same thing better and better for too long, until the day comes when that one thing they’ve perfected is no longer needed in the market. The companies that will be successful in the long-run are those that think exponentially and are constantly disrupting themselves and their business models.

From a leadership perspective, this requires you to embed change into your culture and learn how to feed on the energy of disruptive thinking, even when faced with criticism. When you first decide to make a fundamental change to your business, chances are people will tell you that it’s the wrong move, but if you wait until the change is obvious, you’ll be too late. You must listen to your key indicators—for me, these are customers, startups, industry trends, analysts and shareholders—to see where the market is headed, and when you see a transition, you have to have the courage to go for it. Very few leaders are willing to change themselves this quickly, but the ones that do will break away from the rest.

Have the courage to breakaway. My parents taught me that education was the greatest equalizer in life, but growing up in West Virginia, they also told me that you had to be in the right city, in the right country for that equalizer to really work well. Today there is a second equalizer—the Internet—that has removed these barriers. With access to technology and the right skills and training, the next big breakaway idea can come from anyone, anywhere in the world. But to achieve great things, you have to realize that only you control your destiny.

Whether you’re an early stage startup or an established company, reaching your breakaway moment and achieving long-term success will be dependent on your ability to think differently, dream and learn as you go. In order to do this, you must seek educational opportunities for where the market is headed, not where it’s been, and realize that you will be more a product of your failures than your successes (just don’t make the same mistakes twice!). Most importantly, you must recognize that you can achieve almost anything you want in life, as long as you never allow your challenges to become excuses for why you didn’t accomplish what you set out to.