A recent McKinsey Quarterly interview with Cisco CEO John Chambers resonated with themes I’ve been hearing from thought-leaders within the SAVO customer base. In the interview Chambers, the ultimate ‘top-down command-and-control’ leader, describes Cisco’s transformation from a traditional model of decision-making to a collaboration-based, ‘human-network’ driven style of decision making that he coins ‘The Innovation Business Model.”
In the piece Chambers mentions his own adoption of blogging as a key way of communicating with employees along with the massive adoption of forums within Cisco as concrete examples of “The Innovation Business Model” taking off. Chambers says that models based on collaboration are actually easier to replicate across organizations because they are not dependent on the excellence of a few individuals, but rather leverage and integrate intellegence of a wide range of people.
Reading the article, I recalled similar themes we have heard at SAVO from Sales and Marketing VPs, that by collaboration on competitive intellegence, objection handling and best practices, the quality of their sales conversations could become a competitive advantage versus those that only allowed information to flow top down.
It would be interesting to find out what other companies have adopted something similar to the “Innovation Business Model.”
Social networking and the conpcet of informal learning is a key element of driving the next wave of sales productivity trends. The true nature of sales learning comes from the field through best practice sharing, war stories and curbside coaching. This new delivery vehicle will help enable this knowledge to be shared in a quicker, more elevant manner.
Our team at Tech Image has had the benefit of seeing Cisco’s model in action, and it’s extremely powerful! All connected to the global service organization are invited to participate in regular surveys, monthly check-in calls and live WebExConnect forums. The result is that partners, service providers and Cisco internal managers are able to monitor what’s on the minds of stakeholders, and deliver new value.
The cultural tone set by Chambers – a very positive, can-do attitude – ensures that even the specialist or contractor – is motivated to contribute. No surprise that McKinsey opted to cover Cisco’s approach to innovation!