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How Leaders Lead with David Novak
#274: Chuck Robbins, Chairman & CEO, Cisco – Adapt your leadership style
01:05:48
Listen to this leadership podcast with Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, and discover how to adapt your leadership style to get more from your team.
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Today's guest is Chuck Robbins. He's the chairman and CEO of Cisco, which is one of the most influential technology companies in the world. Chuck's been with the company since 1997, and though the magnitude of his leadership role is now gigantic, he's a leader who knows how to stay grounded and really connect with the people he leads. You're going to love this conversation between David and Chuck. Enjoy it, and I'll see you at the very end of the episode for the debrie.
- [00:33]
Chuck Robbins
I always believed my job every day was an interview. And what I did in my role every day was showing them that I was the right candidate for the next job.
- [00:50]
David Novak
We might have to cut this out from the actual episode, but I gotta hear the story of Pants Patterson.
- [00:58]
Chuck Robbins
You've been talking to Eric Church too much now.
- [01:00]
David Novak
Yes, I have.
- [01:03]
Chuck Robbins
So if you really want to hear it, my CFO is a guy named Mark Patterson, who. He and Eric have become friends as well. We play golf occasionally together. There's a. There's an outside chance we're playing very soon. And this Mark actually had a pair of pants that someone else had bought for him to wear, and he was playing very poorly on the front nine. And he. He was convinced that it was the pants that were causing the problems because they were baggy, they looked like grandpa pants. And so after nine, he went into the pro shop, bought a pair of pants, put them on, went to the temp tee, and proceeded to play great on the back nine. So Eric decided to call him Pants Patterson. And he went on and on about how he started talking about, like, could you imagine, like, a defensive back in today's world with nil and college, you know, Pan. Now starting for the Tar Heels, Pants Patterson. Eric thought it was the funniest thing, and he went. He just. He laughed and he kept. And it's. It's. It stuck. I texted Eric a few days ago and asked him about playing golf with us, and his first answer, his first question back was after he said yes, was his pants coming. There you go. I love it. Now we call them that in at Cisco, too, now. So it's. It's something that's not going away.
- [02:23]
David Novak
That's great, you know, and now there's the food company, Chuck, the R B singer, and then there's. Then yours. Then there's your Cisco. Tell us. Tell us about what Cisco does.
- [02:36]
Chuck Robbins
Well, years ago, there was also an alcoholic drink called Cisco. David, just to be clear, first I'll tell you a funny story about the food company. Mid career I'd be flying and I'd inevitably be sitting next to someone and they'd ask me who I for, and I'd say, Cisco. And they would say, oh, my Lord, you guys, you were so great to my parents when they were running their restaurant. And I was like, that's not us. Different. Different Cisco. But. So what Cisco does is basically we build a lot of the technology that, that creates the plumbing for the Internet and for all the networks that connect to the Internet and we provide cyber security for it. But think about like a traffic system for, for the Internet. We build all that equipment and we sell it to enterprises or service providers or cloud provider. They use our technology to deliver their services to end users. That's about as simple as I can make it. But there's a whole lot more to it than that. But that's, that's a. Oh, I'm, I'm sure there is.
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David Novak
And you've been at Cisco since 1997. You know what, what led you there?
- [03:37]
Chuck Robbins
Oh, that's a good story. So I was selling for a company called Ascend Communications, A S C E N D back then, and I was covering like four or five states and we had young kids and my wife was. There was a territory that came up for Cisco. Now I remember I started with Cisco's biggest competitor. So this. In those days, it was like Coke versus Pepsi. We hated each other and I hated Cisco. The thought of working for them made me sick. And I actually met with them and talked to them in 95 and chose not to go to work for them, which you could argue says something about my intellect. But then in 97, a territory became available that had me. I could drive it and be home every night. And we had young kids and had another kid on the way and. And my wife's like, how many opportunities are going to come about where you can have, you know, there's someone moving out of a role, there's existing customers. It was a good patch. And so the whole theory behind it was, was to be home every night. And 11 months later, I was doing something else. And 11 months after that, something else. And. But you should have seen when I had the offer letter and I had to sign it, my wife's like, it was right. Just like a couple weeks before Christmas. My 28th anniversary was last week.
- [04:58]
David Novak
Congratulations.
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Chuck Robbins
Thank you. And she's like, sign the papers. She had vision and foresight that I didn't have.
- [05:09]
David Novak
And your Cisco equipment routes as I understand it about 85% of the world's Internet traffic. How do you lead, Chuck, when you have such a dominant share of market like that?
- [05:22]
Chuck Robbins
Well, 85% of the Internet traffic flows through some product we have. A lot of. It'll flow through other companies products as well. Just to be clear. Look, I think that we've had to change over the years. There was a time where we were the de facto standard, but we live in a world today that has incredible competition. Frankly, during the pandemic and the subsequent supply chain crisis, a lot of our customers came to the conclusion they needed dual vendor strategies because if you had supply chain issues back then, they couldn't get equipment. So we have a lot of robust competition. So we went from having a team 20 years ago who thought that because we had such high market share, we could control market transitions, we could determine when these products shifted. And now we have great competitors who make us better every day. And so we have to stay on our toes and continue to innovate. And it's a very competitive market for us.
- [06:18]
David Novak
And your company operates for your customers mostly behind the scenes. When everything works, nobody really notices it. What's the leadership lesson that that's taught you?
- [06:31]
Chuck Robbins
Well, I think that you're exactly right. Nobody knows that it's working. And you know, I joke with like these early in career, recent college grads, when they say, like Cisco, what do you guys do? I always say if we didn't do what we do, this wouldn't work. So does that help you? And, and so, but the reality is, is that you're going to have, you're going to have crises, right? When you're running critical infrastructure at the government level, the telecom networks and the cloud providers, you're going to have problems. I mean this technology is super complex and we've always believed that if you handle a crisis properly, you can have a stronger relationship with that customer after the crisis than you had going into the crisis if you handle it properly. And so that's the way we always approach it. When a customer has a problem, it's all hands on deck. And any customer who has an outage, I know about it within an hour and, and I get updates just repeatedly until they're out of crisis mode. And if it's bad enough or big enough or whatever, then I'm on the phone with them too. And it's just, you just have to communicate and you got to smother them when they have a problem and make sure that you're bringing them back and you're in the trenches with them and you're helping them recover. And if you do that right, you will be stronger, have a stronger relationship when you, when it's over.
- [07:45]
David Novak
Yeah. When times get tough and you hang in there with people and you get it done, then that's, that really shows your mettle.
- [07:50]
Chuck Robbins
Yeah. When I was early in my sales career, you know, we'd have a customer doing a big upgrade in their infrastructure on a weekend, and we would have engineers helping them, but I'd come in and just be with them and buy pizza, you know, and just be there. And I think that's, that means a ton to people when you're with them, when they, when they, when they either are in a, in a challenging situation, a stressful situation, or an uncertain situation, like doing a major upgrade on a weekend, it's, it's just a big part of the relationship building.
- [08:21]
David Novak
You know, Chuck, I really want to get into your, your leadership at Cisco, but, but before we dive deeper and I want to, I want to take you back and way back. Can you share a story from your childhood that really shaped the kind of leader you are today?
- [08:36]
Chuck Robbins
Well, you know, I, I grew up in rural Georgia. Everybody thinks I am born and bred Tarhill. But I, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's a joke out of Texas where somebody says you're either born there or you spend your whole life trying to get there. And I think the truth of the matter is you either were born a Tar Heel or you, you're ultimately trying to become one.
- [08:56]
David Novak
And, and, and the sweater color. Duly noted. My bad, my bad. You already made a comment about my poor dress. And I'll work on it.
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Chuck Robbins
You know, just in case you, you know, you need something else. There's a Tar Heel.
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David Novak
There you go.
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Chuck Robbins
But growing up in rural Georgia, my grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher and he had eight kids. And it was a classic. He had a couple hundred acres farm, but the farm was simply existed to feed the families. And you learn hard work and you learn honesty and you learn to take care of your fellow citizens. And I think it, I wouldn't say there was a moment, there were lots of moments. But I also had a father who unfortunately passed away about five years ago, but he had a military background and he didn't suffer fools. And if you made a 96 on an exam, he wanted to know why it wasn't a 98 or 100. And so those are the kinds of things that shape how you think about things. So we had to the rural life. That really shaped sort of how I think about helping people and doing the things and leading people. And then I had a very, a father with very high expectations.
- [10:10]
David Novak
You know, I think about that, you know, getting the 96 on an exam and your dad saying, hey, take it a little bit further, you know, and that's raising the bar. You work with all these high talent people. I mean, you work with extremely smart people in your company and you know, so what have you learned about how to raise the bar with people who already have such a high standard like yourself?
- [10:31]
Chuck Robbins
You have to just. Everybody's got an area that they can get better at, including you and including me, right? All the time. We can always get better. And I think helping people understand sometimes. Like as an example, I have one of my leaders who just works 16 hours a day, high charging, fast moving and he expects out of his team and he, and he, and he wants to be super critical when they're not doing stuff well as a team, himself included. And sometimes you have to say, hey, it's time to stop being critical of the team and appreciate how hard they're working and shift into supportive mode. And so just trying to help people because people who are driven tend to want to move fast and they want people around them that move in the same way. And I think you have to adapt your style depending on the situation and candidly depending on the human that you're trying to motivate. One method doesn't work for everybody and it doesn't work in every situation. I think that's a big thing that we, we spend a lot of time on my team.
- [11:29]
David Novak
And Chuck, you know, as you grow in your career, you know, you had to have build a lot of self awareness and take a look at your own skills and figure out what you needed to get better at next. Did you have a particular process that you used to, to do that or it was just something that happened naturally day to day?
- [11:46]
Chuck Robbins
I think you, we have a lot of discussions about this now because like our portfolio is so complicated and we think about our sales organization and there's this whole discussion around how much training do we provide and how much should they just be taking it upon themselves to go learn? And I was fortunate that I have a mathematical science and computer science background. So I was technical early on and I've been in the industry since it was conceived, unfortunately, which means I'm old, so I had the advantage of that. But I think that, you know, I like to say that the person who's going to benefit most from learning and development is the person. So who should be most responsible for making yourself better is you. If you, you know. And so I think that, and surely people who are listening to this are trying to make themselves better because they're trying to learn from old guys like us. And so I think it was just, it was just something that I was just, I was always curious and I always watched. That's the other thing I think people learn by watching you do. Watching people do something, not having people tell you how to do it. So we would always, like, I would always pick up on. When I saw someone do a great presentation, I'd pick up two or three things. I was like, wow, that was really good the way they did that. Or in some cases it was like, wow, I don't, I don't think that works for me. And, and so it was a lot of situational stuff that you pick up along the way. And you just kind of, you become molded in whatever you're going to become as a result of all that.
- [13:16]
David Novak
Well, you constantly sharpen the ax and, you know, you become CEO of this incredibly huge company and your leadership role is humongous, to say the least. How do you stay grounded? I mean, it has to be hard.
- [13:31]
Chuck Robbins
If you don't have humility. I assure you that the market, the conditions, your spouse, someone will deliver that humility for you. And look, I think we, we moved into a different phase of leadership probably in the last 20 years, where people want to work for humans. You know, I used to joke that my dad would get up in the morning, he put on a suit, and he'd become work dad. And then he'd come home and he'd change clothes and he'd become home dad. And you know, especially during the pandemic, every employee was coming into our homes and, you know, there was discussion around what was behind you, what books are you reading? Pictures of your. My granddaughter walked in the. Walked in one day when we were on an all hands during the early days of the pandemic. I grabbed her and pulled her in just to show people that, hey, I have the same issues you have. We have kids running around here. And I don't know, I just think it. Look, you can always be knocked down. And at the end of the day, we're all humans. And I just don't, I don't find any value in being anything other than who I was and who I am. And I think most really good leaders are that way.
- [14:37]
David Novak
You know, I, I may have this wrong, but as I understand it. You started your, your career out actually writing code and you're like, you know, you're such a gregarious people person, just talked about to people, you know. How much did you like writing code?
- [14:51]
Chuck Robbins
I loved it, but apparently I wasn't very good at it. No, I, I actually loved it. I, I, and it's ironic. My youngest son actually taught himself to code when he was like 10 years old. So he had the same bug. Look, I was, I was one of those guys that I was, I was an athlete and a basketball player and I was also a nerd. I have, I have these two pictures from high school from the same year. I'm not kidding you. One is me dunking on someone in a basketball game. And I show people that and I say, this is the same guy. And then there's this nerdy looking guy with five other people in the picture that was the math club. So I've always been a little bit of both. And, but I love code. I was coding in high school, college, I was writing code back then and, and to the extent, you know, I could, and it was, it was something I loved, but it wasn't, I could not look. You, you get up in the morning, you put on a suit and you go sit in a cubicle and you, and you write code for eight hours. Then you go home. It's like, that's not going to be, I can't do this. And so the good news is it, it, it's, it fixed itself because an opportunity arose and they asked me if I'd be willing to go step across into the area that I am in now, which was a fortuitous opportunity that came about.
- [16:05]
David Novak
At the time, I didn't necessarily see you as a code writer forever. And you know, you're obvious a leader and you have to deal with all kinds of people issues. As you moved into management, leadership, coaching, you know, what was the biggest skill you had to pick up? That maybe was the hardest for you.
- [16:21]
Chuck Robbins
The higher you go, the more comfortable you have to be letting go of stuff. It's ironically, you know, I joke with people that I got to the ultimate level of my career and I don't have a budget. Some people argue, yeah, you do. But I mean, you know, and I don't make a lot of decisions and the ones that I get to make aren't necessarily fun. Usually, you know, you know how that goes. I think that trusting people, coaching people, letting them go, and then, and then you have to learn how to adapt your, to my earlier point I think one of the big things you have to do is learn how to adapt your leadership style to both the situation and the person. It's an innate skill that you have to be able to. That you're blessed with sometimes, but you have to think about it. You have to be at least be thoughtful about trying to meet people where they are and to recognize what kind of leader they need me to be right now. Given the situation, do they need me to push them or do they need empathy? Do they need a partner? Do they need me to sit down and write code with them? I mean, what is it they need at that moment in time? And that's something that I think is really important because you get so many people that lead one way and that can work, but that'll work in the situations where it works, and it'll work with people that like it. And the people that don't like you leading that way are just going to find other places to work. So I think adapting your style is.
- [17:39]
David Novak
Really important, you know, and you've been at Cisco since 97, as we've just mentioned. And how have you strived to differentiate yourself as you moved up the ladder?
- [17:50]
Chuck Robbins
I worked as hard as I could. I tried to deliver results. I tried to help everybody around me. I always believe, and I've told people this through my career, you have to be a leader before the org chart gives you a right to be a leader. And, you know, if. If you're viewed as a leader amongst your peers, then when you get promoted, it's going to be obvious that you were the person that should have gotten promoted because you were already a leader. And I think that's. That's one of the things that I always tried to do. I always try to help people and try to give it, you know, make sure that people around me were being successful. And the other thing that I. One of my big mantras all through my career was, I think it's silly when we have three internal candidates that have been working for us for 15 years that we go through an interview process to determine who we're going to promote. Because I'm like, you watched them work for 15 years. What are we going to learn in an interview that we don't know after watching them work for 15 years? And I say that because I always believed my job every day was an interview, and what I did in my role every day was showing them that I was the right candidate for the next job. And because I was raised by my dad the way I was, I actually operated From a premise that if they don't obviously believe I'm the person for that job, I haven't done my current job well enough. And so some people don't like to hear me say this, but I never asked to be promoted in my life. Not one time did I ask to be considered for a job. They, every time they came to me and said, and I think it was because my, my approach was every day's an interview.
- [19:32]
David Novak
You know, that's really great because, you know, I, I think I asked for only one job my entire life and I, I wasn't ready for it.
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Chuck Robbins
Was that retirement?
- [19:41]
David Novak
No, that was to be the CEO of Yum Brands. So I had a little bit of it. I had a little bit of an interim plan there that helped me get ready. I don't know if I ever did. You played a major role in what is called Cisco's, the Cisco partner ecosystem. What does that mean? And how did you grow that?
- [20:04]
Chuck Robbins
Oh, there's a story there. It was back in the 90s, we were a very direct organization. So we, and we were a sales machine. I mean, we had good products, but we were a sales machine. And so the sales force, the best salespeople in the salesforce, probably had the most respect in the company. The engineers won't like that I said that, but that's probably the truth. And after I'd been in sales, direct sales for a couple of years, they, they asked me to go run this partner or part of the partner organization. And all my peers are like, what you do wrong? What, what, Who'd you make mad? And we were growing so fast that we needed incremental resources to help us deliver the technology to the all the customers that wanted it. To be honest, that's really what drove the initial. We needed more feet on the street to help our customers install this stuff so they could get it installed and buy more. So we wanted to build this ecosystem that would help. That was the original intent or the original driver of the program. What we did was we went over and we actually architected this program that has stood for 20 plus years now that gives us sales capacity all around the world. I mean, I think there's 150 or 180,000 people that wake up every day that are dedicated to selling our portfolio that don't work for us. And so it gives us great scale around the world and it gives our customers more resources. And, you know, it's a great thing because our business now has economic impact much broader than what we, you know, just for Cisco. And so when we look at the impact we have in a country, as an example, if we have. If you go into a European country and we have 5,000 partners that are doing business with us, the economic impact on the country is much greater than if we were just doing business there. And it's given us scale and given our customers a lot more expertise that can help them deploy the solutions.
- [22:14]
David Novak
Do you have a particular story that you tell about one of your partners that really demonstrates that?
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Chuck Robbins
I hate to give them any airtime, but we have a partner in St. Louis named Worldwide Technology. Their CEO and I have been friends for about 25 years. They're our largest partner. They. They do a phenomenal job for us. And, you know, it's. It's funny because there's an assumption. And by the way, there's. There's 50 other partners that do the same. Great job. They do. But, you know, there's this. There's this assumption that we're. We're always leading, and then we're teaching the partners how to do what they want to do. And that's true a lot of times, but it's not true all the time. And so I would say, relative to how we've accelerated our approach in the AI era, right now, Worldwide was actually ahead of us. And we went to St. Louis and sat down with those guys. You wouldn't think they'd be in St. Louis. And they do a great job of really getting ahead of these trends, getting ahead out, ahead of these market transitions that are happening. And so they have. They pushed us, and other partners push us again. There's a ton of them that are just like that. But it's interesting because if you go back 20 years, we were dragging the partners along, and now we have our partners that are actually really pulling us. And the only thing I'd say is their CEO is a guy named Jim Cavanaugh. He's the slowest golfer you'll ever play with in your life. So if you ever get asked to play golf with him, just tell him you got to put him on the clock.
- [23:53]
David Novak
You obviously like to give the little needle and have a little fun. How important do you think it is to have humor in your leadership style?
- [24:01]
Chuck Robbins
I find it to be disarming for people. And it's just part of being human. Right? I. I think people just realize you're. You're just normal when you have. When you. And. And. And actually. And Church is a good example of this, although I hate to pay him a compliment. Real quick, Witness. I Think. And my wife says this is reflective of intellect. And I think that. I just think our teams and our people, they feel like I'm just one of them. I mean, we spend time together. I make jokes, I crack jokes. I tell some of my folks that. Back to this leadership style thing. Sometimes you're being human and they want humility, and they want you to be the human being. And then sometimes you're in such a mess that they need Superman and you need to know the difference. And I was talking to one of my leaders one day. I'm like, you know, your humility is great, but you have to know the difference. So my example was in the early days of the pandemic. They wanted human, but they wanted Superman. They wanted somebody to tell us, this is going to be okay. Here's what we're going to do. Here's our plan. We're good. You're going to be fine. We're going to make all the things happen. And I think that's really. It's an example of how you have to tweak your style. But I think humor is just a big part of it, and it really lowers the tension when people are stressed.
- [25:29]
David Novak
You know, I also love how you do best practice visits and you learn from the company in St. Louis and, you know, helped you up your game. And I used to love to do business best practices. And one of the companies I visited was Cisco. And I'll never forget this.
- [25:45]
Chuck Robbins
The food company or us.
- [25:47]
David Novak
I'm talking about you, your company. And went out to your corporate headquarters. And I met. Took my team. We met with John Chambers, who was the CEO then. And when he walked in, he had six, at least six people, an entourage, basically, taking him from meeting to meeting. And, you know, when you're a huge company and a successful company like that, how do you get rid of that kind of hierarchy and bureaucracy?
- [26:17]
Chuck Robbins
Yeah, it's.
- [26:18]
David Novak
Or am I speaking or am I stating it too far? Maybe I'm drawing the wrong conclusion, but that was my impression.
- [26:24]
Chuck Robbins
No, because we do. Here's an example. We do big events. When we do big events, we'll have 30, 40,000 people, customers at an event in Vegas. We have a lot of people there. We have a lot of people that are staff, that are building a thing. And if we let it, I could walk around that whole place with eight or ten people around me all the time. Because you got communications people, you got assistants that are helping you. You've got, you know, maybe my head of product is going with me on something. We Deliberately, like, break the group up so we don't come off looking that way. The reality is a lot of this stuff's complicated and there are a lot of people around it. I think that optics matter a lot, in my opinion. But there's a lot of people doing. Doing really good work, but everybody doesn't need to know that, you know.
- [27:07]
David Novak
And you followed Chambers, who led Cisco for more than 20 years, what was that like?
- [27:13]
Chuck Robbins
Well, first of all, John was great. He. I don't know if it's, you know, about three years before the transition, he started taking me on trips around the world, and I learned a ton. Engaging with government leaders and doing those kinds of things. He obviously had. Was a bit of a legend in Silicon Valley, and so it was great. Sometimes it's difficult. He was exec chair for two and a half years, and so we had a lot of ongoing discussions. He was in the office every day. People would go talk to him, and sometimes that part was a little tricky, but we worked through it. But he was great. He was such a mentor to me. He taught me a lot of. He taught me a ton. He exposed me to areas of the world I otherwise wouldn't have. He basically brought me into China and taught me and set me up to be successful in China. After he was gone, I remember little nuggets that he would tell me. He told me, like, he said, block Fridays. Block a bunch of Fridays on your calendar because you can always. He said you'd be amazed at the power of a long weekend if you can get one with the schedule that you keep. He said, you can always give them back, but it's hard to take them. And so that's just a practice that we've, we've tried, and very rarely do they stick. They usually get given back. But that's true. It was, it was great. I was, I was shocked, honestly, when they told me they wanted me to be in the process to replace Chambers. I mean, I was like. It was just. It was surreal because I remember the first time I went to a sales meeting and John's on the big stage and I'm sitting in the rafters, you know, and then here I am. So it was, it was fun, you know.
- [28:59]
David Novak
When you became the CEO, what was the biggest change that you had to navigate? You know, you just. Well, even if you just look over your career, what's been the biggest change you've really had to take people through?
- [29:12]
Chuck Robbins
Well, we had a meaningful shift to our portfolio mix. Not to get too technical, but we, we, we now have over half of our revenues that are coming from software and services. So they're subscription oriented. Whereas before we were a, we were a kill something and eat it, you know, every 90 days. I think every quarter, about 85% of our revenue we had, we sold it, we took the order in the quarter and shipped it in the quarter. And that's a, that's a hamster on a wheel business model. It's, that's a, it's, it's just exhausting. So we went through this shift to add more software assets to our portfolio and that was complicated. I learned a lot and I learned all about the underlying operational needs of big business model shifts because I didn't think about it enough on the front end. That was a big learning experience. All of a sudden we got our product teams that built all these great subscription based services and I came to realize that we didn't have systems that could actually do business with customers in a subscription model. So that was a little bit of a problem. So. But that was a hard transition. But the other thing is I've had a couple of shifts through the leadership team and that's always hard, but it's, it's necessary. I think most, most leaders will tell you that one of the biggest mistakes they make is when they realize they got the wrong person in the job is they don't move fast enough. And, and that's something that I've learned over the years. You just have to suck it up and get it done. You will make mistakes. You will hire someone that you, you'll put somebody in a job that you shouldn't. And I put people in job that have been, that I've known for 17, 18 years and you just, they, it just, it was, it was one step too far or I brought people in from the outside and, and realized it was, you know, it wasn't going to work. And inevitably you wait too long.
- [31:02]
Podcast Host
Hello everyone. I hope you are loving this conversation between David and Chuck. As always, be sure to stay tuned to the very end of the episode. David and I are going to break down some of the key learnings from this conversation so that you leave this episode with something really tangible that you can apply to your own leadership and your own life. Chuck is full of insights and David and I break all of them down so that you have something really helpful that you can apply today to your life and to your leadership. So be sure to stay tuned to the debrief and I will see you soon.
- [31:32]
David Novak
You know, you, you've worked through many business Transformations. And you've had to take people with you to navigate that change. You know, how do you, how do you keep people confident when that sand shifting, you know, in your feet and you don't really know where, how things are going to turn out? I mean, how do you, how do you build confidence when you don't necessarily have that answer yet?
- [31:55]
Chuck Robbins
Well, there's a few things that come to mind. First of all, if you want people to go with you on a journey towards a vision that you have, they have to believe you're grounded in the reality of where you are today. And what I mean by that is a lot of times executives and leaders want to paint a rosy picture of how everything is wonderful. And now we're going to go capture this hill over here. And sometimes you're making a big shift because everything's not wonderful. And if you want your best people to go with you on the journey, you have to acknowledge, hey, you know what, this isn't good right now. We're not where we need to be. But let me tell you where we're going to go. Let me tell you what we're going to do to go get to where we need to be. And your very best people are going to want to know you're grounded in reality of where you are before they're going to buy into going on a journey with you. So that's one piece. Second piece is in times of change, frequent, honest, transparent communication is so important. And I'm a believer that hierarchical hope doesn't work when you're trying to get an entire organization to move in a certain direction. You got to talk to everybody. So we do full company meetings every 30 days. We just do it. And I talk to everybody in the company. And so that's the second frequent, honest, authentic communication is so important. Those are just some of the things that I learned along the way in trying to get through these big transitions. And you know, our, we, we hit a, I want to say in 20. In 2000, our stock hit a high of $79 and some change. And we recently actually set a new all time high. And it was a lot of, a lot of that learning and resetting and moving forward and going. And it's, it's been a long, hard, hard track to get there.
- [33:43]
David Novak
You know, Chuck, you're a huge advocate for trusting your employees. You know, we've talked about that at dinner once, you know, and tell me a story where that really showed up and how you lead.
- [33:56]
Chuck Robbins
A lot of times it shows up in some of The M and A that we do, you know. And you know, my team, you'll have a sponsor of an acquisition and you're going to spend billions of dollars. And I'm not a deep expert in some of these technologies. And so that's the ultimate trust. I trust you so much that you tell me we need to go spend $5 billion on this asset so that you can give it. And you know what, they don't always work out, but that's, that's sort of a high level example. But I think the, the reality is, is, you know, we have 90,000 people. Early in my tenure in this job, I was deeply in the product stuff a lot. And I, I'm still like have an affinity for the products because I've been here so long. But we have such a great team that I don't feel as compelled. And we literally, this was a weird feeling for me. This past July we had our biggest, we have our biggest customer event of the year. It was June and it's, it's like 30000 people in person and150,000 people watching it streaming. We made like 22 product announcements and before I got there I only knew about four of them. So for me that's like a huge shift in the trust of that team that's building these products because they're so good. That's just a big shift, which is good for me because it lets me go do some of the things that are really needing my focus right now, like the geopolitical dynamics that we're all dealing with, you know, the, this around the world. A lot of the shifts that are happening in, you know, the deglobalization or reglobalization or however you want to phrase it. I mean, there's a lot of things that I need to be spending my time on right now that I'm allowed to do because of the trust I have in the team.
- [35:44]
David Novak
You know, Cisco's been named one of the best places to work year after year. Culture has to be a big deal for you. You have to be driving that. What's the number one behavior in your work environment that you try to drive deep throughout the organization? If you just could pick one.
- [36:00]
Chuck Robbins
First of all, I think if you give people the ability and the support for them to engage in their communities, they actually feel an affinity for the company because people love giving back in general, if you have the right people working for you, they're going to love to give back. In addition to competing every day. So we have this Deal where we want super competitive people that want to win every day, but with big hearts, that want to give back to their communities and do the things that they need to do. And I think that combination, actually. But the other thing I think that is so important is just the human element. You know, we, we care deeply. We, you know, when we have an employee who's sick, we jump through hoops to get them to the right place. We jump, you know, if it's an employee's friend, we jump through hoops to get them to the right place. We, we just. It's the human aspect of. Of the company in addition to the competitive nature. And that's not one nor two. That's a whole bunch. But it's never one thing, you know, it never is.
- [36:58]
David Novak
You mentioned earlier that sometimes you. You miss the mark. And, you know, when you miss the mark, and I think publicly you've been pretty candid about the fact that Cisco missed the transformation of everything moving to the cloud. How do you learn from that experience? And what do you tell others when, hey, this hits a fan, or you miss the mark?
- [37:23]
Chuck Robbins
We just had a board meeting, and we were talking about something that we didn't. We didn't get quite right that we have to go back and redo. You just got to be honest, and you have to admit it. And I think the worst thing you can do is try to convince the market that something is not going to happen or it's not the right thing when the market is sitting there telling you that it is going to happen and it is the right thing. And just because you haven't been able to define your role in it, and that's a little bit of what we did with Cloud. And, and that was obviously before my tenure in this job. But like, as an example, this artificial intelligence shift is happening right now. We made some decisions back almost a decade ago that I'd love to tell you I was an AI visionary, but there's a lot of luck involved. We made the decisions for good reasons, but it turns out that those decisions are the only reason we're being successful today. So there's an aspect of what is it? Preparation meets opportunity. Yeah, but you just have to. I think you just have to be honest. If denial is not a strategy, and if you. If you want to just tell everybody that things are beautiful when they're not, what happens when you do that is your best people leave because they no longer believe you're credible. And so you have to be honest. We missed this. We didn't get it right. And there's a certain, certain part of our portfolio where we've been working hard over the last couple years to get it to a better place. And my product leader is, he'll get on a public forum and he'll have his team on there that's working on trying to fix it. These are new people, by the way. They didn't create the problem. And he's like, we didn't do well here. We have not done well. We're not getting it done. We're working, you know, And I finally had to tell him, I said, look, you're beating up these people that are trying to solve the problem. You need to shift into a supportive mode now. And, but, but it is important to just acknowledge. And then what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And what a lot of people do, though, especially, let's say you have a competitor that's ahead of you. What a lot of people do, I would sit in these meetings and I'd have people say, in 12 months, we're going to be at par with that competitor. And I ask them, I'm like, is that because that competitor is going to stop innovating for 12 months to let you catch up? Because you're out of your mind if you think 12 months from now, they're going to be 12 months ahead of you because they're going, gonna keep working right now, too. So what you have to do is you have to figure out, how do I, how do I change the game if you're behind? How do I come at it asymmetrically? Because chasing a competitor who's ahead of you, trying to just catch up, you never will. You just won't.
- [40:03]
David Novak
You know, you, you mentioned your, your board a little bit earlier, and you also mentioned AI. You know, how you, you know, 10 years ago, you started that preparation, even though you really didn't know was going to pay off like it has. But I understand you actually put your board through an AI boot camp. What were the two or three things you wanted them to understand so that they, they could provide better guidance to you as a board?
- [40:29]
Chuck Robbins
Well, first of all, we were talking to them early in this, you know, probably two years ago about AI and what we were doing. And they have, you know, this is when everybody's frantic and they're like, what are we going to, what are we doing? What's our role? Where are we playing? What are you doing? What kind of skills do we have? Do we have the right talent? And during that conversation, we Were just talking about. There's not. There's not a ton of talent in the marketplace because it's being developed right now. So we needed to run some internal development activities and boot camps for people to teach them. And my board is so great. They actually said, we want to go through it. And so it was really a request from them because a couple of my board members are deep technologists. So that's. It's not. It's not. They'll go learn it. But when you have people that came from the airline industry or from education higher ed, you know, or they need us to help them. If you're a CEO, how you work with your board is a whole nother conversation. But I am. What you see right now is exactly how I work on my board. I'm honest, I'm transparent. My team can tell them anything they want. Any. Any question they ask them, they can answer. I got nothing to hide. And that's not always the case. And in this case, I want. The more educated they were, the better they could help us. The better questions they could ask us, the more better challenges they could throw at us during the meeting. And so that's true of everything. But. But it was. It was really cool on. On the AI front that they wanted to. They wanted to learn.
- [42:01]
David Novak
And I've heard you talk, Chuck, about AI displacement as a human issue, and after this conversation, I can understand that even more now. But it's a human issue, not just a business one. Say more about how you're thinking about it.
- [42:15]
Chuck Robbins
I think that technology transitions and industrial evolution over the last hundred years has always resulted in job dislocation, relocation. The difference is it's happened at a slower pace. And this feels like. When I talk to a lot of my peers, we're all kind of like in the mode where it's not this year, and it may not be next year, but it might be the year after or the year after that. And what we have to do as a business community and as citizens of the country, we need a plan for what are we going to do for these people that are displaced by AI. How are we going to help them get the next job? How are we going to help them think about what they do? And so I think that's the human aspect, and I think that's our responsibility to work together to create opportunities, some new opportunities. Because if you look at where we are as a country, we need people working. And I don't think AI is going to eliminate that. I just think it's going to shift what people end up doing for a living, and we should facilitate that as opposed to just good luck.
- [43:28]
David Novak
Are you doing anything Chuck, that with AI yourself personally, that's making you a better leader.
- [43:33]
Chuck Robbins
Trying to learn it, you know, trying to just stay up with it is, is pretty impressive. I haven't gotten into like having these personal coaches, these AI coaches. Some of the folks in our company are using those now and they say they're pretty good. Actually, I haven't, I haven't gotten there yet. I use AI. I'm educating myself on AI. So I guess from that perspective, staying up to speed allows me to lead and to have conversations and challenge my team. Just like the board conversation I was having. That's probably the biggest thing that I'm trying to do is just stay educated. And honestly, one of the most educational ways that is most educational are actually AI podcasts. Right? There's lots of podcasts where people are educating, you know, keep bringing you up to speed. And it's, it's moving so fast. I mean, you look like we're not talking about a year, we're talking about a week. Things can change. And you talk to some of these companies about they build a 90 day plan and then 30 days in they throw out the 90 day plan because everything's changed already. And I mean that. You got to really stay up to speed.
- [44:40]
David Novak
You know, I was in North Carolina recently with our mutual friend. We talked a little bit about Eric Church a little earlier, seeing what happened there with Hurricane Helene. And I know that Cisco committed millions of dollars to building houses to contribute to that effort. What drives you to step in at moments like that? And how do you decide where Cisco can make the biggest difference? Because there's so much need all around the world. How do you prioritize?
- [45:13]
Chuck Robbins
Yeah, well, first of all, I have a great team that actually does this. And what we set out to do was around our 40th anniversary as a company, which was about in 2024, we decided to take 40 communities around the world and try to make a big difference. And it was sort of mirrored after some of our work on homelessness in Silicon Valley. And I just fundamentally believe that companies, you need to have healthy communities in which your employees live and operate. And so out there we had had a big housing crisis and people would say, well, that. Why is that your responsibility? Well, the reality is, is that if we can't, if we don't have firefighters or school teachers or people, that if they can't afford to live in the area, then you won't have people teaching your kids, and when your house catches on fire, nobody's going to come help you. I mean, these are just simple examples where we. We need to make sure we have a healthy community. And so what we decided to do was do 40 of these in recognition of our 40 years. And my team has done a lot of work to go identify where those were. Sort of. We launched it right after this thing happened. And Eric and I were talking and we were talking about how we could scale what he wanted to do through business, because ultimately he's going to need the business community. And I said, instead of us trying to go paint a vision and convince companies to give money to something that they haven't seen be successful, I said, let us throw some money at it with you. Let's go build some houses. Let's get some people living in those houses, and then we don't have to go sell a vision. We can go sell the reality that needs to be scaled. So that was just sort of a timing issue that had occurred. And I have a heart for North Carolina because I obviously lived there for 24 years. We have a team of people that do a lot of analysis to figure out where we want to go invest and help, but the first thing that's a given is we are going to do it. The question of where is up to the team to figure that out.
- [47:10]
David Novak
And I love the fact that you encourage your team members to get out there and serve in the community because they feel better, and you've enabled that. I think that's awesome stuff. So thank you for all you're doing around the world on that. That's great. This has been a lot of fun, Chuck. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this?
- [47:29]
Chuck Robbins
Uh. Oh, that scares me. All right.
- [47:31]
David Novak
The three words that best describe you.
- [47:34]
Chuck Robbins
Funny, caring, Adventurous.
- [47:36]
David Novak
If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be?
- [47:40]
Chuck Robbins
Eric Church. Your biggest pet.
- [47:42]
David Novak
Peeve.
- [47:43]
Chuck Robbins
Mouth noises.
- [47:44]
David Novak
Who would play you in a movie?
- [47:46]
Chuck Robbins
Oh, Lord, no. 1.
- [47:49]
David Novak
Your favorite childhood job?
- [47:51]
Chuck Robbins
My first job, I was. I was 10 years old, and this gentleman hired me to help him repair lawnmowers, which you can imagine how effective I was at it. But I loved it because he let me do it.
- [48:02]
David Novak
As a North Carolina fan and alum, what's one thing, one thing that Duke does really well, even if it pains you to admit it?
- [48:10]
Chuck Robbins
Medical care.
- [48:11]
David Novak
What's something you've been curious about lately that has nothing to do with work?
- [48:15]
Chuck Robbins
I've always been A fisherman. And I'm trying to get into more of the science behind it. Learning more about everything from tying flies to weather patterns to, you know, to the. Instead of going with a guide or going with someone who's telling you where to throw it, trying to. I'm trying to understand more and get. Get a little smarter about. About the science of fishing. How's that? Good.
- [48:39]
David Novak
What's the one thing you do just for you?
- [48:41]
Chuck Robbins
Watch Carolina basketball religiously.
- [48:45]
David Novak
Besides your family and friends, what's your most prized possession?
- [48:49]
Chuck Robbins
Probably my fishing boat.
- [48:50]
David Novak
If I turned on the radio in the car, what would I hear?
- [48:53]
Chuck Robbins
Eric Church or country music. God, he's good.
- [48:56]
David Novak
He's gonna take this way too seriously.
- [49:00]
Chuck Robbins
His album got nominated for a Grammy, you know.
- [49:02]
David Novak
You know, he's never won a Grammy for an album or a song.
- [49:06]
Chuck Robbins
Yeah. And Billboard staff picks recently had his number one of 2025. He sent it to me to make sure I knew that.
- [49:14]
David Novak
What's something about you that few people would know?
- [49:17]
Chuck Robbins
I'm a crier.
- [49:19]
David Novak
That's something you and I have in common for sure. What's one of your daily rituals?
- [49:23]
Chuck Robbins
Something that you never miss first thing in the morning. It's just news, news, news, news. And that's a terrible thing to say, but that's what I do. I'm a junkie in the morning because the world is so complex that I just get up in the morning. I got to figure out, like, what happened overnight that's going to affect something that I have to deal with today.
- [49:40]
David Novak
All right, we're out of the lightning round. Great job. And I got just a few more questions. I'll let you go. You're married with four kids. How do you think about leadership at home?
- [49:50]
Chuck Robbins
Whatever. My wife tells me people find it hard to believe that she's a stronger personality at home.
- [49:58]
David Novak
How do you get her involved in decisions? Or do you?
- [50:01]
Chuck Robbins
I do. She is my number one sounding board, period. You know, I've always said she has this uncanny ability because she's not in the emotional day to day of everything. So she can look at things very pragmatically, but she knows enough about our business, enough about me, enough about my team, enough about everything, that when I lay it out there, I'll say she's like, what's going on? That's complicated. What's going on? It's complicated. So they would tell me, and I'll tell her, and she'll go, doesn't sound that complicated to me. And she's always right.
- [50:32]
David Novak
And you have four kids and you know, I know this is a broad question, but, you know, when you think about having kids, what do you think the biggest thing having kids teaches?
- [50:42]
Chuck Robbins
Oh, humility for sure. And it teaches you how to deal with immense fear because you worry about them non stop and it's so out of your control, especially as they get older and older and older and older. And my wife and I joke that bigger kids, bigger problems, you know, when they have a problem, when a bigger kid has a problem, they're just a bigger problem than what you.
- [51:08]
David Novak
That's such a good point. It teaches, it does teach you how to have intense fear. You know, when people who, who have known you for a long time and they see you now, what'll they say hasn't changed about you?
- [51:22]
Chuck Robbins
At my core, I'm the same person I always have been. And I'm gonna, I am gonna be. I'm, I'm as, I'm wide open. My wife says you don't have to tell them everything. Shh. I don't worry at all. I tend not to worry, especially things I can't control. I just don't worry about them. And that's never changed.
- [51:42]
David Novak
What do you see? Last question here. No, not second to last question here. What do you see as your unfinished business, Chuck, both for Cisco and for you personally?
- [51:52]
Chuck Robbins
Well, for Cisco, I think getting us relevant in this AI era is a big, big deal. And we've made a lot of progress and we're having a lot of success right now. We still have a lot of work to do to really cement our place in this, the next decade of AI for me personally, I've got to get a better golf game.
- [52:15]
David Novak
Some things aren't even in the car for a superman like you. There you go, last question. What's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?
- [52:25]
Chuck Robbins
Be a human first. Be a human first. People want to be led by human beings, not by executives, you know, not by robots, not by someone, you know they want an honest, authentic human to work for. That's it.
- [52:41]
David Novak
Well, Chuck, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to do this and have this conversation. And you are one hell of a human being and the impact that you're making in this world and with this company, and you know how you lead and the example you set is an example all leaders lead to follow. So thank you very much. I appreciate you.
- [53:02]
Chuck Robbins
Thanks for doing this. I know it's helpful to a lot of people, so. And thanks for having me. I was honored to be here, David.
- [53:12]
Podcast Host
Chuck Robbins just sounds like a great guy. I want to just hang out with him, maybe play golf with him. I don't know. He's just a good old boy who hadn't forgotten where he's from.
- [53:21]
David Novak
Yeah, I love the fact he's a big North Carolina fan. He wore, you know, that little baby blue that they have at North Carolina. I don't really think much in North Carolina because I'm more of a Louisville Cardinal basketball fan. But anyway, he loves the Carolina team and supports them aggressively. I heard about Chuck from Eric Church, and Eric Church, obviously, you know, renowned country songwriter, singer, said, you got to get to know Chuck. He's just a great guy. And, you know, I. I ran into him at a dinner, and we chatted, and, you know, we really hit it off. But I really appreciate the fact that he. He never really has forgotten his roots. And I think he. He goes out of his way to be approachable with his people. I mean, you know, Cisco is, you know, it's a huge, huge, huge company. And so he could take on a totally different air. But his air is one that appears to be very, very grounded. And I'm sure his people relate well to that.
- [54:23]
Podcast Host
Absolutely. You can just tell that in the way that he talks and the way that he talks about his people and how he cares about them and how he trusts them. And, David, in this debrief of your conversation, I want to be sure that we give everybody listening some real practical tools that they can take away and apply to their own leadership and their own life. So I've pulled a couple of themes from your conversation with Chuck, and I want you to just break them down for all of us so that everybody listening can really understand how they can incorporate some of Chuck's magic into their own leadership. The first theme, David, is about adapting your leadership style. Now, Chuck stays true to who he is and how he leads, but in the conversation, he says that based on the situation that you're in, sometimes you need to shift your leadership style. Style. He says, sometimes people need their leader to be a human, and sometimes people need their leader to be Superman. So as a leader, how do you know when to switch gears and sort of customize your leadership style based on where you are?
- [55:21]
David Novak
Yeah. You know, I always brought my marketing discipline to managing people. You know, in marketing, I always ask this one question. What perceptions have it belief do you have to change, build, or reinforce to grow the business? And then when I was thinking about how to take people with me, I always ask myself what perception, habit, belief do people have that I need to either change, build or reinforce to get them aligned to get done what really needs to be done? And that means that you gotta know your people just like you know your customers. And you know, you stay true to who you are as a brand, who you are as a person, but you wanna make sure that you're, you're relevant to your customers and they'll relate to you. And sometimes you might be in a meeting and you're working on an issue and it's really not that challenging of an issue, but you can just kind of deal with it in a laid back, more low key fashion and really show your humanity. And other times there might be a crisis and everybody's looking for that leader to step up and take charge and do what the that leader needs to do, and only that person can do it. And that's when you got to take on that Superman quality. And you know, I think that's what, what Chuck was getting to. But I think that the main thing, as you point out, is he knows who he is, so he stays true to his core. But he knows that, you know, anything he can do to make himself more approachable, more relatable to the people he has the privilege of leading, you know, he wants to do it because he knows that they're going to be much more linked into who he is and view him as someone that they, they want to follow.
- [57:06]
Podcast Host
I love that you distinguish between, you know, something that's, and maybe a more laid back scenario, like you're in a meeting trying to come up with ideas versus when you're in a situation that is a crisis because the people that you are leading are looking for someone to say that it's going to be okay. And it's in that moment I can see Clark Kent in my mind when Superman needs to come in with his cape and say, hey, we're going to be okay. Here's where we're going. Trust me and we'll get there.
- [57:32]
David Novak
Yeah. Sometimes the leader really needs to save the day or give people the sense that they together can save the day, which is even better yet. And I think that's what he's getting to.
- [57:42]
Podcast Host
David, the second theme that came up quite a bit in your conversation with Chuck was this idea of trust versus control. And I was shocked in the interview when he said that at a recent event that they had with their company, he only knew four of the 22 product announcements that his team made. And to me that symbolizes that he has a tremendous amount of trust in his product team and in his people. And I'm curious, from your point of view, what are some signs that a leader might be struggling to let go of control? Or how do you know how much of that trust to give away?
- [58:16]
David Novak
I thought that was very interesting too. And obviously Chuck has been in the company for a long time. He knows his product development team, he knows their capability, and so he's able to turn over to the range, to the product development leader, hold him accountable for developing the best products, and, you know, go into a meeting where maybe he doesn't know, you know, everything to the intimate detail. But I'm sure that he provided that kind of autonomy after it was earned. You know, if he had a bunch of new people in there developing new products, I guarantee you he'd spend a lot more time on it. And I think that's part of going back to the original point. He adapts his style to understand the, the, the, the people that he's leading. And so I, I really believe in the notion that autonomy is, is an earned right. And in that particular case, you know, that team had demonstrated time and time again that they could, they could really develop great new products. And the company's been on a roll under Chuck's leadership, and so they seem to be doing well because he's developed the right kind of people capability and knows when he can let go. You know, there's analysis, there's this, you know, example that people, you know, I've heard used before. It's like, you know, if you're teaching your kid how to ride a bicycle, you know, you put the training wheels on and they learn how to pedal that bike and move it down the street. Then once they get good at that and, you know, they can hang on to the handlebars, you take off the training wheels and you run alongside them and. But you make sure you can still catch them, and then finally you let them go after they've really demonstrated the skill. And I think that's a great way to think about, you know, how you give people, you know, more responsibility. And I think it comes when they've earned it. I always thought empowerment was a very overused and oftentimes misunderstood, you know, phrase. You know, it's like, you know, I never really liked it. You know, it doesn't mean I don't like to empower people per se, but, you know, I think people talk about getting empowered. I want to be empowered to do something well, do your job. Show people you're really good at it. And then you, then you'll get empowered. But don't ask for empowerment before you've really earned it.
- [60:39]
Podcast Host
That's so good, David. Autonomy as an earned right is something that I remind myself of quite a bit as more people come into the fold and I continue to give away more and more control. I love that idea of autonomy and empowerment, having to be earned. The final theme, and this is a fun one, but I noticed it quite a bit. And when you listen to this conversation between you and Chuck, it's just fun, fun. And I found myself laughing out loud a couple times. And you even asked Chuck in the interview, you know, Chuck, you're a funny guy. What role does humor play in leadership? And I loved his answer. And I'm curious what your answer would be to that question, David. What role does humor have in leadership?
- [61:21]
David Novak
You know, I think it plays a huge role because I think, you know, one of the things that a leader can do is make people feel comfortable and if you can, you know, poke fun at yourself. And I think the biggest thing I got out of Chuck's humor, it's self deprecating humor. You know, he's not that smart. Well, he is that smart, but I mean, he, he kind of, you know, he doesn't take himself too seriously. You know, what's a, you know, people often say, you know, take the business seriously, but don't take yourself so seriously. And if you can make people laugh while you're doing the job, you know, and have fun while you're doing the job, it's a lot more fun to go to work. Work versus being with somebody that grits their teeth and grinds them to the point where they don't have any teeth left. That doesn't go over well. So, you know, it's much, much better when you can have fun at work. And I think humor can play a role in that. And by the way, most people who have a really good sense of humor are really smart and they're also very confident because you're not going to stick your neck out there if you don't think you can do it and get that smile. You know, you're not worried about the joke falling flat. You know, you take, you're more of a risk taker. You know, I think that the people that have a good sense of humor, you know, they're pretty damn smart. And their humor that they have is because they're confident. And you know, I think that can be contagious too. By the way, I think people want to be around people, people that are fun to be around, have a good time, and still get the work done. Obviously, you know, you. You know, you go to work for one reason. You know, obviously you. You want to enjoy your job, etc. Etc. But in. In terms of the end result, you're there for one reason. It's to win. You want to take your team to victory, okay? And that's why you're getting paid. I. People aren't paying you just to show up. They're. They're paying you to. To win.
- [63:16]
Podcast Host
I love, too, that humor is so disarming, and it. It allows your humanity to show, too. So kind of going back to what we chatted about in our first main takeaway, knowing when to be human and how to connect with people and how to stay grounded. Humor is a great way to do that. It just disarms people and kind of, like, allows folks to exhale a little bit and understand that even though you're the one in charge, they can still connect with you in a real human way.
- [63:41]
Chuck Robbins
Yeah.
- [63:41]
David Novak
And you know, what's the single biggest thing that really stuck out to me, you know, with this conversation with Chuck, is that here's this guy running this incredible company. You know, I mean, it's. This is like they've got, you know, tremendous market share, you know, you know, their market cap is just growing through the roof. But he. He understands the important that, you know, you got to stay grounded. You got to be human. You got to know that, you know, you can't get intoxicated by your success. You got to go, you know, know that what you did today is yesterday's newspaper, and you got to create some new news. And, you know, I think he really gets that, and he gets the importance of being real. You know, people talk about authentic and authenticity and being real and genuine being such a tremendous leadership trait. It is, because you can't be someone you're not. And I think he's a great example of being someone who stays true to who he is. And as a result, people don't see him as a fake. People see him as the real deal. And, you know, he. He commands respect, and I love that. And I. The other thing I really like is he's a learner. You know, I love the fact how he's took his board of directors and took him to, you know, through AI training. You know, I thought that was great. And he's trying to get better at it, and he wants to be challenged. That's cool. I love the fact that he wants to be challenged and So I really think Chuck is a terrific person. I look forward to playing him in golf because I know he's a good guy. He'll have a few jokes, and from what I understand, he's really not that good at it.
- [65:24]
Podcast Host
So you'll beat him. That's why you want to play.
- [65:25]
David Novak
Well, maybe I'm not that good at it these days, either.
- [65:28]
Podcast Host
I love it. David. Well, everybody, that does it for today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Stay tuned for another great episode coming next week.