Does it take caution or courage to manage through a downturn?
Tiger Woods and Accenture have been urging us business folks to “Be a Tiger” for a few years now, but when it comes down to the crunch, isn’t that easier said than done? I’d venture many managers would instinctively prefer to head for shelter than face a crisis head-on, but of course the actions executives take in situations like those (and times like these) are what distinguish leaders from followers. No doubt America’s new President would not have been taking the oath yesterday if he had avoided addressing the tough issues on the campaign trail.
“It takes courage to make the decisions that good economic times allow us to postpone,” says Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s head of North America and Japan, in a podcast posted today to the Cisco newsroom. In it, he reflects on the bold moves Cisco made in the downturns of 2001 and 2003 to become pioneers and then leaders in VoIP and Next Generation Networks.
So, what did we learn from those bold moves and how did they influence the way we manage through this downturn? And how are we applying those lessons to our engagements with customers today? You can hear the answers and the whole podcast here.
And if you happen to be a customer who’s interested in applying those learnings to your own business, you might like to take a look at our “Five Ways to Thrive” program pages (and very funny new ‘Survive’ commercial) at http://www.cisco.com/newways.
Posted by David McCulloch at 04:18PM PST
Cisco Around the Web