Getting personal with John Chambers: This is what really made him & Cisco unbeatable

When a business mogul takes a company’s sales from $70 million to $47 billion—and along the way overcomes two market crashes—like John Chambers did as CEO of Cisco Systems, it’s natural to wonder what cutting-edge strategies are stored in his secret playbook. One insight is that he believes “near-death business experiences” can pave the way for greatness. (You'll find more insights in his book released this week: “Connecting the Dots: Lessons for Leadership in a Startup World”).

But perhaps more than anything, his rise to the top of the corporate leader board and his extraordinary accomplishments during a 20-year run at Cisco are rooted in a medical diagnosis he received at the age of nine. I discovered this while interviewing him in his home, where—unlike most business moguls—he opened up about the personal experiences that shaped his career.

John is dyslexic. At a time when people didn’t understand dyslexia well and regarded the condition as a life-limiting disorder, the young John found himself cut off from the mainstream. School sometimes terrified him, as he found himself habitually immobilized from the fear of teachers calling on him to speak in class. He was told over and over, “You’ll never make it to high school.”

John, however, had parents who stood for him—“they were always there for me”—and were vigilant in helping him turn what most everyone considered a permanent restriction into long-term advantage. Over time emerged a life approach that not only sustained him as a functioning adult but fueled his growth as a prominent business leader. He transformed a debilitating burden into a flourishing asset.

In taking his condition head-on, John learned that dyslexia has strengths that minimize its presumed weaknesses. The skills he acquired to mitigate the dyslexia revealed his native ability to visualize the world differently than most others could. It was as if he had a wide-angle lens where others peered at the world through a narrow aperture. Dyslexia, he realized, gave him a beautiful gift, an innate sense of imaging that allowed him to see expansively and distill into pictures rather than words. As a result, he was able to tap deeply into his creative side and generate ideas that otherwise might not have seen the light of day.

As a child, this meant that if he couldn’t excel in English, he could in Math or Science. As an adult, it meant he could see technology and market transitions in unique ways, overcome challenges that disabled corporate peers and lead his company to new horizons. He became comfortably intuitive, which spiked his confidence. His ability to visualize the whole flow of an oral presentation freed him to become a sought-after public speaker.

John's personal journey taught him that just like failure contains new information and opportunities, weaknesses can be turned into gain: “We’re more a product of our setbacks than our successes.” He became determined to be the engine of his condition rather than allow the condition to drive him.

He learned something else too, and it was transformative. The isolation his dyslexia caused in his early years sensitized him to the internal struggles of others. Knowing what it was like to feel low because of his own challenges filled him with a sense of empathy for others. That made him humble, approachable and able to “connect on an emotional level,” a makeup that became the cornerstone of the business culture he shaped at Cisco. (I witnessed this first-hand in the heart-felt comments that his employees posted after they watched our video interview). He valued knowing his employees, their families and their off-work challenges. He espoused principles like “treat people like you’d like to be treated yourself” and “with the honesty they deserve” and “be there for them like no one else.” Those values drove the corporate mission that a family that works together is unbeatable and produced a business brand that the marketplace trusted.

John sees a business world today thriving on a high-speed digital makeover, a spirited voyage with many stops, re-starts, reformulations and adjustments. As he has always strived to do, he considers these new challenges as opportunities. After his remarkable stint at Cisco, he’s made his own pivot by moving into the investment and startup world, which he believes will propel the next major wave of job growth. While he encourages business leaders in this ever-changing market to “dream big dreams,” he has more practical advice for them:

“Do the right thing too long and you get into trouble. You have to reinvent. If you don’t, you’ll get left behind. It’s survival.” It’s advice he’s living out day to day.

I'm looking forward to reading John's book which uncovers more advice, remarkable stories and light bulb moments that he says apply to executives at companies of two people or 200,000 people.

Rebecca Watson is a digital media entrepreneur with a background in content, tech and marketing. She’s the founder and producer of The Reveal, an inspirational interview series that uncovers how business titans turned personal setbacks into professional success.