John T. Chambers

Date of birth: August 23, 1949

• Born: August 23, 1949
• Place of Birth: Cleveland, Ohio

Education: Charleston High School; West Virginia University College Of Business and Economics; Indiana University

Significance: While Chief Executive Officer at Cisco Systems, Chambers oversaw a period of significant growth for the company and became a pioneering leader in the United States technology industry.

Background

John Thomas Chambers was born August 23, 1949 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was born to John and June Chambers, who were both doctors by profession. Although Chambers was born in Ohio, the family soon moved to West Virginia soon after his birth. John Chambers had a middle class upbringing by his father, who was a gynecologist, and his mother, a practicing psychologist.

As a child, Chambers enjoyed going fishing with his father, a habit that followed him through adulthood. They traveled extensively to Alaska, Key West, and the Canadian Arctic for fishing expeditions. He had a very close relationship with his father, and often described him a role model for his life.

It was during his early school days Chambers was diagnosed with dyslexia. His mother sought out the help from Lorene Anderson-Walter, a reading specialist assigned with state and county-run schools. Chambers, on the other hand, managed to keep dyslexia a secret even from his closest friends as he considered it a weakness. Over time, private lessons with Anderson-Walter helped Chambers overcome his learning disability and read effectively. Ironically, even after overcoming his reading disability, he never found joy in reading. Much later, he became the man famous in Cisco for demanding concise summaries and shorter reports.

Chambers graduated from Charleston High School in 1967 as a salutorian. He would later secure a degree from West Virginia University College of Business and Economics in 1971. Chambers then followed this up with a Law degree in 1974. He also secured his MBA from Indiana University in 1976.

Life’s Work

After securing his MBA degree, he started his career in the sales department of IBM in 1977. This was an odd detour for Chambers as he had no interest in a sales job or a natural inclination towards computers. In fact, what attracted Chambers to the position in IBM was the recruiter’s persuasive argument that the job profile involved problem solving and selling the public on a dream of the future of computing.

His stint at IBM lasted six years, and left him with experience and insights about the market and its volatility. Chambers was part of the IBM workforce when the company was failing to reinvent itself to accommodate the first emergence of personal computers in the market. He was also part of IBM’s historic agreement with Microsoft to create the world’s first personal computer.

In 1983 John Chambers left IBM to join Wang Laboratories. Wang Laboratories was founded by An Wang in 1955 and was a major player in the market of word processers and mini computers by the 1970s. Chambers joined Wang Laboratories as vice president of the company’s central regional U.S. operations, later becoming the senior vice president of its Americas/Asia-Pacific Operations. He was crucial in pioneering some of the marketing strategies that helped Wang Laboratories recover from a downward spiral—a staggering loss of $700 million in 1989. His simple idea of hiring a partner who specialized in PC manufacturing to carry the Wang Laboratory label in their finished products was innovative and effective.

In late 1990s, the company was struggling to evolve as a viable business platform and Chambers was forced to lay off five thousand employees as part of an organizational decision. This experience caused him to lose his faith in the company and prompted him to resign.

His impulsive resignation left him with few ideas on what opportunity to pursue next. It was through a mutual acquaintance that Cisco caught Chambers’s interest. He immediately fell in love with the idea of the small networking company, which had the relatively small sales margin of $70 million. Cisco CEO John Morgridge hired Chambers as his heir apparent because of Chambers’s impeccable track record. In the three years that followed, Chambers was promoted three times, eventually landing the position of executive vice president. This position essentially placed him as the number two man of the whole company. John Chambers was named CEO of Cisco systems in January 1995. Under John Morgridge, Cisco had grown to become the most successful computer networking company in the world. It would be accurate to say that Chambers was filling the shoes of a man who saw Cisco grow from 34 employees to 2,260, increasing the company’s sales revenue from $5 million to over $1 billion. Chambers fearlessly brought his own trademark alterations to the company’s basic business model that would later come to enhance his reputation as one of Cisco’s best CEOs. In 2015, Chuck Robbins replaced Chambers as the CEO of Cisco Systems while he took up the position of executive chairman in the company. Two years later, Chambers fully retired from Cisco. In 2021, Chambers joined the board of directors of software company QUantum Metric.

Impact

The best of John Chambers was in his natural can-do attitude that helped multiple world-class companies reinvent and establish themselves against ever-changing market dynamics. The shots called by John Chambers acted as a catalyst, transforming Cisco’s business model. The average revenue increase recorded by Cisco under his supervision from 1995 to 2000 was a record 57 percent. The firm leadership offered by Chambers after the market collapse in 2000 helped the company weather staggering losses, elevating the legend of a man whose vision helped shape technological trends.

Personal Life

John Chambers married Elaine Chambers, whom he had met in high school. They have two children, Lindsey and John Chambers.

Bibliography

Doerr, John. "John Chambers." Time. Time, 12 May 2008. Web. 16 Dec 2015. <http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748‗1733758‗1736338,00.html>.

"Quantum Metric Adds Tech Visionary John Chambers to Board of Directors." PR Newswire, 10 Mar. 2021, www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quantum-metric-adds-tech-visionary-john-chambers-to-board-of-directors-301244267.html. Accessed 29 Sept. 2024.

Slater, Robert. The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Through the Technology Collapse. New York: HarperBusiness, 2003. Print.

Waters, K. John. John Chambers and the Cisco Way: Navigating Through Volatility. New York: Wiley, 2002. Print.