Cisco Systems – “Used to be great”

Pros

Great company with great products, strong senior leadership, excellent brand, opportunities to grow depending on how aggressive you are with your career, excellent sales teams, stable - lots of cash, great HQ location.

Cons

Used to be nimble, fun place to work. But over the past 6 years, the company has taken on huge, multi-year business improvement projects that have created massive middle management that is incompetent, territorial, siloed, the result being millions of dollars are being spent with no proven result. Company spends millions on top management consultants for no conceivable return on investment. Too many boards and councils have made the company extremely slow. Great strategies but it is difficult to operationalize due to the incompetent management.

Advice to Senior Management

Shake up middle management, hold them accountable to deliver tangible results, improve teamwork, truly manage out the incompetent people, stop spending millions on management consultants - instead give employees the opportunity to play in leadership roles. Let us take the company back to the greatness it once was.