思科CEO錢伯斯的退休疑雲
On Thursday evening, Oracle announced to much surprise that founder and CEO Larry Ellison will step down from his long-held post. He’ll become executive chairman and CTO, ceding the top spot to SafraCatz and Mark Hurd after 37 years. Ellison, 70, is by far the longest-serving chief in tech, but he’s hardly the only one whose time at the top can be measured by the decade.
Cisco CEO John Chambers took the helm of the San Jose, Calif.-based networking company in January 1995 and presided over one of the great runs in the industry, pushing the company onto the Fortune 500 list (#332, in 1997) and past a market capitalization of $100 billion (1998) to become, for a brief moment in 2000, the most valuable company in the world (at about $550 billion). Then the market’s bottom fell out in the dot-com bust.
In 2012, Chambers said that he expected to retire in two to four years, naming development and sales president Robert Lloyd, field operations SVP Chuck Robbins, and services SVP EdzardOverbeek as possible successors. For this reason, an unusual amount of anxiety and breathless anticipation accompanied Cisco’s most recent earnings report. The date, August 14, was just nine days before Chambers’ 65th birthday. Could investors expect succession news with the financial results?
It came and passed with little leadership news, of course—another debunked retirement rumor in a long line of them that stretches back well over a decade. Chambers’ retirement has been “imminent” for years, yet the test of time has shown each and every rumor to be greatly exaggerated. This one was no exception, despite news of thousands of layoffs.
“John has consistently said that the next time he talks about succession is when he announces succession,” a company spokesman tells Fortune. “This has not changed.”
Two things have changed, however. First, Chambers is now 65, the symbolic age that at many companies would mandate retirement. Second, the research firm Gordon Haskett issued a report stating that the firm still expects Chambers to announce his retirement soon, calling Cisco “a company operating without a named successor.”
The average tenure of a CEO is roughly eight years. Chambers has been in the role for almost 20. What has allowed him to buck that trend—and how much longer can he last?
‘Networking is a brutal business’
“John Chambers has had a remarkable ride by any measure,” says Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT.
That ride began back in 1995, when Chambers, then 46, took Cisco’s top job. At the time, the rise of the Internet had put a lusty wind in Cisco’s sails, and the company’s routers and switches soon came to be viewed as key vertebrae in the backbone of an increasingly connected world. Since March 2000, when Cisco briefly edged out Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company, there have been plenty of rough patches: several rounds of layoffs, failed acquisitions (remember the Flip camcorder?), and lackluster stock performance.
Cisco under Chambers has also been under considerable pressure in recent years from emerging technology trends that challenge its core businesses. One example? Software-defined networking, an approach that is considered to be cheaper and more flexible than the traditional networking equipment upon which Cisco built its name.
Cisco does have an answer for that, which it calls Insieme. (“I see SDN as something we’ll embrace and get the benefits of,” Chambers said in the company’s most recent earnings call.) Still, there has been “some public grumbling about the company being late to that game and with less innovative products than some others,” King points out, even as Cisco remains the leader in its core networking markets and performs well in newer areas like x86 servers.
“Networking as a whole is a brutal business because, unlike computing, applications haven’t changed that much—switching is switching and routing is routing—while semiconductor progress has commoditized costs and put downward pressure on prices,” says Peter Christy, a research director for networking with 451 Research. “Chambers has driven many attempts to broaden Cisco’s portfolio and grab more wallet share. Some, like server computing or IP telephony, have succeeded brilliantly. Others, like consumer efforts—e.g. the Flip camera—not so.”
Those failed bets are fodder for critics calling for Chambers to retire. Supporters, meanwhile, say he has shown resilience as well as the confidence to make bets that may not work out.
Christian Renaud, a senior analyst also with 451 Research, worked under Chambers at Cisco for more than a decade in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He credits Chambers’ tenure for a long-view perspective that short-term CEOs often miss. “He steered the company from just over a thousand people when I started working for him to over 65,000 when I left,” Renaud recalls. “Under his leadership, Cisco has successfully weathered large market transitions, and not only survived but thrived.”
Other former colleagues tell a similar tale. “Having known him for more than two decades, I am amazed at his nonstop energy and decisive courage in navigating Cisco through both its highs and lows,” says ex-Cisco exec Jayshree Ullal, who is now chief executive of Arista Networks, which competes with Cisco.
It is an inherent part of the CEO role that you get credit for the good times and blame for the bad. Take Cisco’s layoffs, for example—Chambers is equally responsible for those as he is for the company’s growth, Renaud says. “I know how much the layoffs in 2001 emotionally impacted John, as I suspect the layoffs in 2009 did as well,” he says. “This can’t be easy for him, but it is part of the cycle of every business.”
Chambers spent many years in sales during the early part of his career. It’s possible that background may be part of what has helped him endure. “Great salesmen run on a special kind of real-world optimism. You know—head in the clouds, feet on the ground,” says John Waters, editor-at-large for Application Development Trends and author of John Chambers and the Cisco Way. “Add an almost devout focus on the customer, and you’ve got a combo of personal traits that surely helped to keep him in the big chair.”
‘I expect some investors are wondering’
Chambers’ two-decade tenure is relatively unusual in the technology industry, but it’s far from unprecedented. Of those chief executives active in the role today, Activision Blizzard’s Robert Kotick, Microchip Technology’s Steve Sanghi, and Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang exceed Chambers’ tenure. Concur’s Steven Singh and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos aren’t far behind.
“IT CEOs typically call the shots on their career paths until they lose the faith of their customers or shareholders,” King says. That usually happens in one of three ways: Either the CEO misses a key evolutionary shift in the industry, wastes money on unsuccessful products, or fails to deliver the returns desired by large institutional investors, he says.
In Chambers’ case, the last reason is the most pressing. “Much like Microsoft under [Steve] Ballmer, Cisco shares have for the past decade been mired in a fairly narrow trading range—between $15 and $30—and the stock has mostly failed to catch fire in major market advances, including the one currently under way,” King says. “Since the company offers only relatively small dividends—currently $0.19 per share, compared to $0.28 per share for Microsoft and $1.10 per share for IBM—I expect some Cisco investors are wondering how the company might fare under a different leader.”
Cisco has plenty of top talent in its executive suite, says Robert Bradford, president and CEO of the Center for Simplified Strategic Planning. “If the company were in a more difficult strategic situation, they might look outside,” he says. “Given their performance, I wouldn’t.”
Chambers has done all the right things to ensure a smooth succession, says Scott Saslow, founder and CEO of the Institute of Executive Development. The process so far seems “near perfect,” he says: Chambers has pre-announced his intentions years in advance; he has mentioned specific executives who are internal candidates for the job; he would leave the company on very solid financial footing. “It is rare to see all three of these conditions,” Saslow says.
Most boards of directors facing a transition aren’t as lucky as Cisco’s will be, Saslowadds. “The vast majority don’t think they have enough ready successors for the CEO position,” Saslow says. “Given that Chambers has stated that Cisco has several, they appear to be way ahead of the market.”
Cisco’s retirement rumors once worried Renaud, the 451 Research analyst. That’s no longer so. “John has done a great job in recent years of building a succession plan and strong bench in preparation for an inevitable transition,” Renaud says. “That wasn’t always the case, and I’d say his bench now is the strongest I’ve ever seen it. If he was going to retire, the company would be left in good shape.”
上週四晚間，甲骨文公司（Oracle）突然宣佈，創始人拉里•埃裏森將卸任CEO。埃裏森擔任該職位已有37年，以後他將擔任該公司執行董事長兼首席技術官，薩夫拉•卡茨和馬克•赫德將出任思科公司聯席CEO。年屆七旬的埃裏森，是科技領域迄今爲止任職時間最長的首席執行官，不過，擔任首席執行官數十年之久的，並非只有埃裏森一人。
1995年1月，思科公司（Cisco）首席執行官約翰•錢伯斯開始掌舵這家位於加利福尼亞州聖荷西的網絡公司，在他的領導下，思科創造了互聯網歷史上最輝煌的業績之一，並躋身《財富》美國500強之列（1997年位列第332名），其市值超過1000億美元（1998年），2000年甚至一度成爲世界上最有價值的公司（估值約5500億美元）。後來，網絡泡沫破滅，市場形勢急轉直下。
2012年，錢伯斯表示他將在兩到四年內退休，並指定開發和銷售部總裁羅伯特•勞埃德、現場運營高級副總裁查克•羅賓斯以及服務部高級副總裁艾德扎德•奧弗比克作爲繼任者候選人。正因如此，不久前，人們在等待思科發佈最新盈利報告時，懷揣着特別的焦慮和期待。那天（8月14日）離錢伯斯的65歲生日只有9天。思科在發佈財務業績時，是否會發布有關繼任的消息？
當然，那天沒有發佈關於領導層更替的消息，再次擊破傳言。一直以來這種傳言不勝枚舉，甚至可以追溯到十年前。多年以來，一直有消息稱錢伯斯即將退休，但時間證明每次都是謠言。這次也不例外，儘管有消息稱思科將裁員數千人。
思科發言人向《財富》表示：“約翰一直說，下一次他提到繼任問題時，他就會宣佈繼任者人選。這一點沒有變過。”
但是，有兩件事情發生了變化。首先，錢伯斯現在65歲了，在很多公司，掌門人到了這個年齡都會被強制退休。第二，調研公司Gordon Haskett發佈的一份報告仍預計錢伯斯即將宣佈退休，稱思科是“一家沒有指定接班人的公司”。
首席執行官的平均任期大約是8年。錢伯斯已擔任該職位近20年。他是如何做到的？他還能幹多久？
“網絡行業很殘酷”
Pund-IT公司首席分析師查爾斯•金表示：“無論以什麼指標來衡量，約翰•錢伯斯這一路走來都取得了令人矚目的成就。”
1995年，當時46歲的錢伯斯開始擔任思科首席執行官。彼時，互聯網的興起推動思科急劇發展壯大，公司的路由器和交換機很快被視爲日益網絡化世界的重要支柱。2000年3月，思科曾一度超越微軟(Microsoft)，成爲全球最具價值的公司，此後經歷了諸多困難時期：幾輪裁員、併購失敗（還記得收購Flip攝像機公司那場鬧劇嗎？），股價低迷。
近年來，隨着新興技術趨勢不斷挑戰思科的核心業務，錢伯斯領導的這家公司也一直承受着巨大的壓力。舉例來說，軟件定義網絡(SDN)比傳統的網絡設備成本更低且更靈活，而思科當年正是靠傳統網絡設備成名的。
思科確實找到了應對之策，那就是收購Insieme。（錢伯斯在公司最近的財報電話會議上表示：“我認爲SDN是未來的趨勢，我們會從中受益”。）但是，金指出，儘管思科在其核心網絡市場仍然是領先者，而且在x86服務器這樣的新領域運營良好，仍然有人“抱怨思科行動太遲緩，創新產品也少於其他公司。”。
負責與451 Research研究公司協作的研究主管彼得•克里斯蒂表示：“整體而言，互聯網是個殘酷的行業，因爲它不像計算機，應用程序並沒有發生太大的變化，交換還是交換，路由還是路由，然而半導體的進步已使成本商品化，且對價格構成下行壓力。錢伯斯推動了許多嘗試，以拓展思科的產品組合，並搶佔更大的市場份額。有些嘗試很成功，如服務器計算和IP電話，有些並不成功，如Flip攝像機。”
那些失敗的案例成爲批評者們要求錢伯斯退休的理由。而支持者則表示，錢伯斯表現出了韌性和願意冒險嘗試的信心。
451 Research研究公司資深分析師克里斯汀•雷諾在20世紀90年代末和本世紀初曾在思科錢伯斯手下工作了十多年。他讚賞錢伯斯在其任期內着眼於長遠視角，而這往往是任期較短的首席執行官所忽視的。雷諾回憶道：“我剛開始在他手下工作時，公司只有1000多人，我離開的時候，他已經使思科成長爲擁有65000人的公司。在他的領導下，思科成功抵禦了大規模市場轉型，不僅存活下來，而且實現了蓬勃發展。”
錢伯斯的其他前同事也有類似看法。前思科高管傑西瑞•烏拉爾現在是思科競爭對手Arista Networks公司首席執行官，他說，“我認識他超過二十年，他領導思科經歷起起伏伏，始終幹勁十足、果斷無畏，這令人欽佩。”
擔任首席執行官，在公司順風順水時會得到褒獎，在公司陷入困境時則會遭到指責。以思科的裁員爲例，錢伯斯是促進公司增長的功臣，但同樣要爲裁員負責。雷諾表示：“我知道2001年的裁員令約翰很不好受，2009年的裁員也是一樣。這對他來說也不容易，但這是每個企業發展週期的必經之路。”
在其職業生涯的早期階段，錢伯斯從事過多年的銷售工作。可能正是這種背景，幫助他堅持了下來。《應用開發趨勢》(Application Development Trends)特約編輯，《錢伯斯的思科之道》(John Chambers and the Cisco Way)一書作者約翰•沃特斯表示：“偉大的推銷員都有一種特別的現實樂觀主義態度。他們異想天開，同時又腳踏實地。此外，錢伯斯對客戶極其關注，這些個性使他能穩坐首席執行官交椅。”
“我預計部分投資者有想法”
在科技行業，錢伯斯擔任首席執行官達二十年，這確實不尋常，但並非前所未有。目前的首席執行官中，動視暴雪（Activision Blizzard）的羅伯特•科蒂克、微芯科技（Microchip Technology）的史蒂夫•桑吉和Nvidia的黃仁勳，任期都超過了錢伯斯。Concur公司的史蒂芬•辛格和亞馬遜（Amazon）的傑夫•貝佐斯的任期也沒短多少。
金說道：“IT行業首席執行官通常對自己的職業道路有決定權，除非客戶或股東對他們失去信心。這通常有三種情況：首席執行官錯過了行業的關鍵變革，在失敗的產品上浪費大量資金，或未能向大型機構投資者提供理想的回報。”
就錢伯斯的情況來看，最後一個原因是最迫切的問題。金說道：“就像在鮑爾默領導下的微軟一樣，過去十年，思科的股價一直陷於每股15美元至每股30美元的狹窄交易區間，而且思科股票也未能從重大的市場上漲中受益，在目前的市場漲勢中也是如此。由於公司提供的股息較少，目前每股股息爲0.19美元，而微軟每股股息爲0.28美元，IBM每股股息爲1.10美元，我預計部分思科投資者可能有更換領導人的想法。”
簡化戰略規劃中心(Center for Simplified Strategic Planning)總裁兼首席執行官羅伯特•布拉德福德表示，思科的高管人員中有大量頂尖人才。他說：“如果公司處於更加艱難的戰略形勢下，思科可能會從外部聘請領導者。鑑於公司高管人員的表現，我認爲不會從外部聘任。”
高管理髮展協會（Institute of Executive Development）創始人兼首席執行官斯科特•薩洛表示，錢伯斯已爲順利交接做好了一切準備。目前看來這個過程“近乎完美”，他表示，錢伯斯在幾年前就宣佈了退休的意圖；他提出了具體高管人員作爲繼任者內部候選人；他離任時公司的財務狀況將非常穩健。薩洛說：“同時做到這三點很難得。”
薩洛補充道：“大部分董事會在面臨轉型時沒有思科那麼幸運。絕大多數董事會認爲，他們沒有足夠的繼任者來擔任首席執行官一職。而錢伯斯表示，思科有好幾位候選人，在這方面，該公司似乎遙遙領先於同行。”
思科的退休傳聞，一度令451 Research公司的分析師雷諾甚爲擔憂。現在他不再擔憂了。雷諾說：“最近幾年，約翰制定了良好的繼任計劃，併爲不可避免的過渡，準備了強大的候選人陣容。不是每個首席執行官都能做到這一點，我要說，他的候選人陣容是我見過最強大的。如果錢伯斯退休，思科將運營良好。”
