Ans 1) After the dot-com bubble, Cisco experienced a downturn, and one of the primary reasons
behind this was the lack of agile teams and employees who could form cross-functional teams. The
downturn made them realize that if the company's orientation is only to hire the best talent and not
nurture them in-house via fostering innovation, as a company, it will never be able to adapt and
adjust to any adversity outside its expertise. It had a "Buy" and "Bind" strategy where they use the
resources of the company they acquire based on their requirement and focussed on "Completing
the projects as fast as possible."
This called for strategic changes in HR policy ("built to last") and outlook. The focus before the
economic downturn was on developing leading technology, but soon, the company recalibrated its
strategy and moved towards a design thinking approach by focusing on creating an environment
for intuitive, engaging workers representing a customer experience. Hence it started thorough
training of both the executive and other individuals via programs like ePM, TAP, CLS, LDF on the
market, technology, and consumers. Cisco overcame the situation to ensure that everyone in the
company could solve technology-based problems of any customer form, thereby increasing sales.
This review process shows that the company's focus shifted from just a sales-based organization to
one organization having its own culture where Talent, Competence, and Commitment are their
main themes. It also started pivoting towards providing solutions in market adjacencies to focus on
profits rather than revenues. This helped them to realign themselves from a Product-oriented
company to the system and solution organization. It was done with the introduction of the 3E
Leadership Model: Experience, Exposure, and Education. The creation of various leadership training
modules helped Cisco develop cross-functional teams with a common goal aligned to its policies.
Cisco created a software application that allowed managers to post openings for jobs within high-
growth areas to complement the strategy. It allowed employees to enter their resumes for
consideration voluntarily. In addition to the above, the company's organizational realignment is
based on moving from a company who "tried to do everything" to the one that figures out "what
not to do." This helped them to align themselves and their employees towards the common Line of
Sight (LOS).
In my opinion, there is no need to change the value system as mentioned in the case that each
employee wears the values tag citing The Company’s culture was based on the principles of "open
communication, empowerment, trust, integrity, and giving back to the community." A new HR
strategy was already created by a team who used the Grow 3 "Grow the business, grow our team
and grow yourself" model, thereby developing a holistic strategy that builds human capital and
aligns people's priorities with the goals of the larger company that contributes to overall
organizational growth as a whole.
Ans 2) The Human capital strategy that Cisco applied during its tough time is Intellectual Capital.
Intellectual capital can be defined as the intangible assets that add to the company's value. Further,
let's look deeper into it. This is divided into three components: Human Capital, which consists of the
employees and their contribution towards the company's goal, knowledge, and experience, etc. Next
is Relational Capital this defines the relationship of the company with its customers, employees,
shareholder, and investors. The third component is Structural capital. It consists of the
organization's processes, policies, culture, vision, mission, etc. It also leads to a firm reputation in the
market, a company that uses intellectual capital and pulls a large pool of talented people towards it.
This also helps to build work culture, firms' relationships with outside and inside people; this all
takes the company to survive in this competitive market for a longer run.
Now coming on to the Cisco case, we saw that during the don com burst, Cisco laid off a large chunk
of employees but still was able to grab a position of the best working place is just because of the
Relational Capital they had even with the employee who was laid off. The other thing which Cisco
leveraged was the Human Capital; it valued its most precious employees' skills and knowledge. They
made an agile workforce of skills who can contribute more to areas of greatest need when required.
Employees who understand the customer need and can walk the extra mile to deliver such need to
the customers.
To achieve this Cisco came up with the cisco university in 2003, the used the 3 E model for that
which was Experience, Exposure, and Education. By experience, they meant to experience through
assignments, on-the-job learning, and traditional learnings. Exposure meant exposure developed
through online learning, shadowing periodic forums, and talent reviews. Education was the series of
customized programs that Cisco initiated that included sessions by Senior leaders and outside
faculties.
