The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Through the Technology Collapse [Hardcover]

Robert Slater (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2003

In March 2000 Cisco Systems, with a market capitalization of $531 billion, was the most valuable company on the planet. With 44,000 employees and a stock price at $80 per share, Cisco was poised for unstoppable growth and unending glory. Six months later with the crisp smell of cold cash in the air, Cisco president and CEO John Chambers vowed to change the world. Who knew that in a matter of days disaster would strike?

The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Through the Technology Collapse offers the gripping account of the high-tech American dream turned nightmare. Bestselling author Robert Slater's riveting narrative traces the path of Cisco's rise from anonymity to prosperity and then to its sudden, shocking fall, as a world without ceilings gave way to a world where no floor was in sight.

Through unprecedented exclusive interviews with Chambers and Cisco's top executives and unparalleled access to Cisco's private forums, Slater reveals the confidential working and insider decisions behind what was nothing short of a business miracle before the vision went temporarily awry. Unadorned and unequivocal, this is the fascinating story of how Chambers, once widely hailed as "King of the Internet," navigated Cisco through a period of inconceivable success before guiding his company through unimaginable misfortune.

Throughout this engaging tale of the birth and death of the new economy, Slater gleans pearls of business wisdom and essential lessons for corporate decision-making in the new millennium. Collected here are the brilliant maneuvers that catapulted Cisco to glory and the devastating mistakes that brought the company low. The Eye of the Storm is a story at once captivating, instructive, and provocative. Never again will we forget that our soaring revenues of today may well become our plummeting stock prices of tomorrow.

Slater's incisive and illuminating firsthand account takes you behind the scenes from the boom to the bust through to the recovery of a company that has earned its place in the history books asone of America's greatest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Slater, a biographer of Jack Welch and George Soros, here profiles John Chambers, the leader of Cisco Systems, one of the Internet economy's greatest success stories. The author traces Chambers's rise from a dyslexic West Virginia childhood to the head of what became, at its $500 billion peak, the most highly valuated company in the United States. While a trajectory like that could make one helluva business tycoon biography, Cisco's sharp decline during the recent recession-which occurred just as Slater finished his first draft-made Chambers's success a thing of the past and forced Slater to completely rethink the book. And though the author believes he "had a better story to tell as a result of Cisco's setback and the early stages of its recovery," he never quite integrates the two halves of the tale. Slater provides plenty of detail on the firm's rise, including its strategy of acquiring other technology firms, but fills the sketchy outline of the events that constitute the alleged "recovery" with generalities. Slater also repeats phrases, like a magazine headline asking if Chambers is "the best CEO on earth," and his quotes from sources are repetitive and too long. It's easy to understand why Slater wouldn't want to let so much research go to waste, but perhaps he could have gained some perspective on what happened to Cisco and to the economy at large by holding off a while longer.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Prior to the stock market crash in 2000, Cisco Systems was one of the most valuable companies in the country. Slater (Jack Welch & the G.E. Way) writes about the company's rapid rise and sudden fall, focusing on the leadership of John Chambers, who became CEO in 1995. Cisco was founded in 1984 to build routers and switchers, but Chambers oversaw its rapid expansion, fostering its "focus on the customer" philosophy and driving Cisco to enter into partnerships with vendors and to acquire a number of companies. The fall came in March 2000, when Cisco was forced to lay off nearly 8000 employees. Throughout, Chambers is presented as a maverick who turned Cisco into a phenomenally successful company but who was reluctant to take responsibility for its decline. The book concludes with Cisco's recovery story and lessons that other executives can learn from Cisco's experience. Recommended for academic, public, and corporate libraries.
Stacey Marien, American Univ., Washington DC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness; 1st edition (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060188871
• ISBN-13: 978-0060188870
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,295,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Slater was born in New York City on October 1, 1943, and grew up in South Orange, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia High School in 1962 and graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, where he majored in political science. He received a masters of science degree in international relations from the London School of Economics in 1967. He worked for UPI and Time Magazine for many years, in both the United States and the Middle East.
Slater has written 16 books about major business personalities before his new book on Donald Trump:
' The Titans of Takeover (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987).
' Portraits in Silicon (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
' This ... .Is CBS: A Chronicle of 60 Years (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988).
' The New GE: How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1993).
' Get Better or Get Beaten! 31 Leadership Secrets from GE's Jack Welch (Burr Ridge, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1994). This book made the business best-seller list in Japan.
' SOROS: The Life, Times, and Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor (Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996). This book profiles superinvestor George Soros, and it appeared on the Business Week best-seller list.
' Invest First, Investigate Later: And 23 Other Trading Secrets of George Soros, the Legendary Investor (Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996).
' John Bogle and the Vanguard Experiment: One Man's Quest to Transform the Mutual Fund Industry (Chicago, IL: Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996). This book profiles the most important business figure in the mutual fund field.
' Ovitz: The Inside Story of Hollywood's Most Controversial Power Broker (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1997). This book made the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times business best-seller lists.
' Jack Welch and the GE Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1998). This is an updated look at the business secrets of General Electric's chairman and chief executive officer. It made the Business Week and The Wall Street Journal best-seller lists.
' Saving Big Blue: Leadership Lessons & Turnaround Tactics of IBM's Lou Gerstner (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1999).
' The GE Way Fieldbook: Jack Welch's Battle Plan for Corporate Revolution (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 1999).
' The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Systems Through the Technology Collapse (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2003).
' Magic Cancer Bullet: How a Tiny Orange Capsule May Rewrite Medical History (New York, NY: HarperBusiness, 2003), co-authored with Novartis CEO, Dan Vasella.
' The Wal-Mart Decade: How a New Generation of Leaders Turned Sam Walton's Legacy into the World's #1 Company (New York, NY: Portfolio, 2003). A paperback version was published in June 2004.
' Microsoft Rebooted: How Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer Re-Invented Their Company (New York, NY: Portfolio, 2004
' No Such Thing as Over-Exposure: Inside the Life and Celebrity of Donald Trump (New Jersey, Pearson, Prentice Hall, February 2005)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Informative but not tough enough, July 8, 2003

By 

Joshua Jaffe (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Eye of the Storm: How John Chambers Steered Cisco Through the Technology Collapse (Hardcover)

As the author readily admits, his book was rewritten when his subject, Cisco CEO John Chambers, was suddenly presiding over a shrinking, rather than expanding, company. The rewrite shows in the final product.

Robert Slater explains Cisco's fabulous rise well. The key players granted him interviews and seemed happy to discuss the company's glory days in length. The company's subsequent decline beginning in 2000 is not treated as well. I didn't learn nearly as much about Cisco's fall as the book's title would suggest I should have.

After covering business icons such as Jack Welch and George Soros, I wonder if the author was really prepared to take the critical approach necessary to cover the decline of Cisco that John Chambers oversaw.

And as if he felt the need to justify the subject matter, Slater repeatedly mentioned the fact that Cisco was the most valuable company in the world, if only for a second. The reference got annoying.

Overall, anyone who wants insight into the roots and management team at one of the world's most important tech bellwethers should read this book. There are some fascinating revelations here such as how close Cisco came to acquiring hub maker SynOptics Communications in 1993. At the same time, I was disappointed he completely omitted information about Cisco's close M&A relationship with Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital in the late 1990s.

While Slater's ninth chapter about Cisco's dealmaking techniques comes to the conclusion that most of its deals had little or no effect on the company, true M&A junkies might be better off reading Ed Paulson's adulatory book, Inside Cisco, to learn more about the communications equipment maker's aggressive corporate development program.