Connecting the Dots
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Narrated by:
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Allan Robertson
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John Chambers - introduction
About this listen
Silicon Valley visionary John Chambers shares the lessons that transformed a dyslexic kid from West Virginia into one of the world's best business leaders and turned a simple router company into a global tech titan.
When Chambers joined Cisco in 1991, it was a company with 400 employees, a single product, and about $70 million in revenue. When he stepped down as CEO in 2015, he left a $47 billion tech giant that was the backbone of the internet and a leader in areas from cybersecurity to data center convergence. Along the way, he had acquired 180 companies and turned more than 10,000 employees into millionaires. Widely recognized as an innovator, an industry leader, and one of the world's best CEOs, Chambers has outlasted and outmaneuvered practically every rival that ever tried to take Cisco on—Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, to name a few.
Now Chambers is sharing his unique strategies for winning in a digital world. From his early lessons and struggles with dyslexia in West Virginia to his bold bets and battles with some of the biggest names in tech, Chambers gives listeners a playbook on how to act before the market shifts, tap customers for strategy, partner for growth, build teams, and disrupt themselves. He also adapted those lessons to transform government, helping global leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to create new models for growth.
As CEO of JC2 Ventures, he's now investing in a new generation of game-changing startups by helping founders become great leaders and scale their companies. Connecting the Dots is destined to become a business classic, providing hard-won insights and critical tools to thrive during the accelerating disruption of the digital age.
©2018 John Chambers (P)2018 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Connecting the Dots is powerful, penetrating, and unblinkingly personal. With a rich store of behind-the-scenes stories from his remarkable 20 years as CEO, John Chambers shares insights into the people, principles, and playbooks that powered Cisco's growth into a global Internet giant. Here is a must-read on best practices for any manager in any industry."—John Doerr, Chairman, Kleiner Perkins and bestselling author of Measure What Matters
"By turns practical and insightful, John Chambers' indefatigable spirit, sound judgment, and depth of experience shine through in Connecting the Dots. Throughout his career, Chambers set a standard of leadership and innovation over the better part of 20 years. And these lessons apply to all of us—in business and in life."—Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase
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Slow going with an odd narrative tone
- By Benson Bumpkin on 08-06-12
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Everybody Matters
- The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family
- By: Bob Chapman, Raj Sisodia
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Starting in 1997, Bob Chapman and Barry-Wehmiller pioneered a dramatically different approach to leadership that creates off-the-charts morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance. The company utterly rejects the idea that employees are simply functions to be moved around, "managed" with carrots and sticks, or discarded at will. Instead Barry-Wehmiller manifests the reality that every single person matters, just like in a family. That's not a cliché on a mission statement; it's the bedrock of the company's success.
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A Much Better Read
- By Bob Burton on 12-14-18
By: Bob Chapman, and others
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Start with Why
- How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
- By: Simon Sinek
- Narrated by: Simon Sinek
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The inspirational best seller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our why. Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time - with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the why of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever.
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Useless Dribble
- By Chimdi Azubuike on 03-10-18
By: Simon Sinek
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Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve
- By: Whitney Johnson
- Narrated by: Whitney Johnson
- Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The best bosses know this, and they know how to make it happen by thoughtfully designing people’s jobs around the skills they have today as well as the skills they'll need to be even more valuable tomorrow. That's how entire organizations stay competitive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing business environment. In this book, Johnson explains how to become one of those bosses and how to build your A-team.
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A must listen for team builders everywhere
- By Nathan McMullin on 06-09-18
By: Whitney Johnson
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Mastering the VC Game
- A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-Up to IPO on Your Terms
- By: Jeffrey Bussgang
- Narrated by: Ramon De Ocampo
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Finding the right venture capitalist to back your start-up is a challenge. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some dictator who will undermine your vision and take control of your life's work. Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that works for everyone.
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slow in beginning but gets really good
- By Diana on 04-11-19
By: Jeffrey Bussgang
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Good to Great
- Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't
- By: Jim Collins
- Narrated by: Jim Collins
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Built To Last, the defining management study of the 90s, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about companies that are not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
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Good info, over-the-top narration
- By Anaxamaxan on 08-31-10
By: Jim Collins
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The Reinventors
- How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change
- By: Jason Jennings
- Narrated by: Jason Jennings
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Eventually every job and every business will become irrelevant. According to Jason Jennings, the past few decades have seen unprecedented shifts: former third-world nations have transformed themselves into high-tech manufacturing powerhouses; technology has democratized business and increased competition in ways never before seen; and customers, used to getting exactly what they want when they want it, are no longer beholden to the corporate giants.
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Good advice
- By Myers on 07-28-18
By: Jason Jennings
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Reality Check
- Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
- By: Guy Kawasaki
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion" is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense"...then it's time for a reality check.
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The Reality of Reality Check
- By Ben on 08-18-09
By: Guy Kawasaki
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All In
- How the Best Managers Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results
- By: Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton
- Narrated by: Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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To have any hope of succeeding as a manager, you need to get your people all in. Whether you manage the smallest of teams or a multi-continent organization, you are the owner of a work culture and few things will have a bigger impact on your performance than getting your people to buy into your ideas and your cause and to believe what they do matters. Based on their extensive consulting experience, the authors present a simple seven-step road map for creating a culture of belief.
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Interesting Theories in Management
- By Nancy on 07-28-12
By: Adrian Gostick, and others
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Taking People With You
- The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen
- By: David Novak
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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David Novak learned long ago that you can't lead a great organization of any size without getting your people aligned, enthusiastic, and focused relentlessly on the mission. But how do you do that? There are countless leadership books, but how many will actually help a Taco Bell shift manager, a Fortune 500 CEO, a new entrepreneur, or anyone in between? Over his 15 years at Yum! Brands, Novak has developed a trademarked program he calls Taking People with You.
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I would like to recommend this book... but can't.
- By Michael on 01-30-12
By: David Novak
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Shortcut Your Startup
- Speed Up Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches
- By: Carter Reum, Courtney Reum
- Narrated by: Carter Reum
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Courtney and Carter Reum have years of experience in the field, from investing in over 130 companies, including Lyft, Pinterest, Warby Parker, and ClassPass, to driving the success of their own liquor brand, VEEV Spirits. The Reum brothers have learned from every triumph and tribulation and over the years have developed an effective and easy-to-understand guide to help entrepreneurs through the startup journey from inception to sale.
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A must read for start ups
- By Dave on 02-09-18
By: Carter Reum, and others
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Startup Rising
- The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East
- By: Christopher M. Schroeder
- Narrated by: Christopher M. Schroeder
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite the world's elation at the Arab Spring, shockingly little has changed politically in the Middle East; even frontliners Egypt and Tunisia continue to suffer repression, fixed elections, and bombings, while Syria descends into civil war. But in the midst of it all, a quieter revolution has begun to emerge, one that might ultimately do more to change the face of the region: Entrepreneurship.
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Inspiring stories
- By Raafat Zaini on 02-13-15
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Inside Drucker's Brain
- By: Jeffrey A. Krames
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In late 2003, Peter Drucker invited Jeffrey Krames to his home in Claremont, California, for a rare interview. The 94-year-old Drucker who had amassed an unprecedented body of published work, comprised of many hundreds of thousands of pages, spent a full day sharing his insights from a lifetime of management consulting and writing. This resulting audiobook is a simple guide that distills the essential wisdom from Drucker's considerable body of work.
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Learn From the Master
- By morton on 10-24-08
What listeners say about Connecting the Dots
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Clayton Anderson
- 10-29-19
Good lessons taken away
Good lessons learned and applicable in the tech industry. Was a little salesy towards the end of the book but the beginning and middle were great.
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- Paul Walsh
- 07-17-24
Loved the playbooks
As a dyslexic entrepreneur, I connected with this book in ways I didn’t expect. I even applied one of the playbook strategies to a major customer, and it worked exactly as I had hoped.
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- Tal B.
- 11-30-21
For entrepreneurs - a great walk through
I worked for Cisco from 2000 to 2006. Reading this book, now as an entrepreneur, definitely connected the dots for me.
This book helped me focus on the critical aspects of running a business, especially building business models.
One of the critical challenges for every startup is TIMING. the very long time between innovation and actual product readiness, especially for hardware startups, requires agility and an elastic business model, which can adjust to "Market Transitions," as Steve calls it.
Great book, especially for those who have already faced the challenges and want to do better.
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- M Munger
- 01-23-19
Wealth of knowledge & experience delivered clearly
John Chambers is clearly one of the great CEOs of his or any generation. His track record speaks for itself as the basis of this audiobook. The insights on leadership are well laid out with examples & stories to reinforce the concepts. His view of the global future of business & government should at least be considered by any of today’s or future leaders.
Among the insights are traits to identify employees, great startups & how to navigate markets in transition to your greatest benefit.
Mr. Chambers has truly changed the way the World lives works plays & learns and shares that journey in this book.
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- Joe Gonzalez
- 08-14-19
Great insights into Cisco's growth
Great things don't happen without Great Leadership. John Chambers provides wisdom and specific examples of how he developed Cisco. Also, some insights into what is next for business growth globally.
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- betania
- 03-06-20
Good points!
If you want to learn how a CEO thinks? This book is great. I notice most of the stories was repeated. Overall great book.
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- James S.
- 10-04-18
Soft business and personal skills from many angles
Writing this book obviously was the author's labor of love. A lot of practical lessons are relayed through business and personal stories. In his life, the boundary between these business vs. personal categories was often non-existent by design; this was his way of showing compassion to all, as all people [of relevance] in either category were considered family.
He also discusses many of the most important points regarding activities in the business domain that were key in the success of Cisco, as well as other business-related lessons learned before he joined Cisco (his time as IBM and then Wang). I was surprised to learn that he was so successful as a CEO likely because of, rather than despite, his lack of technical training. This really hits home the extreme value of nurturing soft skills.
He ends with a discussion of his current investments as a venture capitalist, and puts more into explaining these endeavors than I would have expected.
I think this is a great book for anyone interested in business case studies, as well as anyone wanting practical motivational reminders as you pursue your own ventures.
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2 people found this helpful
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- C. VERA
- 09-09-19
Great leadership read
This book brought back fond memories as I worked at Cisco for 11 years and I can attest that the company culture set by John was felt. Obviously not everyone followed it in the company, but I had the opportunity to meet and work with John's direct leadership team and I can say that they followed his lead. Maybe not presented in the same, but aligned. John has always been in the look out for the market transitions (healthy paranoia as he calls it) and he has been mostly right. Definitely a great read for anyone interested in leadership from a different perspective. A more relational perspective.
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- Brad Downey
- 10-11-18
How Cisco changed my life!
Cisco has been rated the most sustainable company in 2018, this is due to all the hard work, smart decisions, but mostly the culture that John Chambers established.
Cisco crossed my path as a high school student in 1997. They were developing an education program to teach networking to young students. Computers were interesting to me, so why not. 20 Years later I own a great carrier, family, and education to Cisco.
I loved hearing the stories from John Chambers in this book. It was very nice to hear how and WHY he built the culture that he did at Cisco.
Now he is focusing on Startups and digitization. I can't wait to see what he does next.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 03-14-23
inspiration
The is a great book on the management of innovations with companies and Nations that what to build great futures for employee's and future generations.
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