Working Both Ways...West Point and Woodstock: Authoritative Leadership and Democratic Decision Making

Product Author Bios

Inder Sidhu is Senior Vice President of Strategy and Planning for Worldwide Operations at Cisco, the $40 billion worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. A member of the company’s Operating Committee, he co-leads Cisco’s Emerging Countries Council, which drives business success in fast-growing geographies like China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and the Middle East. From 2006-2009, he co-led the Enterprise Business Council, responsible for Cisco’s corporate business, representing about half of the company’s total revenue. Before joining Cisco in 1995, he was with McKinsey & Company, an international management consulting company. He has also worked at Intel and Novell.

This Element is an excerpt from Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today's Profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth (9780137083640) by Inder Sidhu. Available in print and digital formats. 

How to get the best of both “command and control” and “decentralized” organizational structures — and avoid the drawbacks of each.

In command-and-control models, power flows downward through a hierarchal pyramid of authority. These models provide scale, replicability, and accountability, but aren’t optimized for speed or flexibility. In contrast, collaborative environments often foster creativity, and operate faster. However, they often fail to execute decisively or measure progress accurately. Scale or speed? Replicability or flexibility? What if you didn’t have to choose?