CISCO : Entrepreneurship and Small Business -SAUDI ARABIA UNIVERSITY

The Organizational Structure at Cisco Systems Cisco systems is an Internet technology organization based in United States with its headquarters in California. The organization is an international unit which manufactures process its designs of networking materials and sells all over the world. Some of the products manufactured by Cisco include; Cisco IOS, Datacenter, network management and network devices (Daft, 2015). The company has renovated itself repeatedly to prove the organizational structure that is, not only responsive but also in accordance with the changing marketing requirements and industry plays a central role in the success of the company. Cisco systems have adopted several organizational structures. According to John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO and Chairman, the organization had shifted from silo culture before 2001 in order for the company to remain innovative and agile in a quickly changing industry. The committees working at various departments were now cross-functional in agreement with the organization, rapid replication, scale, flexibility and lent-Cisco sped. Cisco realized that the traditional command-and-control approach lacked relevance, and the future would require collaborate design for decision making. The new organizational structure have benefited the company and aided in implementing its assertive growth plan even during economic downturn. Design changes needed Organizational change is not all about new CEOs or big mergers. There are several other appropriate techniques such as establishing a new policy or applying a new technique. Cisco Systems was attached to an outdated silo culture. In silo culture, with two different departments, employees were lacking focus and duplicating effort. In most cases, employees never knew that duplication of efforts was occurring. Additionally, staffs experienced operational, architectural and balance design issues, that was almost impossible because of time and resource constraints. At this point, Cisco required a structure to enable employees to collaborate and communicate easily. Cisco systems shifted from silo organizational structure to lifecycle approach which comprise of six steps: Prepare, Plan, Design, Implement, Operate, and Optimize, and matric culture (Dutta, Malhotra & Zhu, 2016). The structure facilitates clarity on each stage of a scheme and allows group members to focus on their particular fields of expertise. Organizationally, staffs were shifted to various teams to concentrate on single step of the lifecycle technique without distractions. As a result, the roles were clearly defined and intensified productivity.