Cisco's Organization Culture

Cisco's success has been attributed to its relationship with its customers. Cisco professed a 'worship of customers', which was a part of the company's culture right from its inception. "This is a culture where the customer comes first. If the customer has a problem, we drop everything," said Pete Solvik (Solvik), Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO), Cisco. Cisco viewed the assessment of customer satisfaction as a continuous process. One of the elements of this assessment was getting regular customer feedback, which helped Cisco employees to be proactive in identifying problem areas, rather than waiting for an annual customer satisfaction survey. Cisco's field teams designed the questionnaires that were used to assess customer satisfaction...

Cisco's recruitment practices reflected the company culture. Cisco's recruiting team identified candidates whom they felt the company 'should hire' and then designed its hiring processes to attract them to the company. In the late 1990s, the company was hiring at a rate which averaged 1000 new employees every month. For recruiting candidates who fit into the culture of Cisco, a selection criterion was developed which targeted candidates who were frugal, enthusiastic about the future of the Internet, and were not obsessed with status - all hallmarks of the Cisco culture...