Every time the LR topic comes back around everyone in collab says we participated so heavily in the last round, there's no way it could happen this time. And then it's massive. Of course if you look at performance, what really should be the expectation? We went from being #1 in essentially every market category we played in to now hemorrhaging in all areas besides devices which has a plateau issue coming. It's still a multi-billion dollar area of the business but is absolutely dying with exec leaders peeling off as fast as they can. There is still talented people peppered around but the question is- why? Why haven't those with real value decided to leave at this point given the writing on the wall? Those without real value are the blockers that prevent real work/progress from being done and this promotes the connotation that things are 'bloated' and our days of innovation and leadership are gone (that may be true regardless). Just how much more can collab give whether its in the BU, marketing or the overlay specialist sales org (time will tell if this entire structure continues on under Gary). I'm thinking the Collab SE org is a shining spot to be targeted further along with specific BU product management. Best of luck folks.
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Excellent point on the DA/PA in Collab. Such a waste of a precious budget to burn on these positions. All they do is help with internal and external (Cisco Live) training and coordinate. There are better and lower cost position and titles that are more inline for these specific responsibilities. Unfocused leaders that do not know how to effectively manage resources (budget and people)
The only actual collab work Cisco does is ‘collaborate with competitors to give them business’ while Webex shares depreciates 10x at a time.
What is G2's accomplishment? What has he done for Collab and security other than
bringing in a bunch of incompetent leaders? He should be fired.
Plus acquired many companies and turn them into trash!!
Agree on the blunders in collab technical sales. Constant trainings that seem like it’s more about getting them over the line to give the many PA/DA people something to do and nothing at all with helping us win. Year 1 messaging of missing our numbers was ‘it’s a fluke, let’s show grit’ and year 2 of failure was ‘we overhired during pandemic’ and so on. At what point do we outright say sales leadership is inept? There is nowhere else to hide besides you have a flawed strategy and an inability to execute, specifically at the VP levels. Me and my boss hope they are gone during this round.
Collab team here. Collaboration leaders do not know how to manage a great team and to focus/align all of us to drive the business. Too many ineffective trainings that are not applicable to driving the business. Too many technical training that is not related to our day to day support of our customers. So many internal tasks and goals that we had to achieve (check marks) that took so much time away from our customers. Probably all developed in isolation and sounded great or looked awesome on PPT without any true feedback. We could be 2-3X more effective in driving the business. They all failed us and we are paying the price now.
Cisco pis-sed WebEx away during covid. Zoom and MSFT had already started eating our lunch before the pandemic and chuck refused to pivot. Cisco let this happen.
Same thing will happen with Splunk. Splunk will not save Cisco . Stop drinking the cool-aid.
The market is already saying Cisco is the loser in the market in the AI wave. We didn't and will not pivot. I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss John Chambers vision of knowing whats next.
G2 is smoke and mirrors.
There are two options - exit the business or buy Zoom.
Collab, just put a cool sticker of ms teams on your laptop and it saves us money in the long run.
The emperors new clothes comes to mind … our portfolio has been a challenge across the board and anyone with any common sense saw this
Collab is unfortunately a loser portfolio for Cisco now...it'll never catchup despite G2D2's proclamations, which consistently fail.
What is G2's accomplishment? What has he done for Collab and security other than bringing in a bunch of incompetent leaders? He should be fired.
There are still useless leaders and directors with one to four employees reporting to them. Very inefficient, too many management layers.
Hearing many of the higher ups in Collab getting whacked. Hopefully a good thing and not a bad thing (jumping ship).