Cisco's current and future failings comes down to some basic psychology.
When it comes to careers people aren't programmed to think beyond their retirement, for obvious reasons. If a persons job is expendable then their focus is shorter term. In most organisations senior leaders have a life span of about 4 years. This is actually healthy as it means the next person coming in is going to focus on the next four years and try not to get fired. However at Cisco we have a unique position where everyone in a senior leadership role is a Cisco lifer and they aren't going anywhere, nor will they be fired for poor performance. This means the entire leadership only have the companies interest until their retirement age, which isn't too far away for many. This suggests that none of them care if the company fails after they retire.
Take the Global Sales Leader for example. He's been at Cisco for over 25 years now. He is likely to retire in the next few years, so what is driving him to set the company up for success after this point? This is a company wide issue and the only way to resolve it is to start performance managing poor leaders out of the business and bringing in people with a longer term view for success.