This portion from the article sums some of this up:

And Chambers has greater ambitions, even now, in the midst of turmoil. Or, perhaps, especially now. He has been taking Cisco through a massive, radical, often bumpy reorganization. The goal is to spread the company’s leadership and decision making far wider than any big company has attempted before, to working groups that currently involve 500 executives. This move, Chambers says, reflects a new philosophy about how business can best work in a networked world. “In 2001, we were like most high-tech companies, with one or two primary products that were really important to us,” he explains. “All decisions came to the top 10 people in the company, and we drove things back down from there.” Today, a network of councils and boards empowered to launch new businesses, plus an evolving set of Web 2.0 gizmos — not to mention a new financial incentive system — encourage executives to work together like never before. Pull back the tent flaps and Cisco citizens are blogging, vlogging, and virtualizing, using social-networking tools that they’ve made themselves and that, in many cases, far exceed the capabilities of the commercially available wikis, YouTubes, and Facebooks created by the kids up the road in Palo Alto.
The bumpy part — and the eye-opener — is that the leaders of business units formerly competing for power and resources now share responsibility for one another’s success. What used to be “me” is now “we.” The goal is to get more products to market faster, and Chambers crows at the results. “The boards and councils have been able to innovate with tremendous speed. Fifteen minutes and one week to get a [business] plan that used to take six months!”

This is a CEO and a company who clearly gets it. Cisco is definitely one to watch.

Some very keen insights that I thought were applicable to leadership in the church. No doubt the climate has changed dramatically in our nation and the church needs to adapt to what is taking place and in reality, lead the way.

–The one-man-at-the-top model of ministry leadership has been over for some time but most of these guys don’t get it. Chambers is still the CEO, but to spread decision making ability and real empowerment to some 500 executives shows real leadership, confidence and a man who realizes it is not all about him.

– Networking and collaboration are more than just buzz words for the new era, these are powerful Biblical principles that allowed the church to multiply at exponential rates. Kudos to the movements that understand this and are leveraging its power.

– Everyone at Cisco blogs! No secrets, no hidden knowledge! True knowledge sharing takes place that enables information to be ubiquitous. This is exactly what the imagery of the body used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 is about. No one person owns all of the knowledge, that is God’s domain. We all know in part! We must harness technology to share knowledge and information that is beneficial to all, not just for the sacred elect who hoarde revelation and dispense it in crumb-like morsels to the masses.

– Responsibility for the win is shared by all. This puts in end to competition. We need desperately to learn this in the church. There is a world to reach, a message to be spread, a King and His kingdom to be proclaimed. Church, let’s get it together!