Upfront & Personal: An Interview With Cisco’s Mark Chandler

Mark Chandler, SVP and GC of Cisco Systems, says he lives and dies in his job by how his team is performing.

Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Cisco Systems, recently spoke with Rose Ors, the CEO and Founder of ClientSmart, about being confident in yourself and others, assembling the right teams and the best tools, and fearlessly following your passions.

Rose Ors: What life moments have defined you?

Mark Chandler: Professionally, there have been several occasions in my life where different individuals had confidence in my ability to do things that I didn’t think I could do. I listened to them each time and each time it turned out to be a good decision. The first person was the president of the California Public Utilities Commission who in 1978 offered me a job that I took even though it looked like it would delay my going to law school.

Then in 1988, the CFO of a Fortune 500 manufacturer hired me to my first general counsel position. I’d been working in a marketing job at another company and he flat-out said, “You don’t seem to know that much about law, but you seem bright enough and all the people from law firms are so legalistic, so maybe you can do the job.” It turned out I could do it.

And then [former Cisco CEO] John Chambers trusted me to be his general counsel in 2001, and I had the privilege of doing that for 14 years for him, and now for more than two years for his successor, Chuck Robbins. All these people’s advice were inflection points where I wasn’t sure I could do a job, but they trusted me and I trusted them.

Rose Ors: What is it that you think each of these individuals saw in you that you didn’t see in yourself?

Mark Chandler: I think you’d have to ask them, but probably a certain practicality that tempers intellect. They felt I would get stuff done, and I have persistence.

Rose Ors: What do you find most personally rewarding about your work?

Mark Chandler: The chance to make a difference in the history of my company by building an incredibly strong, smart and able team, to make a difference in the lives of the members of that team, and to help use technology to bring people together and create new opportunities. It’s very important to hire people with different experiences. The happy coincidence of that is that in a large organization like the one I lead, a good outcome really depends on a very diverse set of skills and experiences that no one person can bring to the table.

Rose Ors: What are the things you are most passionate about?

Mark Chandler: One is education and the difference it makes in people’s lives. An education gives people access to resources that help them develop their skills. It’s a passion I share with my family — both my wife and my older daughter were teachers in Teach For America. I’ve seen the difference this involvement makes for kids who’ve had the opportunity to get ahead of the curve and for the kids who haven’t.

Rose Ors: What is another passion, Mark?

Mark Chandler: I’m really passionate about figuring out how to deploy and adjust to technological changes in a way that creates a good outcome for the world as well as for Cisco.

We’ve tried to drive efficiency and effectiveness in the legal department in a way that reflected the ethos of company. What we’re building gives people the chance to make the world a better place and improve their own effectiveness and profitability in the business world. And by using these tools or processes ourselves, we’re able to model that for others and build a better company for Cisco and a better opportunity for our customers as well.

For example, the deal automation tools have allowed us to scale very quickly and always use the right template.  That’s been very useful to drive consistency and efficiency across the contract work. That’s really critical as you build a global business. In fact, we’re always looking at external tools, and we’re willing to use those and then enhance our results with some things we’ve developed ourselves.

In a sense, I live and die in my job by how our team is performing. I’m tremendously dependent on great people and they are the beginning and the end-point of the success of our department.

Read the full interview of Mark Chandler on Legal Executive Institute.

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