Astro4Business Intersections

AUDIO VERSION:  Uranus in Pisces – Cisco Systems Audio File

Cisco Systems is a name we all know, but few of us know exactly what they do.   During the dotcom boom Cisco was the supplier of most of the gear that guides data through the internet, like switches and routers.  In March 2000 it was considered the most valuable company in the world. Then during the dotcom bust in 2001 much of its stock market value was lost.  In the last seven years, it has responded not only by diversifying its businesses but also reworking its organizational model to meet the new realities of today.

Branching out

A company in the Mature Stage of the business life cycle,  by 2001 Cisco’s core business had already peaked and would never again reach the annual average growth rates it once had.  So the company has developed a strategy to move quickly into new businesses, businesses that can capture the higher rates of growth that are expected at an earlier point in the business life cycle.  This branching out has become institutionalized in the company culture in the last seven years.

The company calls new areas of growth “market adjacencies”.  The CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, gives an interesting clue for this kind of diversification.  Of the thirty or more market adjacencies the company is exploring and investing in, he says he hopes that at least half will be successful.  (Clue #1 for small businesses:  don’t expect everything you try to pay off.)

Cisco’s biggest current bet is on video communication, which it believes will increase tenfold by 2013.  (I believe so too, with Neptune moving into Pisces in 2011, but that’s a different post.)  And Cisco’s not waiting passively by for someone else to develop the technology.  It is planning to push its own video communication tool, TelePresence, into homes, and give “match-day experience” in people’s living rooms. 

Cisco’s TelePresence utilizes high-definition screens, spatially sensitive microphones, custom video-processing technology and networking equipment.  Cisco already uses the TelePresence technology at an impressive rate in its own business, turning videoconferences into approximate face-to-face meetings, 5,500 times a week.  These updated, upgraded videoconferences offer the nuances of body language and tone of voice, allowing coordination and cultivation of relationships among employees across the globe.

“Welcome to the human network”

In addition to and really more fundamentally innovative than diversification into adjacent business lines is Cisco’s restructure of its management process.  Cisco has continually restructured internally, first operating in divisions according to lines of business, then changing to a functional structure.  (The company has a Sun/Uranus conjunction in its chart which indicates its leaders, symbolized by the Sun, are engaged constantly with change, Uranus.) 

Now Cisco has developed an elaborate system of cross-functional committees to bring new products to new markets.  Some of these committees function without a formal leader although there is documented “replicable processes” for how groups are set up and how decisions are made.  Jay Galbraith, a noted management consultant, calls Cisco’s system a “culture of collaboration”. 

There have been drawbacks to this though.  Some people can flourish in a structure like this; lone wolves, as talented as they may be, cannot thrive, and loss of talent ensues.  A fifth of Cisco’s leadership has left the company. 

But Uranus in Aries is coming!

So what do we see here, from an astrological point of view?  This is an excellent example of a company using innovation (Uranus) during the mature and transitional stage of the business cycle (Pisces).  Natural Pisces attributes abound in the story:  diversification to deal with new market forces, committee leadership, and collaboration, as well as global connection, dissolution of structures, termination of hierarchies.

And the risks to this strategy?  If I were their astrologer I would tell them, good job!  You used the Uranus in Pisces time well, taking the last seven years to restructure your business innovatively, both in products and internal culture.  But Uranus in Aries is coming!  The innovation during the next seven years will come through the start-up phase, of the business cycle, from the efforts of the entrepreneur, the lone wolf that you just forced out.  The committee/matrix structure will not lead to ongoing innovation.  And the diversification strategy which worked so well with Uranus in Pisces will need to find a single overriding focus as Uranus moves into Aries during the next year.

Over the next two years, we’ll watch Cisco as we go through the transition between Uranus in Pisces to Uranus in Aries.  My hunch is that the current management will not be able to be weather the shift in focus under the weight of all those committees.  They will be forced to segment the company into smaller units to retain innovation and competitive edge.

We’ll wait and see…