Cisco's John Chambers spent his last month as CEO flying around Europe warning that 40% of companies will die
He keeps saying that he's not going to be secretly still running the company (though many people inside Cisco don't fully believe that, yet).
His role, he says, will be "wing man" to new CEO Chuck Robbins.
It appears Chambers means that quite literally. In an interview with Daniel Thomas at the Financial Times, Chambers said he's spent the last month of his tenure flying around Europe.
Chambers owns his own plane, and he charges the company when he uses it for business travel like rank-and-file employees charges for mileage when driving their cars driving to meetings.
As the FT's Daniel Thomas reports:
Europe has actually been one of Cisco's' stronger markets, growing for the past six quarters, Chambers said in May. (It is China that's been giving Cisco a belly-ache.)
But one of Chambers favorite things to do is to fly around meeting with world leaders sharing his vision for the future and Cisco's roll in it.
Right now, he's focused on ensuring that as billions of devices join the internet, they do so on an internet that is still using mostly Cisco equipment. But that's not a given. Many of these devices will be joining the internet thanks to cloud computing and many of the largest cloud computing vendors (Amazon, Google) use few of Cisco's equipment. They tend to use lower-cost alternatives.
Chambers' latest tactic is a fire-and-brimstone warning. The internet of things will change the business world, he says, and those who miss it won't survive.
So, Chambers is out there, talking about the internet of things, making investments to ensure Cisco's place in it, and doing his wing man duties from the comfort of his own plane.