Charles Carmel Video

CHARLES CARMEL: Gaining from a Loss,Video Case Transcript Challenge My name's Charles Carmel and I'm a vice president in Cisco's Corporate Development Group. I've been with Cisco and with Corporate Development for a little bit over eight years now after having left the GSB. I joined the organization at the entry level as a manager in Corporate Development with a particular focus on the optical networking segment and, over the course of the last eight years, have moved up through the organization to now have joint responsibility for the overall leadership of the corporate development effort at Cisco. I've been at Cisco a couple of years and had an opportunity to work on a mix of different projects, but one of the things that I felt very strongly about early in my career was that it was important to put points on the board. It was to get big projects done, to get major acquisitions completed, and that often viewed as the key to success, which was getting projects completed. So I started to work on a very large acquisition; it was one of the bigger projects that Cisco had been focused on over the last several years, and we were starting to make success in pushing it forward within the organization. Over the course of a six-month period, I became very focused on the idea that getting the deal done was really the key to success. It was a couple of months of buildup and discussion and influence setting around the company, and eventually we were getting to the point where we needed to get to a final decision about whether we were going to move forward on the acquisition or say no.We had a big meeting on a Friday afternoon with John Chambers and the full executive team of Cisco, where I had an opportunity to present the findings and to make a recommendation as to whether we were going to move forward or not with the transaction. After an hour conversation and a lot of good debate, we came to the point where it was time for that final decision. I remember when the decision was eventually made, which is John said we weren't going to move forward with it, he turned to me and said, "Charles, I'm sorry, but this is something that we aren't going to make as a company, but I want to thank you for all the hard work, and you've done agreat job in really driving the process and bringing this forward for the team to consider." In the buildup to this big method, I had spent countless months and a number of all-nighters trying to build up for the big presentation, and because I had viewed that the key outcome was getting to this "yes," and I'd put six months of my time and energy into building up my case to get to the "yes," I remember feeling like when John said no when the decision was to pass that I'd just wasted this six months of effort and energy trying to get this big result and get the points on the board. I remember thinking there was a mix of options that I had: One was to not take no for an answer and try to come back and redirect the conversation, maybe with a slightly different angle so that we could build back up for another chance at a "yes," or I could let it lie and decide that the right answer was to move on. Decision I think one of the best things about the timing for the meeting was that it happened on a Friday afternoon, which meant that I had a chance to leave work and go home for the weekend, maybe head a little bit down but a chance to reflect on my own for 48 hours before having to come back and talk to my management chain and start to think about how we were going to regroup. When I came in on Monday, I sat down with my immediate boss and we talked about the results of the meeting and how to think about where we went from here. I remember pushing at him a little bit about, "Maybe if we tried it this way, or maybe if we position it a little bit differently, we'd get a different answer." But it became pretty clear during the course of that first meeting with my immediate boss that it was going to be a tough hill to climb, and so I came out of that pretty disappointed and really having to reflect on what was the best way to move forward from there. I remember feeling like this was going to be the reason that I was going to be passed over, which was I had worked so hard on a big project and now had put six months of my life into trying to get this through to completion, and the fact that we were now at a place where we weren't going to move forward on it, that I was going to have to start the clock over while others were going to be further along in getting some of their big projects through to a "yes." Results I think I started to reflect on both the feedback that I had had from John Chambers and then also from my direct boss where what I felt like was a negative outcome. I kept getting told what a great job I had done in positioning the decision and leading the analysis and really bringing forward the key facts for the company to base its ultimate decision on. I think it started to sink in that all of this positive feedback was a little bit counter to what I had viewed as a failure. So I started to recognize that part of the responsibility is really driving the right outcome for the company, even if that outcome is a "no." I think I started to really internalize the fact that sometimes the right way to approach it was you learn from a "no" and you move on, and in fact you may get more positive credit for having been mature in the decision and then recognizing that it's not just about the "yes," but it's about how you position the decision for the company where you really may get the most spotlight. In the initial few meetings that I had with both my boss and then my boss' boss, I was always so focused on this point of why we didn't go forward on the deal and what were the reasons why and how to think about the takeaways from it.Eventually when I had my annual review and was talking about my bonus for the year, I realized that in fact they were looking at it from exactly the opposite perspective: It wasn't about this project, but it was about how did I handle the decision not to move forward? I recognized that I was actually being tested in that moment. My boss had told me that John had come back to him and had said, "Hey, how did Charles do in the subsequent days and weeks after that big meeting where we said no? Was he heads-down and was he disappointed?" In fact, they were impressed with the idea that I was able to move forward from it and eventually start to think about the bigger picture and not just be focused on this particular project. In the end, I got a very good review, and my bonus was what I had expected, and so it turned out to be a good outcome as opposed to a bad outcome despite the fact that we said no to the project. Lessons Learned I think some of the lessons learned from the big meeting experience was either I could be focused on that particular project and why we decided not to move forward on it or really try to take it up a level, which is thinking about the decision process itself and what were the key things that our CEO was looking for and other key leaders in the room and use that as a way to inform the next project. So I think trying to take a bigger picture perspective and not just be focused on was it a yes or a no for this project, but how do you frame big decisions? How do you take projects and try to present them to a room with that level of executive oversight and try to focus on the bigger picture, not that particular project. The fact that I had actually taken a mature viewpoint to it to say, "Time to move on and time to try to learn in terms of how to reposition for the next project," was actually being viewed as a positive from our CEO and from the management chain at large, helped me to understand that sometimes it's about the journey and not about just getting to that "yes."

Questions

How would you feel in this situation? What would you think?

What are the implications for Carmel's career, and what other concern does he have?

Should he push the group to revisit the decision? Why?