Making tough calls and earning team buy-in: Cisco’s Liz Centoni on driving big change

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Welcome to Meet the Leader, the podcast where top leaders share how they're tackling the world's biggest challenges. In today's episode, we talk to Cisco's Liz Centoni on one of the biggest challenges leaders face when making big change happen: Earning people's buy-in.

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I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum and this is Meet the Leader.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: As much as you explain the why, you also have to understand what do people fear and how do you help them address that? How do you give voice in the organization as you're defining things to people who actually do those jobs every single day, to help us kind of design and make modifications along the way? Our strategy stays the same. But the execution has the voice of many of those subject matter experts as well.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Change is constant and any leader worth her salt is never truly done driving it. So why is it still so hard and how do you win people's faith, their support, their buy-in?

Liz Centoni understands this challenge well. She is the chief customer experience officer at Cisco. Being a leader in her role means questioning the status quo and ensuring that changing needs continue to be met. But also pushing for new solutions and new ways of doing things, even when that means you might be pushing outside people's comfort zones.

We talked about driving big change effectively and the blind spots leaders might overlook, like their own communication skills, or even if they've continually made the space for real feedback or even small wins. And while creating the psychological safety is critical, no team will trust a leader that they sense doesn't feel that safety themselves.

She'll talk about all of this, including her own leadership journey and the strategies that she uses to drive change and earn team buy-in. But first, she'll talk more about the sticky side of change. Now we can lean into it.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: So, my default mode as an engineer is always like, go go go, let's go. And I'm thinking very logically and very analytically as, we've explained the why so let's just go, let's go go go.

But we're talking about people. And people, you know, come in with their own fears, their own emotions. And so, you've got to lead with empathy as well. As much as you explain the why, you also have to understand what do people fear and how do you help them address that? How do you give voice in the organization as you're defining things to people who actually do those jobs every single day, to help us kind of design and make modifications along the way? Our strategy stays the same. But the execution has the voice of many of those subject matter experts as well.

It also is when you get over some of the emotional and the fear-based issues, you invest and it feels like it's your own versus something that, oh, it's just what's senior management is trying to do. So, I think it's balancing out the oh, it's very logical, we've explained the why, there's a mission, everybody should align to it. To know, we're all humans. We all come at it very different way. No two people on the team are really alike. So how do you make sure that you've taken into consideration that empathy, that emotional intelligence to bring people along?

And it's always going to be some level of fear. But making sure that when you've had an opportunity to have, you know, where people feel comfortable voicing their opinions and you take that as feedback, it's not seen as criticism. It's more like how do you look at this and go, this is feedback You may not incorporate all of it, but that's okay. It gives people a voice

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Was there a turning point for you that helped you really embrace that sticky side of change. something that made you go, i'm going to lean into this and here's how.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: The operating model change was one of that, and I felt like we kept communicating this every single time. The team kept working on it, but it felt like we were a little bit like a hamster in a hamster wheel. It's like we were all running, but we weren't moving forward.

And even though I felt, like, okay, we're making space for this and having these conversations, it felt like we actually needed to chunk the problem down into more consumable chunks and have those separate discussions with the teams as well to really understand what are the issues that are holding us back? Is it more about fear because people have operated in a certain mode and they're very comfortable? Is it where people are looking at it and going, my job is going to change, for a number of reasons in terms of how we're heavily pushing into AI, but they can't quite see that the routine and automation and some of the repetitive tasks they're doing are going to go away. But this means that they get to spend more time doing things more, like thinking more creatively, more problem solving. But that also comes with the, well, I'm uncertain how to do that.

So, we have to chunk the bigger problem down into much more consumable chunks. And for me, what that meant is, even though it's a large organization driving a quarter of our company's revenue, getting down, I would say, deep in the trenches on some of this. It has meant that outside of going and talking to customers and engaging with them, spending a significant amount of time in some of the operational execution of this as well.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: And, just so people understand, the broad strokes of the operational model change, what was the before of the change that you guys were building?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: It centered with how do we simplify this? How do we simply this where our customers didn't feel the friction of multiple touch points into the organization? Customers don't care what part of the organization that you're from. They look at it and go, I'm buying from Cisco. I'm looking at this where there's a set of people at Cisco who design a product, sell it to me, you know, help me adopt it, support it. They don't care about the organizational structure.

But like in any company, we're defined a little bit by our organizational structure. So the problem was like, how do we make it seamless for our customers, but still keep the identity and the pride of the different organizations in terms of what we do? But that also meant working across the silos and building deeper connective tissues as well. But everybody understood that we needed to simplify this.

Fewer touch points into the customer also caused some concerns for the team that said, okay, then what is the value of what I do? And so, it was helping redefine kind of value for people around, it's not like you don't add value anymore just because you're not the primary person talking to the customer. So, it was really about simplifying the operating model such that the customer felt like it was easy to engage with us, the team fully understood the end-to-end piece – not just their operational silo – and that's what we're working towards.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: And what surprised you about this process? You know, something like, gosh, I didn't ever expect this.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: I would say is the scale of the organization. This is the biggest team that I've ever managed. While over the last 15 years being in leadership roles out of my 25-plus years at Cisco, I haven't managed a team this large. It's about 20,000 people and we have another 10,000 contractors. So, bringing everybody along, the change needs to happen both top-down and bottom-up as well. Because that's what makes it sticky at the end of the day.

So, what surprised me is, the pace at which I like to move – which is always like, let's go, let go, go, go – you have to pause at times. And pause is hard for me because I'm just used to the moment I get up, it's like, I'm going. Because there's so much stimulus coming at us. It's coming at me. It's coming from my team. It could be business. It could be political. It is macro-economic. And you're trying to manage through all of this. It's the large employee base. And I'm not used to taking a pause.

And this is where I love [Austrian psychologist] Viktor Frankl's quote around between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space is the power to choose our response. And in our response lies our freedom and growth. I would still say it's something I am learning because being in engineering for pretty much my entire life. You know, you don't pause, you just go. You know the speed at which technology is moving is outpacing how we can consume and adopt that technology.

So, we're all kind of just so focused on, let's go. So, pause is something that I've got to say, it's not just let's just move, let just pause. And also celebrating the small wins because it's just not about that one big milestone. You pause on how you want to respond but celebrating the small wins has helped immensely because teams want to know how things are progressing, not just wait for the big milestone where we're all celebrating.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: And, this pause, what does it look like? Help us picture it so we can replicate it.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: So, most of the time when I'm, say I'm in a meeting and we're talking about, you know, the progress on the operating model, that's a good example. My default mode is to engage because that's just who I am. You know, kind of engage and now it's more like sitting back and choosing to respond based on after I've understood versus just listening to respond to something.

And that helps the conversation, even among the leadership team and the employee base, move a lot. Because the moment I say something, the equation changes in the room. Because then it's more like the team is then focused on responding to me. Because whether we like it or not, there's a power dynamic in the group. And so, I've learned, that's just one example of like, I have to sit on my hands a little bit. I literally sometimes in a meeting, I have to sit on my hands going, don't talk, just, you know, just pause. There's one.

The other parts of it is, when you make big decisions that are hard, that do impact people's lives. When we have certain roles that we don't require anymore, especially being a female, there's a lot of, you, know, misogynistic racist comments being directed towards you. Those sting. One of the biggest pieces of advice I've gotten from my boss, who's an amazing CEO, he said, because I asked him, how do you deal with this? And he said, well, if you wouldn't ask their advice, why do you care about their opinion?

And I think that pause has taught me that as well around, because otherwise, you know, I need to make sure I'm focusing for across these multiple different functions – my team and my customers as well. And I want to make sure I keep the main thing as the main thing, is the priority.

So that's where the pause helps from different angles. One in terms of how I've been engaged with my teams, and the other one is how I handle like different kind of stimulus that comes my way, both good, bad and the ugly.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: In that pause, how important also is it to sort of compartmentalize maybe your emotional reaction, whatever that is. Say if you're annoyed by something, or frustrated, or maybe angry. How important is it, to separate that from the action that you're trying to move forward?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: You know, you mentioned the word emotional. Being a female, especially in technology and at a senior level, usually "emotional" is seen as a wrong word, but I actually embrace "emotional" because I look at that as I'm emotional and passionate about what I do. And that really makes me very good at what I do within the company and for our customers and employees as well.

I give myself the grace to know that how I feel is totally okay. And that was not the case before. Because before I used to think, why am I upset about this? Why are the circuits in my head not wired a different way where there's ice flowing in my veins? My husband and I joke about this, he calls me Lizzie Ice at home. But we're human. And so, I give myself the grace to know it's okay to feel the way I feel. But what do I take actions on?

And so, I prioritize the ones that need a response. Everything else goes below the line. And so, giving myself that grace to know that it's okay to think this way, but that response, it's like some things just don't require a response. And that has helped me to let go and just focus on the things, and compartmentalize, that really, really matter to us.

Because in this world where there's so much stimulus, that pause just helps in terms of, it's freeing. I can tell you that, this is where I feel like sometimes when I'm in a moment of where I'm in a meeting and it gets super passionate and I can feel, you know I have an Oura Ring and I'm looking at it and going oh my stress level is going up in parts of it. I always feel like Viktor Frankl is sitting next to me and he goes: pause. And it just helps reframe the whole thing as well. And then I think about it like later that evening and the next day and almost chuckle going, why was I upset about that?

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Everyone is human and you should be feeling emotions –but how can you be strategic so you're getting the impact you need and you can be effective.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: I like to think that I lead with authenticity, right? So, I don't want to be the ice queen, even though I joke about it and going: I want to be this chill person. So, leading with authenticity also means being able to show at times when you're vulnerable about things, at times where you're really passionate.

I'm really passionate about our mission. And that comes through to the organization. And I've heard that from so many people because you can bring people along. I'm passionate about making sure that the work every single person does is tied to that mission. I tell them very often, if you see that the work that you're doing, it doesn't connect back to the mission, you should talk to your manager. And if you feel like you're not getting the answer right, reach out to me directly. We have a great messaging platform. Anyone can reach out to anybody.

And so that's where, you know, I want the passion to come through. I want our teams to have passion about our customers, what we do, because we exist because of our customers. I want them to be passionate about growth, passionate about the technology that can fuel what we drive, both for the company as well as our customers as well. And I show that passion. Because that passion is contagious. It also helps attract talent, both at the leadership level and through the organization as well.

But when I think about friction that exists in any organization, and this is a big part in terms of where I'd like to look, how do we reduce the friction on people doing their jobs? And in a large organization, 80-plus thousand people, there's likely silos, there is likely friction. There's likely, you know, people getting upset about things that don't move fast. They're in sort of the passion, I'm very even keeled. Don't get me wrong inside. I'm going, I wish we could just get rid of it. But the power of my words, I know if I were to say this, it just would become a bigger issue than it is.

And part of like just quietening that down is listening, truly understanding and saying, let me see if I can go help. Let me understand the crux of the issue. But that's when it's more even keeled, because, I mean, friction is something we're not going to be able to completely eliminate. But how can I reduce that? Lower the temperature so the teams can focus on what our mission is?

So, I think those are the different places where, one, the passion and the emotions are high. And the other one, where keeping it even keel so that our teams can see, you know, maybe it needs to calm down. And yeah, she's going to help us – it doesn't go away completely, but I know I have confidence she's, one, got our back and, two, she is going to see what she can do about helping reduce this friction so we can get our jobs done faster.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: One way to make sure that we can move quickly is to be able to articulate what's actually needed. Sometimes it's really hard. And sometimes you know that you might not be the most popular person in the room if you voice a concern or a need. What do you think is really important? How can we do this constructively? If somebody was going to apply two or three things, how can I say the hard thing in a way that's productive?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: Yeah, I would say is it was hard for me early on in my career, where it was, you want to say the things that that seems like the group thing, because you don't want to be the only person.

And for me, it's really around, one, is making sure that you lead with your leadership values around, for me, they're around transparency, creativity, communication, you know, leading with empathy as well. And I think it's not just about saying that. It's about the way you operate as well. Like if you're walking that and you show walking that talk, your organization knows that you can actually say things, by the way, that, and you make room for that.

So once a month, I have a ‘Ask Me Anything’ meeting with my team. Sometimes there's no agenda at all. And we make it so casual that it's on our Webex platform. And the teams are typing in every question. And, by the way, they're very comfortable with their name attached to it. I scroll through all of them as a leadership team, we answer that. And some of them, it's more like, you know, there are questions on, geez, you know we have this people impact, you did this again. Some of them I'll acknowledge, yeah, you know, that was an error in the decision that the leadership team made.

And I think owning up to like, some of the decisions that we make may not go right. And owning up, that gives people a feeling, a view of it's a safe space to be able to say that. But I always start with the, let's keep it respectful. This is about the business and the feedback. It's not about a specific person or a personality.

And that is how people, you know, again, you give them a space to be able to tell you about the, you know things that are not going right. I want that. I'm scared when it's an echo chamber. When you're sitting in the room and all we're hearing is this is great and that's great. I'm always a little wary going, can't be great 100% of the time.

So, I actually love where we're talking about things that are not working well. Because things that we're doing at the scale that we are doing, whether it's a product, whether it is a transformation, whether it a change in the operating model, it never goes smoothly. I mean, I look back and I go, geez, every product, every project, every business that I've run has been ups and downs. And we've had milestones and misses along the way. But what I've noticed is that those milestones and those misses fade, but what people remember is how you treated them and how you led along the way.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Psychological safety is important for change to happen, for wellbeing, for morale, for actually to tackle a lot of problems of burn out and things like that. Everybody comes in to Meet the Leader, they say, you just have to have psychological safety. It's still elusive, right? It's still hard. It's a moving target. It's also a blind spot for a lot of organizations.

Are there things that leaders should either look for, questions they should ask themselves constantly to kind of do a check? A like, hey, do I have this in place? What should they be looking for to make sure that they have the ingredients for psychological safety?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: First, I would say leaders need to look inward and make sure they have their own psychological safety. Because sometimes, I would say at all times, no matter how good you are at acting or faking it, people will feel it. And so, if you're not in a good place, you'll project that.

So first it's like, do you feel like you're in a place in an organization where you can speak your mind about things? It doesn't need to be about the group thing. And you feel comfortable about that because when you're in the good place, you project that. So, when you talk to your teams about, it's about transparency, you know, feedback. By the way, you know, all your feedback, I look at it as feedback. I may not take all of it, but I want to know. And I'm learning with you along the way.

In my first month coming into this group, because I'd always been in product development, and so, services is different, even though it's still a very deeply technical organization. The first thing I told the team is, I don't know a lot about what customer service is, customer experience is. I'm looking to learn along with you. But some of the things that I'm doing as part of this is I'm talking to our customers. I'm talking to others in the organization. I'm talking to many of you as well. Because in that first three months, you feel like you're not jaded, you haven't drunk the Kool-Aid completely yet. And I got a ton of feedback as well.

And what I've done with every one of them is I come back to the next month's ‘Ask Me Anything’ and I say, here are the things I actually heard from all of you. Let me talk to you about. Us as a leadership team, we got together and we say, we're going to address this. And these other ones just know we've read it. We don't think it's something that we're going to drive.

So, I think that gives psychological safety where you feel like you're heard. You may, you know, the leadership team may not agree, but I think, first and foremost, I encourage my leaders to ask themselves, it's like, do you feel that yourself? So that you're projecting that as well.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Are there things that can kind of go wrong, where you think you've shored it up, but then you might not even realize that you've missed a piece? What are these sort of missing pieces that people can overlook?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: Is really around the employee buy-in. So, any of the major changes that you're doing, there are things that you can do in terms of continue to repeat the mission, right? The main thing is about the main thing, it's about the main thing. You can, I would say, continuously repeat that. There could be operational challenges along the way as well.

So, you're laying the blacktop on the freeway as you're driving. Because we don't get to do things serially. We're doing things parallely and partially in a parallel way as well. So, as we're making this operating model change, we still have to drive revenue for the company. We're still driving growth. We're still driving AI pretty hard. We're still making sure our customers, we are delivering that seamless experience and experiences that more and more they look at this and go, boy, these guys understand my environment better than I do myself.

And at the same time, we're trying to drive this change. That's a lot on the team. And trying to balance that, it's never going to go perfect. But making sure that you are in the details. Constant communication – this is what we do every week as well.

And then the third one is around, you know, how do we make sure that we're bringing this large organization along? And having a pulse, we take a pulse in the organization pretty often. That's important because if it's just a subsection of the people doing this, it's not going to work because it's going to fail along the way. You have this perception of, yes, I'm making this transformation. And one day you'll wake up and see, well, it actually isn't happening. So having a pulse on employee sentiment is absolutely important.

I mean, one of the great things about Cisco as a culture is that it is pretty open. I mean, there are people who reach out to our CEO directly on things as well. Like, let me tell you what are the areas we should improve. I think that's great to be able to have. Could we continue to do better at that? Absolutely. We don't think that, hey, it's a one and done, everybody feels comfortable. We constantly look at it and go, how do we make sure that, in our passion about showing how things are progressing, we're not leaving behind a section of the employees who feel like, well, things are not moving along for me?

We want to be able to hear from everyone. So, we continue to look at what are the things we could do better in being able to find that.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: Is there a book you would recommend?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: I would recommend definitely the book of The Courage to be Disliked.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: And tell me about that.

Liz Centoni, Cisco: The number one thing I loved about that is the power, your power. And I've struggled with this a little bit. And it's funny, this week, funny is most of the conversations have been about AI and every panel that I've been on, every media that I'd been on has asked the question about agentic AI and when is that coming into CX? And we're experimenting with that. But I'm going, boy, you were talking about giving a virtual agent agency. And yet what we don't talk about very often is around the agency that we have, the power that we have.

When you know that you have that agency, you don't need to be part of the groupthink. It's not just about the recognition because it's important, especially, you know, one of my mentors once told me, men are promoted on potential, women are promoted based on performance. I think that's super wise. So we're like, okay, if it's on performance, I need to make sure that I'm recognized. But when you step back and you look at it and go, hey, if I'm doing the right thing. And it's not just about being recognized, it's not just about the being the loudest voice in the room. That's where the pause comes in. It's about being intentional. It's knowing that the authenticity that you can bring forward and the power and the agency that it gives you.

I don't know if I am doing the best job in terms of articulating the book, but that book has helped me immensely because, I can't remember who recommended it to me, and I thought, what an odd title, The Courage to be Disliked. Even the person who says, I'm okay if people don't like me, I don't quite agree because as humans, we want people to like us. But separating that out in terms of going, there's an agency that you have in terms of the power, you don't need validation for everything.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: In your opinion, what can leaders prioritize in 2025?

Liz Centoni, Cisco: I would suggest to leaders is that they really need to, like at least have a baseline knowledge of AI. Even if you're not in dev-opping it, incorporating it, AI is going impact every function in every organization. So, having a baseline knowledge of the technology, what are the use cases? What are the issues that come up around transparency, explainability, security, privacy? These are things that you need to know.

So, in addition to all the things that you're already doing, immerse yourself in the technology. And then the learning part. I mean, I've been around for 25-plus years in the industry and learning has always been part of everything that you do. But the speed of where I've needed to learn, like every day I spend an hour reading on something brand new. On Fridays, as a team, we spend three hours just going through what's new. It doesn't mean that we're incorporating this, but I love the fact that, for me, it's like learning every day. And I think as leaders, we need to accelerate that.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader: That was Liz Centoni. Thanks so much to her. And thanks so much for listening.

Our Future of Jobs Report gives a sneak peek at the changes we'll be seeing ahead and the skills leaders will need to develop to drive teams in the future. We'll make sure to have a link for that in the show notes.

And to listen to more podcasts, including my colleague's podcast, Radio Davos, go to wef.ch/podcasts. This episode of Meet the Leader was produced and presented by me with Jerry Johansson as editor, Juan Toran as studio engineer in Davos and Gareth Nolan driving studio production.

That's it for now. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum. Have a great day.