For decades, Cisco Systems Inc.’s stated purpose has been to use technology to “Change the way we work, live, learn and play.” Sure, the taglines have changed as Cisco has been known for things like “Empowering the Internet Generation,” welcoming us to the “Human Network” and reminding us that “Tomorrow Starts Here.”

Recently, the tagline evolved to “Building a Bridge to Possible” with a focus on businesses using Cisco technology to build smart cities and connected ports of call and to educate students differently. The way the message is delivered is different, but the underlying theme still focused on changing the way we work, live, learn and play.

This week as Cisco Live 2020 kicked off, Chief Executive Chuck Robbins (pictured) used the new platform to unveil Cisco’s new purpose: “To power an inclusive future for all.” Make no mistake, Cisco Live is a technology event and there is a lot of tech content, but Robbins used this platform to deliver a strong social message to the millions of people watching: The time for change is now.

The pivot is certainly well aligned with what’s going on in the world with the COVID-19 pandemic and the social unrest caused by the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and most recently Rayshard Brooks. Cisco Live 2020 was actually originally scheduled for two weeks ago, but the country was embroiled in an unprecedented number of protests and Cisco wisely moved its event to this week to avoid taking away from the country’s focus on change.

In a bit of irony, the only reason Cisco could push its event out was because of the digital format created by COVID-19. Had this been the traditional live event, the logistics of rescheduling hundreds of executives and 25,000 attendees would have been impossible.

As a longtime Cisco watcher, I’ve witnessed Cisco change in the past several months. The pandemic was a wakeup call for every business leader to focus on what matters, and that’s what Cisco has done. During his keynote, Robbins discussed this and stated, “As we entered into this pandemic. We made a decision that we’re going to focus and only focus on our employees, our customers, partners and our communities and these were the only things that matter to us.”

He then highlighted that Cisco has donated more than $500 million to various social causes since the start of the pandemic.  This includes a combination of a significant amount of cash, product donations and free services. To combat COVID, Cisco technology was used to enable telehealth, purchase critical supplies online and help people work end educate remotely, all of which fall under the umbrella of new ways to work, live, learn and play.

Now Cisco is setting its sights at a bigger goal and that’s creating an inclusive future, which includes ending systemic racism. That begs the question: Can technology change societal issues such as racism? Obviously, technology alone can’t, but it’s hard to see how the world changes without it. In a sense, Cisco has already started this change with the growth of its Networking Academy programs, or Netacad in Cisco-speak, which started in 1997.

The Networking Academies teach technical skills to people all over the world, including a number of third world countries. There have been numerous examples of both men and women in parts of the world who would never have had the chance to participate in the global economy. Networking Academy created the educational platform to learn modern networking skills and they were able to find jobs, sometimes in other countries, or start their own businesses. 

During an executive panel during the analyst program this week, Robbins discussed the importance of acting on the lessons learned from the pandemic. If it’s true that people working remotely can be just as productive as people in the office, then the mindset around hiring talent should change. The current crisis is fueled by inequality of opportunity so taking Networking Academy programs to underserved communities creates more educational opportunities for black students. Cisco can also use its might to bring together its ecosystem of partners and create unprecedented hiring situations to start to level the uneven playing field that exists today.

As part of Cisco’s new mandate, the company has developed a new framework for how the company guides its decisions and how it responds to injustice or a global challenge. The company has created four primary pillars of response and assigned an executive leader to each:

• The most vulnerable, led by Tae Yoo, senior vice president of corporate affairs, will focus on the nonprofits and partners that support underserved communities and those disproportionately impacted by systemic issues and crises.
• Families and community, led by Fran Katsoudas, executive vice president and chief people officer, will focus on expanding care and well-being services beyond our employees.
• Research and resilience, led by Liz Centoni, senior vice president of Emerging Technologies & Incubation, will focus on technology solutions that can advance healthcare research and address social inequities.
• Strategic recovery, led by Maria Martinez, executive vice president and chief customer experience officer, will focus on helping healthcare and education institutions adapt their operations so they can continue to provide care to impacted communities and critical pathways to job opportunities during times of uncertainty.

This framework is put in place to ensure that the efforts by Cisco are ongoing, not “one and done,” and go well past an initial response. I’ve had the opportunity to meet all four of those executives and can tell you they are strong leadership figures and they make things happen. Robbins gets a lot of accolades for the job he’s done turning Cisco around, but without a highly diverse executive leadership team made up of people like them, Cisco would not be the company it is today.

An interesting challenge for Cisco is understanding how to measure the impact of its effort.  With its current corporate social responsibility programs, Cisco has set a goal of helping 1 billion people and it measures that through its efforts with organizations such as Mercy Corp.

Ending systemic racism is a much bigger task and has as much to do with the way people feel and act as it does opportunity so creating a way of measuring the impact could be difficult. However, that’s not a reason to not do anything either, as that’s akin to saying, “The problem is too big, what can we do?”

Someone somewhere needs to get things kickstarted. Without getting political, I’ll just say our government response has been slow, so all eyes are on the private sector to invoke change and that’s what Cisco is doing.

Over the past few weeks I have seen a lot of statements from a lot of companies demanding that systemic racism, social inequality and other injustices end. Most are basic vanilla statements that have no bite. The fact that Cisco has made this the mission of the company and assigned many of its top leaders to it shows it’s taking a stand. I hope other tech companies follow suit.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this column for SiliconANGLE.

Photo: Cisco/livestream