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Women get the good word from Cisco
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TUESDAY 11 MARCH 1997 THE AGE Jenny Barbour with Gary Jackson Journalist. JENNY SINCLAIR |
THE NEW managing director at Cisco Systems, Gary Jackson, practised what he preached at a recent women's networking lunch in Prahran.
In a speech on the art of self-promotion, Jackson told 20 high-powered IT industry women: "Be supremely confident."
Not betraying even a trace of nervousness in a room that reversed the more common male-female ratio in the industry, he outlined the rules for success that had changed him from an engineer to a managing director.
Jackson took a small pot-shot at the efforts of public relations consultants to prevent foot-in-mouth disease in their clients, saying even negative sales figures could be talked about, as long as they were tied to a positive message.
Coming from a man who once confessed to Bill Gates' face that he'd never touched a personal computer - and still managed to get a job at Microsoft - the advice carried some weight. But, he said of his later sudden departure, "it hurt when I got shot at Microsoft."
"It's not nice to get shot."
In order not to get shot, Jackson advised his listeners to "disarm" people with whatever weapons came to hand - charm, politeness, salesmanship.
One of Jackson's bag of tricks for getting noticed (also known as self-promotion) was to "get a prop". Jackson's own prop is a silly tie of a cartoonish style. In response to questions, he suggested that attention-seeking props for women had to be carefully selected. Short skirts might work, but they had to be backed up by real ability, he said.
Jackson said it was part of his job to get himself and his company noticed; with his liking for "a walk on the wild side", Cisco Systems networking and routing vendors, may be about to develop an attitude, courtesy of Gary Jackson.