The guy has a good personal story to tell: He was diagnosed with dyslexia as a kid, overcame it, excelled at Middle America universities – first at West Virginia and later at Indiana – and rose to head one of the world’s largest and most influential companies. He has an even better and more relevant business story to tell: He has pulled a company through a wrenching period – including big layoffs – helped reinvent its culture and operations and made money in the complex global marketplace.

He knows firsthand how government can both impede – and encourage – growth and deals daily with the competitive pressures of China and other emerging markets.

He could run as an authentic outsider, someone who hasn’t spent his life pursuing public office. A Washington-has-no-damn-clue message on navigating and dominating the world economy would resonate for many. His smooth speaking style and self-confidence would play well on the national stage.

More ingenious Cisco product placement? I hope not, but Chambers is one of the most non-conventional candidates on the list, now that Bloomberg’s established his political chops. Would he or could he make a presidential contender? I’m doubtful. Sure, he has the sales experience that comes with a large enterprise business, and that would surely help negotiate through the labyrinthine maze of Washington deal making.

He’s also got the technical chops: Cisco has had its down years, certainly, but he has plotted bold visions and painful pivots to keep the company strong, focused and ambitious. I simply don’t think the current leadership in Washington would know what to do with a Chambers presidency, stymieing any forward momentum from both sides, and I think his long-tenure as CEO and later Chairman at Cisco has ill-prepared him for the compromise, gridlock and frustration American politics hold.

But I could be wrong: His political aspiration led him to co-chair John McCain’s 2007 Presidential run, and Fast Company profiled him as a “hardcore Republican” experimenting with socialist corporate values.

Either way, I think Washington could definitely learn a lot from tech culture and Chambers in particular:

• It’s OK to admit your wrong: Chambers stepped away from Cisco’s 25 vaunted priorities, apologizing to the company’s stock holders, employees and customers just a few years after betting the farm on them. In politics, that’s called flip-flopping. In business, not doing that is called suicide.
• Directly connecting with people matters. TelePresence has been derided by some as a dressed up version of teleconferencing, but to Chambers, it’s an essential part of Cisco’s strategy. More closely connecting with others, whether in personal life, business life or political life, is important. That’s a lesson Washington seems to have forgotten on both sides.
• Building culture. A lot of politicians talk about the “culture” of Washington: Insider culture, partisan culture. But few seem to be able to actually do something about it. Chambers underscored the importance of building a quality corporate culture at Cisco, which was based on a non-partisan vision for a better future.

We see all of these market transitions going on at the same time; so, instead of doing 1 or 2 [priority initiatives] a year, like we did during each of the economic slowdowns—the four that we’d seen before—we’re going to do 30. And it sounds impossible.

- John Chambers to McKinsey Quarterly, July 2009

That said, today we face a simple truth: we have disappointed our investors and we have confused our employees.  Bottom line, we have lost some of the credibility that is foundational to Cisco’s success – and we must earn it back. Our market is in transition, and our company is in transition.  And the time is right to define this transition for ourselves and our industry.  I understand this.  It’s time for focus.

- John Chambers memo to Cisco employees, April 2011

It was a wholly ambitious plan, and one that, if executed, would not just have grown Cisco’s position as the networking infrastructure provider, but would have grown it to be a dominant communications provider in both the enterprise and consumer space. Cisco was moving from being an enterprise darling with limited mass visibility to a company that would touch every bit and byte of communications at almost every point: From taking video and voice on its broad line of professional phones and pricey TelePresence to the budget and beloved Flip camera, to the wireless and wired switches that carry that video and voice, to the telecom infrastructure that carries them worldwide, to new, interactive viewing experiences.

But Chambers realized, two years later, that Cisco wasn’t cut out to be a consumer company, at least not now. And so at this Cisco Live!, the company is chastened but not humbled and cutting back from 30 priorities to just 5 fundamentals:

• Switching and routing, coupled with security and mobility.
• Video
• Collaboration
• Data center
• Business Architecture

Marie Hattar, vice president of borderless networks at Cisco, explained that the “business architecture” focus boiled down to a focus on products that transformed business practices: You’re not building a high-end switch or an HD television with a fancy camera on top, you’re building a way to cut travel costs while boosting remote collaboration.

Cisco has a receptive audience for this narrowed focus: A record 15,000 attendees are at Mandalay Bay this year to see what Cisco has in store, according to Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s executive vice president of worldwide operations, many of them Cisco loyalists from when the prime event was still called Networkers. “We’re going to reward that loyalty,” Lloyd said.

That 15,000 number isn’t counting those who tune in online or attend one of the other global events, spanning Mexico, London and Australia. But the one thing almost all of this international audience has in common is that they’re the IT professionals, business bean counters and other ordinary folk who have helped put Cisco in the Fortune 100 year in and year out, and Cisco executives said they were determined to put them squarely in their sights when determining where to take the company.

“We’re realizing we have to bring together all these,” Hattar said, stating that Cisco’s internal teams have become more cross-departmental and collaborative. “It causes some discomfort, but at the end of the day it’s best for our customer.”

Lloyd put it directly: “Cisco is a very focused company right now.”

Michael Morisy is the editorial director for ITKnowledgeExchange. He can be followed on Twitter or you can reach him at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com. Check out our complete Cisco Live! Coverage guide for more breaking news.

That was a very different Cisco: HP still was getting its consolidated enterprise story straight, everybody and their uncle was promising a tablet, and Cisco still was touting a much-beloved little consumer device, the Flip.

The Flip has, of course, been deep sixed since then, with John Chambers publicly apologizing and promising to return Cisco to its decidedly less sexy enterprise roots. Less sexy, that is, unless you care about running a profitable business that helps companies the world over get back to being productive.

But what’s the big news going to be this year? Besides drips and dribbles, Cisco’s been relatively humble lately about the Cius, largely because, to quote Churchill, they have much to be humble about. I’ve seen them in the wild and they’re adequate (actually exactly what I would have imagined a BlackBerry tablet would have been if BlackBerry hadn’t done the PlayBook). But adequate, coupled with IT love, hasn’t been selling phones for a while, and I doubt it will sell pricier tablets except in a few, hopefully profitable niches.

So what is the promised “breaking news” that Cisco has scheduled? I have no idea, but my money would place it in more data center announcements: Beefed-up hardware offerings and a more integrated way to control both physical and virtualized devices in cooperation with the networking teams. John McCool, senior vice president of Data Center, Switching and Services, is scheduled to join Padmasree Warrior, CTO, shortly after the big announcements, so I really expect a whole bunch of new reasons why it’s safe to bet on a Cisco-centric future, along with reassurances that the company’s continuing to embrace standards and interoperability. Maybe the Cius’ real value is for Cisco to demonstrate that the future of business is built around data-heavy video streams, no matter which final product companies end up buying.

Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it, too?

Michael Morisy is the editorial director for ITKnowledgeExchange. He can be followed on Twitter or you can reach him at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com. Check out our complete Cisco Live! Coverage guide for more breaking news.