To be sure, Chambers has delivered his stump speech many times in the past few months. But his ability to speak without notes is a necessary skill.

Chambers suffers from dyslexia -- a reading disorder in which people mix up letters in words. While dyslexic children often are teased mercilessly about their low scores on conventional tests, the condition has nothing to do with intelligence.

Indeed, like many other high-achieving CEOs such as Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic and cellular industry entrepreneur Craig McCaw, Chambers has consistently demonstrated an ability to anticipate his industry's trends.

"I can't explain why, but I just approach problems differently," he told Fortune magazine five years ago. "I picture a chess game on a multiple-layer dimensional cycle and almost play it out in my mind."

It is how Chambers moved Cisco from being a unidimensional maker of routers (the Internet's basic plumbing) to becoming a multi-faceted developer of electronic gear, software and services.

Chambers cannot read sentences, which is why the slides he uses in his presentations include only a couple of words which alert him to the general topic he wants to talk about. "I'm very good at seeing something and memorizing the whole concept," he says.

Chambers was very adept at hiding his dyslexia. It wasn't until the late 1990s -- several years after he had been appointed CEO -- that he came clean. The occasion was a company "take your child to work" day. Before a crowd of hundreds of parents and children, Chambers had called on a young girl to answer a question. But the girl struggled, saying that she had a learning disability.

Chambers came to her rescue by acknowledging -- for the first time in public -- that he, too, had a learning disability.

He still has trouble with written directions and he prefers voice mail to e-mail. Now, through Cisco's products, he is in a position to make his own world and those of other dyslexics somewhat easier.

One reason: Cisco is playing a leading role in creating the video-enabled web.

"Everything and everyone will be connected," he said, adding the web 2.0 (as it's known) will mean profound changes for how we work.

Chambers offered his own schedule as an example. A year ago, he spent two weeks visiting customers and clients on three continents. He slept badly and arrived home exhausted. More recently, he had meetings with a similar number of people on the same continents -- this time using Cisco's videoconferencing gear. Total elapsed time: three hours.

Chambers added the new technologies are helping him speed up many aspects of Cisco's business. The company in March acquired California-based WebEx for $3.2 billion in which the required due diligence by company engineers, lawyers and financial experts required only eight days.

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