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Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Building An ‘AI-First' Culture: What Does That Even Mean?
AI-first means people-first Lately, there's been no shortage of talk of managing organizations around 'AI-first' approaches, meaning managers would consider whether AI could do a job, or set of tasks, before humans are brought in. But AI-first goes deeper than that, suggesting an organization's entire culture can be redesigned to incorporate the broad intelligence solutions that AI platforms and tools can offer. How would such an organization look, and is this something a decades-old company could pull off? Cisco Systems, which was founded more than 40 years ago, has been undertaking such a transformation over the past three years across all aspects of its business. This includes transforming 'the way that we build product, the way that our products get used by customers, the way that we actually get jobs done within the company,' said Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer for Cisco. Even in what is one of the most technology-savvy companies in the world, such an effort will meet resistance, Patel recently explained on a recent episode of Michael Krigsman's CXOTalk. 'It's a cultural shift. It's actually fraught with a level of skepticism." Still, 'If you looked at us a year and a half, two years ago, no one would have really said that Cisco is AI first,' he said. An issue being encountered is 'people have actually been afraid of AI, saying, 'Hey, AI's going to take my job, so I'm not going to go out and use it,' Patel added. 'I actually find that it's less about AI taking your job, it's more about someone that uses AI better than you in their jobs is probably the one who's going to take your job.' Ultimately, 'the dexterity that you need to show in the way in which you do everything with AI is going to be pretty important,' he said. 'We've always felt like there's only going to be two kinds of companies in the world. Ones that are dexterous with the use of AI, and others who really struggle for relevance.' There are three key considerations in building an AI-first culture, Patel explained: Customers are also part of the transformation to an AI-first culture. 'One area that we struggle with is that the pace and rate of change is so fast that communicating that to our customers and having them digest that change is a challenge,' said Patel. 'I don't think we've cracked the code on that.' Customers have a view of Cisco from more than three years back, 'and frankly, it's an entirely different company than what it used to be three years ago,' he added. 'I feel like there's so much coming at people all the time that you have to make sure that you distill it down to a few things that make sense.' For example, AI is accelerating the company's responses to support tickets. It also is helping to reduce overhead costs. On the sales side, AI will help accelerate sales meetings, as well as legal and accounting processes involved with the sale. 'All of those things will have AI as a pretty critical component of it, and I do feel like the sales process is going to change quite materially over the course of the next few years. And you will never be in this position where you go completely blind and unprepared into a conversation because AI can get you prepared within a very, very compressed amount of time on what needs to happen.' What's important now for the new generation that's entering the workforce – as well as existing workers – is not to operate out of fear of AI, Patel advised. 'You have to operate from a place of looking at the possibilities and looking at the opportunities that actually can be unlocked. I would urge people to just have a very different kind of mental model, which is, there's nothing that should stop us from actually being curious about how we might be able to use AI, and this technology is going to get easier and easier and easier, where no longer is technical dexterity going to be an impediment.'
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Could AI Rescue Companies In An Economic Downturn? Think Twice
AI economics: threat or opportunity? getty Could ongoing economic turbulence – or a recession – result in even more widespread adoption of AI and AI agents as a cost-saving move? There's a risk to business leaders thinking in the event of sour times they could simply lay off workers and swap in AI systems to replace them – such a choice could be extremely counter-productive. Cruelty of layoffs aside, the vast majority of businesses simply aren't ready to simply adopt AI on a wholesale basis, said Phil Fersht, CEO of HFS Research, in a recent interview on Michael Krigman's CXO Talk. The problem is, Fersht related, is most companies still don't have the experience, skills, and knowledge to implement AI in a smart and scalable way. Many companies are now 'very aware of what they can do, but they're still yet to have that burning-platform trigger to go do it,' he continued. "My concern is if we plunge into a deep recession, you're gonna see some organizations literally come out and say, 'We're just gonna start relying a lot more on AI, and we're gonna let people go.'" The risk with such a 'weaponized AI,' Fersht explained, is 'how advanced they are with embracing this. Are they prepared to do anything?' In working with many enterprises, Fersht found 'they're not doing a lot.' Only about 15% of executives feel they are truly ready to adopt AI in a positive and intelligent way, his firm has found through surveys. They have 'fairly integrated views of where they're going; they have a strong culture of support, and they're embracing this.' The majority of companies, he related, 'are either still figuring it out or they're not on the path. And this is just going to become more pronounced as we go through the next few months of macroeconomic turbulence.' Fersht emphasized that executives aren't consciously thinking about getting rid of people. 'They're actually thinking about, 'How do we break from the past?' Companies have much data, they don't know what to do with it. They can't join it up. They can't make decisions on it.' Rather, the thinking is breaking away from legacy systems, to start to really build out the new with agentic systems. There is an 'AI-first mindset' that is shaping future hiring and skill-acquisition plans. Companies 'are now insisting before you hire any new staff, you need to show that this work can't be done by AI. We've reached that point quite quickly." The impact on offshoring – previously seen as a way to avoid new hiring – is already tangible, he continued. 'Now, C-suite directives are, 'can we not do this with AI?' The whole point of agents is really this ability for companies to grow and scale in a way that you don't need to keep adding more and more people. You do a lot more with the people you have, and I think that's the positive way to think about this.' For people in business, there's both threat and opportunity. 'If you're in a job where you can be effectively replicated and replaced, you kind of know that, and you need to figure out, 'how do I continue to add value in an enterprise?'' The value for humans comes from collaboration, people skills, and empathy. 'If you can become a great person everybody likes to work with, and you become very thoughtful about what you do, and you start to collaborate beyond your existing area, you become very valuable to your company.'
