Unlike past tech waves where security was a trade-off against speed, with AI it's the foundation of adoption. If users don't trust an AI system to be safe and secure, they won't use it, rendering it unproductive by default. Therefore, trust enables productivity.
To create an integrated product suite, Cisco dismantled divisional silos and restructured into a platform-based organization. An org chart directly dictates product architecture, so leaders must design their organization to produce the desired integrated outcome, not just individual products.
Experience can bring baggage and premature dismissal of ideas. Cisco's CPO advocates for mixing experienced 'pattern recognizers' with inexperienced team members who approach technologies like AI with unconstrained, companion-like thinking, unlocking novel use cases.
Strong AI products require a tight feedback loop where the product and model are deeply integrated. Thin wrappers around third-party models create weak, short-lived features that will be subsumed by the platform. A durable AI business treats the model *as* the product itself.
Employees progress through three stages of AI adoption: 1) Fearing AI will take their job, 2) Fearing a person using AI will take their job, and 3) Realizing they cannot perform their job without AI. Leaders must actively guide their organization to this third level of indispensability.
Beyond cultural fit, the key to Cisco's successful Splunk acquisition was pre-existing trust between leaders who had worked together before. This allowed them to bypass the typical trust-building phase, accelerating integration and alignment on a common mission from day one.