Magnet, Not a Mandate: How Cisco's Bob Cicero Is Redesigning the Office for the AI Era

I fundamentally believe when you think about the impact of AI, we think that AI is going to take 8 billion people on this planet and make it seem like 80 billion people. But some of the tasks that we do every single day from the 8 billion people, it's going to be driven by AI. It's going to be this confluence of people that are going to come together more because that's really what's going to happen when the standpoint of some of the rogue tasks and all those other pieces that you think about on a daily basis go away. It's going to be done by the digital worker. And how do you really think about that from the standpoint of bringing humans together more is what's actually going to happen over time.

you don't win by following the playbook you win by rewriting it 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real no theory no fluff no shortcuts this is right about now with ryan alford Companies are still trying to figure out what to do with the office, bring people back, stay remote or something in between. But most of the conversation is missing the point. Bob Cicero is America's future-proofed workplace director at Cisco and is working on what the next version of the workplace actually looks like. Combining AI, data and physical space. Bob, welcome. Right about now. Ryan, thank you. It's great to be here today. Thanks. I'm excited to talk about this because it's been on my mind. I have condensed my team and South Carolina has been a different place in many regards than the rest of the world.

And how do you solve that problem? And people really wanting to be in a space and not being forced to be in a space because we've seen this shift. in the past four years of mandates and from a return to office standpoint, RTO standpoint, mandates haven't worked. And so what we've seen is, is that people want to go to places that are inviting, that have all the technology components they need to operate. And really, that's really where that genie is out of the bottle. But we need to work with the genie when it's out of the bottle. As an entrepreneur who's very innovative and thought that I'd be like, it didn't matter where we worked, my team and everything, I've done a complete 180. It actually matters a lot.

The value becomes is that, is it forced to come together or do people want to come together and truly earning the commute, if you would, around the space that they occupy. But people are coming together, whether it's to solve problems, to brainstorm, to socialize. At the end of the day, it's human interaction is important for people to also feel fulfilled about the work that they do, be part of something bigger than themselves. That doesn't happen through a screen. That happens when you're physically together. It's that balance though. Is it five days a week? It depends on the organization, but there is a balance from a hybrid perspective in terms of people coming together. But when they come together, it has to be valuable. They have to have the tools there that they need to be productive, just not for themselves there, but also for any remote participants.

It totally depends on the industry. And you talked about the generational gap. Older leaders feel more comfortable because they've been doing it that way forever in terms of folks being in C. But it's also industry dependent. There are some industries that I call the apprentice based model of work. Someone doesn't become a great lawyer by sitting behind a screen. It's an apprentice model. An associate works with a partner, learns that trade. Same thing in finance. So it really depends on the type of work that you're doing and the way that you learn. And a lot of times it is that apprentice model, which drives an in-person culture. What's interesting is that leaders that are uncomfortable with the fact that folks might not be together are really achieving the goals that we have as an organization.

And then how do you put a model together that you can achieve the goals of the organization, but also cater to what people want? You talked about that genie coming out of the bottle. The genie's out. You got to cater to what people want. But at the same time is we need to prepare for the future. I fundamentally believe when you think about the impact of AI, we think that AI is going to take 8 billion people on this planet and make it seem like 80 billion people. But some of the tasks that we do every single day from the 8 billion people, it's going to be driven by AI. It's going to be this confluence of people that are going to come together more because that's really what's going to happen when the standpoint of some of the rope tasks and all those other pieces that you think about on a daily basis go away.

But to your point of tasks that you did were done at home, is the digital worker going to do that for you? Maybe, probably. When we first started this, we were thinking about how do we amplify humans with the intersection of problems? People, space, and technology. Now we have this added component on it that's clearly coming at us from a technology perspective when we think about that. It's still that, but some of the tasks are going to be taken away and it's really going to be this further amplification, I believe, of the value of space and what is actually happening there with the humans that are occupying it. Interesting. Bob, talk to me about like your daily role. What does Bob Cicero do every day?

What problems is Bob solving? and what you actually need to put into that space for humans to do their best work. We started that effort in 2019. Pandemic hit in March of 2020. Gave us a lot of time to think. As we were sort of stalled in terms of what the world was going to be, we reimagined our workspaces and workplaces and really wanted to bring to the market something unique and different in terms. of the space that we all occupy, there's a lot of operational burden and costs that goes along with it. You think about real estate inside of most organizations, it's not trivial from a dollars and cents perspective. A lot of times it's number two costs. Then can we take sort of an IT view and bring that to the built environment in terms of thinking about notion of platform across all of this to amplify that intersection of what I talked about before, people's

space and technology. Dream redraft the market, our space. And then now from a customer standpoint, customers, it's really interesting to see. You think about real estate in general, it's long tail. It's a long time to make decisions. And you think about most corporate leases, 10, 15, 20 years, options, et cetera. The industry doesn't move fast, but it's being forced to move fast in terms of what's actually changing. Also work with customers. My team worked with customers every single day to really start re-imagining space, but thinking about technology enabling the experiences where before it was really about the architectural elements, which are still obviously important, but it's a tech piece that was forgotten. We have to bring that forward with that data mindset we talked about a little bit for us to get prepared for the future.

space types and space mix. As an organization, traditionally, it's folks have a lot of focus workspace where it's a desk because you're gonna come in and you're gonna sit at your desk and that desk is assigned to you. Yes, sure, you might've done hot desking or telling, but then you had a group of their spaces that were really for collaborative moments for the we side of the world. You think about the me is focus, we is the collaborative space. We took that approach and we flipped it. We used to do 30% of we and 70% me. We flipped it on its head. 70% we, 30% me. And at the time people were like, why in the world do you need all this collaborative space? And we felt like it was that fundamental moment that it was going to be about groups of people getting together, not about sitting at your desk.

And as we fast forward here over the past four years since we've opened, we've got 14 of these sites around the globe. And it's interesting, there was just a large architectural firm that released a report today that talked about storytelling Space type, space mix, collaborative space, that's the future of it. We see that and we saw it early on. But I think what the uniqueness was is our ability to have data about the space and really thinking about how do you count people inside of a room, as an example. With the technology that happens to be powered by NVIDIA and our technology, we're able to count people. We know what's happening and we can cater to that and really bring that forward from the standpoint of employees to be able to enjoy the space.

But it was that fundamental shift on just not space type, but we really wanted to think through what else was important to the organization. How do we think about energy from the standpoint of electrification and changing the way we electrify? We're thinking about the network. If you think about Cisco from a core technology standpoint, we're known for the network element. Well, network is just not about data. It's also about power. We're re-electrifying everything in the built environment, light, shades, mechanicals, etc. Thinking about health and wellness, health and wellness matters. The amount of natural daylight that we get every single day, the air quality that we breathe, it matters every single day. The noise levels inside the environment, because all of us are unique and different.

You think about neurodiversity, 20% of the world is neurodiverse. How do we bring all of that to space? And then ultimately, all of this for us is really underpinned by data. When you think about space and place, that industry never thought about data. They thought about badge swipes, swipes of someone walking into a building. I swipe in. That's great. Someone's there. Fantastic. What are they doing inside? We really wanted to bring that forward in terms of this notion of having all this digital footprint, if you would, of the intersection of people, space and tech and the tech providing that. But we also knew that the world was developing AI. And so when you think about AI, AI is three pieces. It's data, it's a model, and there's the compute to make all that stuff happen.

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Could be WebEx, could be Zoom, could be Teams, etc. They're sitting at their desk on meetings with people that are on the same floor. Why are we doing that? You point it to their meeting space. One is they don't have enough Wii space. You go into their Wii space, it doesn't have the right technology for them to be efficient. Thinking about space layout and how do I get to those spaces? Are they on the other side of the floor? At the end of the day, people are humans-like patterns in terms of how we work. And every single day, you're programmed to wake up and you might get a cup of coffee and have some eggs or whatever your morning routine is, workout, et cetera. But we didn't provide that for employees.

And we were wondering, everyone's shocked around, well, why are people sitting at their desk? Well, you go into the rooms, they don't have the capabilities they need. Now, even so today, people are like, oh, great. We got together. We're in the room. But everyone brought their laptop as they're in the same meeting. And everyone has speakers muted. And maybe one person has speakers on. But it's like we don't have the right makeup of just not the space, but all the components that go inside. The way that space is envisioned and designed and built. Unfortunately, technology was last in the process. Technology was never first. We're not saying it needs to be first. We're saying make it your second choice. And then the tables and shapes and all these pieces should follow.

You build it. All these pieces need to work in. It's like an orchestra. They need to come together for it to just be amazing when you're done the effort. We're talking about the space, Bob. It's also about the communication. You've got a little bit of this disconnect. Let's just call the spade a spade. You got leadership that feels a certain way. You've got middle management for certain way. You got daily employees that feel a certain way. There's some amount of disconnect going on because a lot of people don't have Bob Cicero's directing the show. Where does the space and the messaging align as far as internally with connecting all of these dots? We're very fortunate at Cisco.

But it's continuous. It's not a one. It's not a point in time. I do a big change management effort and I walk away and everyone just gets it. It's this constant evolution and change that needs to occur that these engaged leaders really need to drive from an organizational standpoint. We've had a lot of success inside of the company because we've had those engaged leaders, those engaged leaders to really drive that change as an organization. I picked this term up, earn the commute. What does that mean in practice? Earn the commute. It's real. We think that you're competing with the home. For you to compete with the home, people have their own home set up that's to their tastes and likes. But also, they have a commute that's standing in front of them to get into the office.

And we think every given day, people are going to wake up and be like, okay, they're going to run a little equation in their head that says, what's the return on commute? What's my return on commute value if I go into the space? This earning the commute notion, it's really about having space be differentiated. It's not about the same color walls and how do I build it for the cheapest price that I can, which oftentimes you think about in times of speed. It is a huge cost, but how do you invest in the right components to be able to make it inviting? But then more importantly is that what we think is the differentiating factor is thinking about this technology-infused space where people just come in and it just works.

And it's everywhere. It permeates the entire space. People can roam about. It's that when they come in, it's a delightful experience. It's not about a barista. It's not about free lunch. It's not about people have amenitized their spaces. When you think about landlords amenitized their spaces, people are like, I'm going to bring free lunch in. That's great. But the reality is, is that it's really about how do you take friction out of the workday for when people come inside of the space? That's what we fundamentally believe. Think about when we say earn the commute. We want to earn the commute when people wake up in the morning, do that equation in their head. And they're saying, I'm making that commitment because there is value. But when I go in to be with my colleagues and others inside the organization, it is just a delightful experience when you come in.

But then I'll say the other day, hey, you got to roll up your sleeves and work, baby. That's just me being direct, Bob. work always fun? No. But at the end of the day, it's for us to get together and drive this notion of this great work experience. Part of it was, is that not just re-imagining the workspace, but it's within an industry that moves slow. It was a really small step changes. And over time, we're like, yeah, maybe it's a big change, like in two decades. But at some point, you had to draw a line in the sand. And it's like, OK, yes, we're coming in to get a job done, depending on what your line of work is. Hopefully, you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself.

But we had to change an industry that moves very slow. And this radical transformation that we did as an organization was people looked at us and said, I can't believe you all did this. Now, here we are four years later. The industry is agreeing with it. We're 14 sites in as an organization, and we're taking this show on the road from the point of view of for us as an organization globally. We've got space in Milan. We've got space in London. We've got space in Paris around the globe for us to execute as an organization. But I think there is something fundamental to is that you can make the work more enjoyable for individuals depending on the space that they're in. It's why they like the home.

They certainly did. I don't know about today, but what we've seen is, is that when you think about this fundamentally their own space anymore. I don't have an office with my name on it. But it's the different types of spaces. And what we see is that people will migrate throughout the day to different space types. And we typically see them touching five to six different space types throughout the day. And you think about that. And I think about the history of the past six years that we've been through. Is that when COVID hit, personally, I didn't sit in one space the entire day. I roamed around the house and I went in the kitchen, went into the living room, went in the back deck. We're seeing that.

I mentioned 70-30 split. How should you program space? for organizations. If you have this data, how do you program the space? How do you look at things visually? We're producing tools as an organization. You can design. One of the biggest aha moments was when you're thinking about mixed prep, and virtual coming together. An architect is trained for physical. It's what they went to school for because this notion of mixed presence was never talked about. But in order for you to absolutely have a phenomenal mixed presence experience, you think about technology forward, as I mentioned before, table selection, angles of table, all these other components became super critical to have a great experience. Way to turn it into a tool. And so this journey of AI, when we think about AI, where it is today, data is informing language models or tools that are coming on the marketplace for space planning, et cetera.

How do you program the space? But ultimately, when we think about this world of agentic, the industry talks about this agentic AI. Who knows? We might have 10 digital workers. We might have 100 digital workers, each of us. But then we think about a space, a four-walled space. that's going to have an agent. You think about a place, that's going to have an agent. And then agents are going to operate on all sides of the house of IT, the real estate side. All these agents are going to be consistently communicating together. That's where the industry is heading. But when we think about where it is right now, people have to get the data right. You have to have the data to inform. And now we're seeing all these models come out with space design, et cetera.

And like, so you see like Nano Banana and all those other... models that are out there from like a Gemini perspective, and you can add texture and type, we'll type all these other components. That's just going to accelerate. You think about the changes that's occurred since the first time you logged in to maybe chat GPT and used it. You're like, wow, this is amazing. And now you see where it's going is we're creating images that way. We're animating space. We're working on a project right now. As an organization where we created the vision, if you would, with AI, and then we animated it to put humans in it with AI, all in 24 hours. What's happening is, is that when you look at yes data to models, but it's this rapid pace of change and people are going to expect you to build faster and drive this change faster with the AI tools that are available.

I love that. I'm going to use that moving forward. We really appreciate Bob. We appreciate Cisco. We bring out a lot of their leadership, an amazing company, doing amazing things to push us past what we used to do into the future. We'll see you next time on Right About Now. Here's the truth. Information doesn't change your life. Execution does. So don't just listen to this episode and move on. Take the idea. Make the call. Launch the thing. Fix the problem. Build what you keep talking about building. For more, follow Ryan Alford on Instagram, at Ryan Alford. And watch or listen to every episode at ryanisright.com. This is Right About Now. Now quit waiting. Go win.