Unlocking AI Success: Skills and Innovation driving the future

When organizations lack urgency around AI adoption, what are they lacking urgency about? Is it about technology or is it about getting their people ready? It's about both. So, first and foremost, it's about technology. They have to be able to deploy technology that's going to be meaningful for their environment. And Pacesetters, which are the ones that are really setting the standard for innovation and for utilization of AI. They know what technology they need. That's really going to be impacting their business. But just as important, they also have an urgency around that deployment. They know that this is a race and it's not a marathon. It's much more of a sprint. They also realize Pacesetters that it's around talent, and they have to be able to not just attract great talent, but to train up the right talent. And so, they deploy training that, when and where you need it. That's relevant. That is constantly churning and updating is technology. So essentially they're scaling at the speed of innovation. The best of the best are doing those things. And then many companies see their ability to deploy AI is directly related with their lack of talent availability. So, what causes a disconnect between that realization that they have challenges when it comes to talent availability, but and actually doing something about that? Well, that's a real key. The first thing that you have to do is to recognize, that you have a lack of talent, that you do not have the talent inside your organization to be able to respond. And Pacesetters know that they're constantly reviewing the talent in their organizations and making sure that they have the talent to deploy, into areas that are needed the most. And the other thing that they do that's very good is, they look at the talent that they have and where they don't have the skills. They bring the skills in and make sure that talent is ready for all of the different evolutions that are going on within our industry. The other thing that they do, and they do it very well, is they act quickly so they don't go off and consider too many different options. They know Pacesetters know what they need in their organizations regarding skilling, and they're prepared to deploy very quickly. Awesome, and you mentioned skills. You're talking about skills a bit earlier. Pacesetters, AI leaders they're not just hiring data specialist. They're not just hiring. AI specialists. They’re are actually hiring specialists across different functions. So, AI skills across finance, across operation, supply chain. They are also creating new career pathways. They're creating new roles. What would you say is the risk when organizations treat AI as a niche skill versus a cross-functional skill? No, it's a great question because, companies that don't skill cross-functionally, risk being obsolete and the skills of their people being obsolete very quickly. So, Cisco together with several partners, some of the largest companies in ICT, Microsoft, SAP, Accenture and others came together and did a study where we looked at the 50 most in-demand jobs in our industry, and we put down all of the skills necessary to fulfill those job requirements. And then we injected AI into those job requirements and rewrote the skills required to fulfill those jobs. And what we found was just, passing 92% of all jobs in our industry are going to be impacted by AI, either somewhat or significantly. Now, I personally believe that other 8% is also going to be impacted, but for now, it's 92%. And what that tells us is that, moving forward, we're going to have to embed AI in every job. And the very best companies understand the Pacesetters. Understand that cross-functional skilling is the way to unlock the value of AI within organizations. I'll give you an example. If you are a company that is setting the standard in AI, you're literally creating new job roles on the fly as they emerge because they're emerging in real time. One of the things that we notice at Cisco is that the pace of churn for innovation has never moved faster. It's basically Moore's Law applied to our entire industry, Moore's law being the churning of processor speed

every 18 to 24 months, with a having of the cost. That was true during the late 70s, through the 80s. You can apply Moore's Law to our entire industry now everything is churning every 18 to 24 months. And if you're not scaling it, the speed of innovation, if you're not cross-training, if you're not preparing your people for it, then their skills become obsolete very quickly. And that can really harm a company's opportunities and growth moving forward. Absolutely. And if we were to talk about results, in general. So, the most AI ready companies again, these Pacesetters, they measure the impact their AI deployments have in their organizations. For organizations that want to reach that level, where can they start in terms of measuring their success? The pacesetters always start by evaluating continuous improvement. So there is no standard by which they say, okay, we're good. We're done. Right. I mentioned how there's a constant churning of technology now. There was a very recent, award of the Nobel Prize for the economic sciences, and it was awarded most recently to three scientists that introduced the notion 20 plus years ago of creative destruction. is what economies do that are prepared to innovate. They have to get rid of old, outdated technologies, old, outdated approaches to make room for new innovations. If they don't do that, they'll never be able to make room for those innovations. So, they have to creatively destruct part of their economies. I would suggest companies need to do the exact same thing. You have got to take some of the old and churn it out to make room for the new. And that's where training is so important, and where the Pacesetters really set the standard is that they don't just say, okay, we're going to churn people out. They say we're going to reskill and upskill people so that those people that we have that are so valuable are now retrained for another two, three, four or five years of value in our company. They know that the best thing they can do, is to skill and upskill the very good people they already have. Yeah. That's fascinating.