Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
Earning the Commute: What It Takes to Make the Office Worth It Again | Bob Cicero
31 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How is AI expected to enhance human work in 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 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.
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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 work 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 to 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, but there's certainly corporations here that have had the same challenges and issues of making the workspace somewhere where people want to be. I always said, this is going to be a hard genie to put back in the bottle.
Philosophically, what are your thoughts on all this?
It is a hard genie to put back in the bottle. You think about COVID, March of 2020, just passed, I can't believe six years ago. You think about it. Everyone went home for two years and habits formed and lifestyles were formed and How do you put that genie back in the bottle to effectively get people back to the office? And it really depends on your view in terms of where work truly happens.
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Chapter 2: What challenges do companies face in transitioning to hybrid work models?
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. But it is finding that balance for the organization, for yourself.
You said a small business, it makes sense for you all to be together at times. But there's times you do remote work. Cisco is the same way. It's the same in terms of balance. from the standpoint of what actually makes us most productive.
What have you seen from senior leaders as far as the general consensus around these things? It's easy maybe to go, well, the older guys just want us here in person for no reason. I don't know if that's necessarily the case, but I have to think there's a bit of that on some level. But I'm just curious, you're at a large corporation, probably seen others, talked to others in your field.
What is the general climate with leadership in this area?
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 it 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 and 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.
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Chapter 3: Why are traditional return-to-office policies failing?
The humans are needed to sort of get in the room and have some ingenuity and some creativity together.
For sure. And you think about, sure, AI and the thinking models that are out there and models are going to get better over time. But it's really the value of humans getting together and really thinking through an issue that the machine might not be able to do or provide some creative thought to come together.
But to your point of tasks that you did or 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 people-centeredness? 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?
We started this journey before the pandemic, quite honestly, as a company. If you look at Cisco and our heritage here and our history is dot-com boom, and we were wiring the world for the internet. And then we were catering to employees that wanted to work remote many, many years ago, and then the pandemic hit.
In 2019, we actually came together as a group and as part of that group inside the organization to really rethink the value of space and what you actually need to put into that space for humans to do their best work. 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 cost.
And 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 this to amplify that intersection of what I talked about before, people-centered? space and technology. Dream redraft the market, our space.
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Chapter 4: What is the 'me vs we' workplace model and its significance?
If you look at space types and space mix, as an organization, traditionally, folks have a lot of focus workspace where it's a desk. Because you're going to come in, you're going to sit at your desk, and that desk is assigned to you.
Yes, sure, you might have done hot desking or hoteling, but then you had a group of their spaces that were really for collaborative moments or 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... Space type, space mix, collaborative space, that's the future of it. We see that. 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, et cetera.
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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Chapter 5: How does human connection impact workplace satisfaction?
It's a lot of me. But open floor plans and thinking through, okay, it's going to be a lot more important that we're collaborating, that we're meeting, we're doing these things. using the technology and the grid.
It is a simple concept. We and me. That old adage of there's no I in team. It's the we space because that's where we're going to get people together to accomplish the goals of any organization.
And that's going to make people want to come back to work because they're not going to want to come back to work to go sit in their cubicle to do what they could do at home.
And if we're going to have AI doing a lot of that work, then we need to have people together collaborating on the things that push the company forward, the human aspect that drives what we do, the ingenuity, whatever it is for your industry. That's super key to get people who want to come back.
Absolutely. One of the biggest things you heard after the pandemic when people were going back is, why am I going back and sitting at a desk on a pick your platform of choice on the meeting side? Could be WebEx, could be Zoom, it could be Teams, et cetera. They're sitting at their desks, 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 desks? 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. So you have a great experience for the we. Because that's the reality of the world. It is about we.
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Chapter 6: In what ways is AI transforming productivity in the workplace?
It's also about the communication. You've got a little bit of this disconnect. Let's just call the spade a spade. You've got leadership that feels a certain way. You've got middle management that feels a certain way. You've 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, our CEO, fundamental difference shift on the viewpoint of that. But when we think about the ability to people to get together and how do you actually have that change happen, it's change management at the end of the day. When you think about change management, what does that mean? I need engaged leaders. None of this works unless you have engaged leadership.
Engaged leadership is just not from the top. It's engaged leadership from the bottom up as well. Everyone that's in a leadership role, it's just not about leading people and leading the purpose and all the other elements. It's about leading the ability for people to get together and the value of the space that comes together.
What happens is that manifests itself and sort of gets this word of change management around it, but it's continuous. It's not a one, it's not a point in time. You 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.
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Chapter 7: What design elements make offices more appealing to employees?
That's just me being direct, Bob. It's
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 in two decades. But at some point, you had to draw a line in the sand.
And it's like, okay, 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 do they like the home? It's because they're comfortable there. It's them. It's a piece of them in terms of what they like. If we think through that, it's yes, at some point it's you're direct. Get back to work. Sure.
But also when you get there, you got to feel good about it. Not just the work that you're doing, but also the space that you're occupying.
Just no nap pods, Bob. No nap pods. We have no nap pods. That's where it cuts off for me. I'm like, come on. You know, you take a break. Take a break. We got a basketball goal in the back, Bob. We got Xbox, but no naps. No nap. Take a rest. Siesta. You know, five minute mind ease. I just can't handle the nap pods.
I don't know if those still exist at Google or not, but supposedly they did at one time.
They certainly did. I don't know about today, but what we've seen is that when you think about this fundamental change in space, For us as an organization, no one has 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.
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Chapter 8: What does 'earning the commute' mean for modern workers?
Who knows? We might have 10 digital workers. We might have 100 digital workers, each of us. But then we think about space. 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 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 typeable type, all these other components, that's just going to accelerate. And if 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 coming to market.
It's really mind blowing how many data points I'm thinking doing the math, like what you're talking about, how many data points there are. Bob, where could everybody keep up with you, what you guys are doing at Cisco? Give me some links, some social, anything like that.
On LinkedIn, most active for that. As a company, right, Cisco. Follow us on all the major social media elements is where you can find us in terms of what we're up to because we're not stopping. We're actually accelerating, which is the exciting part.
Hey, guys, look, it's not about whether people should go back to work or not. It's about being a magnet. Bob used his CEO's words best. That really stuck with me. You got to be a magnet, not a mandate. I love that. I'm going to use that moving forward. We really appreciate Bob. We appreciate Cisco.
We bring on a lot of their leadership, an amazing company doing amazing things to push us past what we used to do in to the future. We'll see you next time on Right About Now.
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