Cisco’s people chief: ‘We can’t transform our workforce without fundamentally rethinking how we lead’

Detailed summary

Cisco's focus on its people has helped earn it the No. 2 spot on the 2026 Fortune World’s Best Workplaces™ list.

Cisco is preparing its 85,000 employees to learn new skills, experiment with AI, and rethink how they work.

That takes more than teaching people how to use the technology. It takes time to learn, freedom to experiment, and leaders who are willing to change alongside them.

Cisco has invested in AI tools, role-specific training, coaching, mentoring, and new career development opportunities.

That focus on its people has helped earn it the No. 2 spot on the 2026 Fortune World’s Best Workplaces™ list.

Cisco is also seeing record business performance. It closed its 2026 fiscal year with record revenue and a record quarter, including record revenue per employee.

“Our focus is building learning agility: the ability to learn, unlearn, experiment, and apply new capabilities as work evolves,” says Francine Katsoudas, Cisco’s executive vice president and chief people, policy & purpose officer. “We want our people to be able to influence what changes, rather than simply react to it.”

Katsoudas says human judgment is one of the most important capabilities employees will need, “and the critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity that make it possible.”

“As AI takes on more work, we need people to challenge assumptions and make thoughtful decisions,” she says.

Research from the AI Workforce Consortium found growing demand for human capabilities, including ethical reasoning and systems thinking, in cybersecurity-related jobs.

Opening of the article, excerpted from Fortune. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.