Posts in category: business

Research has long shown that using friendly nicknames can be a great way to solidify personal relationships between peers or romantic partners. But what’s the impact of using nicknames in professional environments, in which power disparities are common? Through a series of studies with more than 1,100 U.S.-based adults, research finds that using nicknames in workplace relationships between supervisors and subordinates can sometimes have positive effects — but not always. Specifically, researchers found that when employees can call their supervisors by a nickname, they feel more psychologically safe, more powerful, and more respected by their boss — but when supervisors call their subordinates by a nickname, employee wellbeing suffers. This effect is stronger in organizations with strong hierarchical cultures. This research suggests that managers and senior leaders should allow others to call them by their nicknames, but when it comes to calling a junior employee by a nickname (even a well-intentioned one), managers should exercise caution.

Uncertainty around AI takes different shapes and forms, but we can boil it down to three main categories that every manager should consider: state, effect and response uncertainty. State uncertainty occurs when managers lack sufficient information to predict market trends and changes. Managers experiencing this type of uncertainty face challenges in understanding AI’s current capabilities and potential developments. As AI evolves rapidly, it is difficult to distinguish between what is achievable now and what remains a distant possibility. This uncertainty is even more daunting because AI experts often have wildly different views on critical questions — like whether scaling AI has limits, whether AI confabulations can be fixed, or whether AI can ever truly reason. Effect uncertainty describes the difficulty managers have in predicting AI’s impact on business. Will AI disrupt your industry, or will it be just another tool? This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that current tests focus on narrow benchmarks that lack real-world relevance. As such, even developers do not know how enhancements — like an increased context window in upcoming models—will affect business outcomes or employee dynamics. Response uncertainty is the challenge for managers in determining how to react and the consequences of these actions to the many uncertainties surrounding AI. Should you take the leap as an early adopter, or is it wiser to wait and observe? Should your focus be on automation and cost-cutting, or augmenting human capabilities? This uncertainty extends to choices about models and approaches — whether to develop custom models, fine-tune existing ones, or integrate techniques like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

When the news is stressful and anxiety is high, the best managers adopt a more flexible and thoughtful leadership style. There are a few strategies emotionally fluent leaders can use to help their teams navigate the emotional ups and downs of a distracting news cycle: 1) Avoid anxious fixing; 2) give non-update updates; 3) provide a clear path forward; 4) prepare for your team’s emotions; and 5) plan for a dip in productivity.

When people are glued to the news, it can feel especially challenging to be a manager. This November, the week of the U.S. elections will undoubtedly be one of those challenging periods.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: Welcome to the HBR Video Quick Take. I’m Todd Pruzan, Senior Editor for Research and Special Projects at Harvard Business Review.

We’re here with Apolak Borthakur, Vice President of Duo Engineering at Cisco, for his insights on organizations’ challenges in balancing cybersecurity with user experience and where AI fits into that evolution. Apolak, thanks so much for being with us.

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco: Thank you. Great to be here.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: Apolak, what is your experience at Cisco in developing and implementing cybersecurity strategies and solutions?

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco: I lead the Cisco Duo product line at Cisco. Duo is a leading identity security vendor, and we’re very widely deployed. I believe we have over 30 million licensed users, and we process almost 2 billion authentications every month. And as part of the leadership team within Cisco Security, I do participate in planning and strategy. And then I’m super heavily involved in mergers and acquisitions.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: OK, thank you. I appreciate the context. What are the key emerging trends and technologies that you’re seeing in cybersecurity?

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco: I’ll touch on a couple of them, one being the shift from point products to integrated platform solutions. And this makes it a lot easier for customers because then they don’t have to replicate tasks across the different products. And also, with a platform you’re able to see end-to-end correlations. And that is not something you can get if you have individual point products.

Another trend that we’re seeing is the shift to identity becoming the new perimeter for security. And as workloads move to public clouds and SaaS, a lot of the infrastructure that hackers used to leverage now go below the waterline as far as they’re concerned. So they’re doubling down on getting in via identity breaches. And finally, AI and, in particular, Gen AI, still early, but lots of interesting potential.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: OK. So three pretty strong trends you’re seeing. Apolak, how is Cisco balancing the need for strong security with user experience when you’re designing and implementing a security solution?

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco: Well, being a security product, it’s absolutely fundamental that our own product has to be completely secure for us to continue to win the customer’s trust. And then we also need to make sure that we’re enabling customers to accomplish their security efficacy goals.

But more than ever, we’re hearing from customers the need for a simplified user experience, and we’ve taken it very seriously. So, for example, if you look at Duo, we’ve invested very significantly in design. And design is a fundamental part of our development process now.

Also, Duo has the mission to democratize security, to make it affordable and available even for small and medium businesses. And if you look at our business, we have a significant chunk of it coming from our customers that never, ever have to talk to a Cisco Duo employee. And this is only possible because we’ve been passionate about democratizing security and providing customers with a very simplified experience.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: And I’m sure customers can really feel that difference. How is Cisco managing the ever-evolving landscape of digital threats? What are your expectations of service providers, like Persistent Systems, in managing these threats?

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco: Cisco Security has a number of deep capabilities across multiple areas. But the real value that we’re now bringing is that we’re bringing it all together into a single integrated platform so that we can provide customers end-to-end visibility and correlation that nobody else can provide.

And this is super important because if you take any common breach scenario, for example, a phishing attempt, you need solutions across your email, threat detection, endpoint, network identity. And we have them all, and we’ve brought them all together so that you can really get to the results that you need as a customer.

With regards to Persistent, we use them in all aspects of engineering. And that includes development. That includes quality, as well as project management.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: OK, thanks. Apolak, what do you see for the future of applying AI to cybersecurity?

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco: There is a lot of potential in, well, first of all, taking the existing machine learning and analytics that we already use for things like detecting suspicious and abnormal behavior, as well as potential root causes. But, in particular, Gen AI.

Generative AI– that’s an interesting new field. And, as you know, we’ve released Assistants and CoPilots, but we’re just starting to scratch the surface. There is so much more that we could potentially do.

At the very high level, Generative AI allows customers to specify their queries in natural language. And behind the scenes, it can go and collect data from multiple sources, analyze it, and generate a response that makes it easier for the customer to do their job. So lots of interesting potential there.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: That sounds like a lot of potential. Apolak, thank you so much for sharing all of your insights today about the current and the future state of cybersecurity and its ongoing evolution.

Apolak Borthakur, Cisco:Thank you so much for having me.

Todd Pruzan, HBR: We’ve been speaking with Apolak Borthakur, Vice President of Duo Engineering at Cisco about cybersecurity. To learn more, click the link below.

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