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There is an intrinsic link between the digitisation process, our daily lives and our jobs. How would you explain this mechanism?

I think the mind-set is changing. Technology enables me to work out of the office. The office is just a tool, for when I need to have physical meetings. We can work from anywhere with any device of any kind and I can choose what best works for me. The challenge for people now is that they work too much and they don’t know how to disconnect.

We talk a lot about the work-life balance but this also means that if I want to be successful, I will need some personal time. The problem today is that it’s so easy to keep in touch that a worker wouldn’t know how to disconnect.

You speak of the digital revolution. Where do you foresee this technology going?

Difficult, if not impossible to foresee. When I look at my smart phone, it’s crazy to believe that it did not exist a couple of years ago. No one would have imagined what would happen today with the smart phone. I look back and say ‘what did we do in 2006,’ and 2006 is not that far behind us. So how can we imagine what we can achieve in 2025?

You speak a lot about how this digitisation process can help our work-life balance. But how can one enjoy his personal time if the person is constantly connected?

It’s a way of looking at the capabilities and modifying your behaviour. For example, while having dinner at home, we leave our phones in a separate room so that we are completely disconnected. Sometimes, we even get some board games out to connect with each other.

A simple phone can disconnect you from contact with your own family. For instance when I’m speaking with my kids and I have the phone in my hand, they know that I’m not really attentive to what they are saying.

There was an article on the New York Times which analysed, very clearly, that if you have a phone in your hand while talking to someone, you are not interested in engaging in serious conversation, or at least, it means that you don’t intend to take long. When I want to speak to someone about something serious, I always ask them to put their phone away. Because although you might not answer, you will still look at the notification popping up on the screen.

It’s amazing the level of priority. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me that if the phone rings while we’re having lunch, we don’t answer it. Back then, a phone hanging on the wall was the technology at the time, but it still could cause distraction. The argument here is, why is the person who wants to reach you on the phone more important than the person sitting next to you on the table? It’s all about behaviour and cultural balance.

Does this level of connectivity make us more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and hacking?

Yes. Security must be a part of our DNA. Everything we do or develop at Cisco is designed at its core with security in mind. Within Cisco, security starts with education. Our employees realise that they are carrying a device in their hand that is as powerful as the mainframe that existed 20 years ago and they have to be responsible, not as IT people, but as normal people who need to be aware of cyber security issues and use their corporate connected devices in a responsible way and with a security aware mindset. When I receive an email from someone I don’t know, I have to be careful not to open the attachment. At Cisco, we test our employees by sending out fake viruses and malware just to check if they are vigilant enough. So if they open it up, a sign saying ‘you lost’ will pop up on the screen.

And I guess there’s still a long way when it comes to training.

A long way to go, yes. Technology itself can help you stay safe. Hacking is a very wide-spread and serious issue. The hacking business market costs $500 billion. When you compare with the drug busi-