‘Strategy without execution is hallucination’: Cisco’s Aruna Ravichandran on AI and work

Aruna Ravichandran leads marketing for Webex at Cisco with a 99% remote team, less than 1% attrition and what she calls “maniacal execution.”

We caught up with her at the recent Webex One convention in San Diego to learn about her philosophy on thriving in the AI era and how she sees the future of work, marketing and tech evolving.

How has AI fundamentally changed how your team works?

I think about AI in three layers. Layer one: people who feel AI will take their job. Layer two: people who worry someone better at AI will take their job. Layer three: people embracing AI to change how they operate. I’m in layer three, and 95% of my team is too.

Here’s an example: For our keynote [at Webex One], I didn’t like the design of the animation. This was Sunday [two days before the presentation]. Traditionally, that animation would take several days. My creative director and I found an image on Shutterstock, and he used AI to create the simulation in about 10 minutes. What you saw in the presentation was created in minutes instead of hours.

What’s the line between AI augmentation and human creativity?

The human brain can never be replaced by AI, but you’ve got to put it in the prompt. With AI, it’s input to output — garbage in, garbage out. Take your intelligence and put it in the prompt. It doesn’t matter if you’re a developer, a marketer or a strategist — how you craft the prompt matters. AI saves you hours, so spend time refining your prompts. You’ll save tremendous time while getting output with velocity you could never achieve before.

Your team is 99% remote with less than 1% attrition. How did you achieve that?

This team was born during the pandemic. We came together with the mentality that we’re not challengers, we’re winners. The fundamental thing that cannot be taught is passion. Either you have it or you don’t. We look for passion and hustle.

There’s skill and will; you might have skill without will, and you’re not the right fit. But if you have will without skill, skill can be taught — will cannot. When you’re having fun, innovating, taking risks, that’s when innovation happens. Risk-averse cultures kill innovation, and our attrition proves it works. People don’t leave our team because of the culture we’ve built.

How has AI changed what CEOs expect from marketing leaders? How do you balance being revenue-driven with brand stewardship?

AI is having a very positive impact. All the marketing automation tools are innovating in unbelievable ways with revenue marketing and growth marketing. We now have an opportunity leveraging AI to really home in on your ICP: your ideal customer profile. I use ICP instead of “target audience” because you’re laser focused on who you’re actually selling to. AI gives you the ability to understand your hunting ground, where your ICPs are operating.

I’ve actually reduced my spend with Google search significantly. OpenAI hasn’t created a monetization angle for marketing yet, but my team’s goal is to write long-form blogs so that when AI systems crawl the internet, you get indexed. Search is fundamentally changing. Everything is becoming intent-based. You can give AI a prompt: “I’m bringing a new product to market, my target market is X, Y and Z. How are my competitors targeting that audience?” You get so much intel that makes you laser focused on how you go after prospects.

What skills matter most now?

If you think AI will take your job, or that someone better at AI will take your job, you’ll get stale fast. Having an open mentality that AI will uplevel your skills and understanding how to leverage AI to make your life easier is critical. If you’re in layer one or two, it’s going to be tough.

How do you stay ahead in rapidly evolving markets?

I wake at 6 a.m. and spend 6 to 7 learning: what’s happening globally, how LLM tools are operating, what Nvidia and others are doing. I also have dinner once a month with people in different industries, to learn from them. Learning should become part of who you are.

How would you redesign marketing for 2025?

I’d revamp every function to operate in the AI world. For product marketing, don’t spend hours researching the competition — leverage AI. Build your marketing plan with AI, but vet it because AI hallucinates. Get feedback from customers, analysts, the press, then execute with velocity. Event marketing is different. You can only do better, not replace it. AI cannot replace putting an event together.

I’ve also learned something important from Jeetu [Patel, president and head of product marketing at Cisco]. He says to pour your heart and soul into the product. He jokingly says he doesn’t even need marketing because a product becomes the best marketing tool. Build products where customers will share them with other customers or family members. Word-of-mouth marketing is the best form of marketing. When you build products people love, it becomes easier to create awareness at scale and activate it around the planet.

You said “Strategy without execution is hallucination.” Explain that.

People ask how I do it all. I’m a mother of two, with a demanding job. I have another saying: I outsource everything but love. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you don’t execute, it means nothing. It’s all about hustle, finesse and maniacal execution.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.