Cisco recently published a compelling vision for AI infrastructure — the Secure AI Factory, Zero Trust for digital agents, quantum networking, AI-native 6G. The technical ambition is real and the investment is serious.
But reading it, I kept thinking about a conversation that followed in the comments.
Angel Mendez — Board Director, former Cisco supply chain transformation leader — shared something that stopped me. One of the best leaders he worked with at Cisco, Rick Justice, EVP/CCO, had a phrase he returned to again and again during Cisco’s own transformation years.
SMOP. The Small Matter of People.
Rick used it to remind his teams that it was never about the technology alone. Org issues, readiness, culture — those were the real keys to scaling solutions.
That was Cisco’s internal wisdom during one of the most ambitious supply chain transformations of its era. And it’s the wisdom that’s missing from most AI governance conversations today.
Nine regulatory frameworks have been published in the past eighteen months — WilmerHale, the OECD, the IMF, the FSB, the GAO, Harvard Law School Forum, Grant Thornton, McKinsey, and IOSCO. Each one tells organizations what AI governance should look like.
Not one of them addresses SMOP.
They build the blueprint. They cannot build the internal foundation organizations need to execute against it. That foundation — the process structural integrity that makes governance real rather than documented — is still the Small Matter of People.
In 2007, I wrote about Cisco’s adaptive supply chain model and noted that even then, the challenging piece wasn’t the technology. It was organizational readiness to use it. Nineteen years later Angel confirmed that Cisco knew it too — they just called it something different.
The technology has advanced. The constraint hasn’t.
SMOP isn’t a criticism of AI infrastructure investment. Cisco’s work is important. So is every framework on that list. But infrastructure without readiness is a highway without drivers who know the rules of the road.
Before the next AI commitment is made — ask the SMOP question.
Is your organization actually ready to act on what the technology produces?
Governance doesn’t create outcomes. Process structural integrity determines whether governance can even function.
We see the patterns others don’t — which provides you with the insights you need to get it right at the right time.
Phase 0™ · HFS™ Hansen Fit Score™ · RAM 2025™ · Hansen Models™ 18 years · 3,300+ documents · Zero vendor sponsorships · Zero paid analyst relationships procureinsights.com
In 1998, we asked a single question at Canada’s Department of National Defence: “What time of day do orders come in?” The answer — 4 PM — surfaced a structural misalignment that no technology could fix. Delivery performance went from 51% to 97.3% in three months and sustained for seven years.
Rick Justice would have recognized it immediately. That was SMOP in practice.
That is still the question the nine frameworks don’t ask.
Rick Justice spent more than sixteen years helping build Cisco into one of the most trusted technology companies in the world. He battled prostate cancer for seventeen years — and never stopped showing up. Shortly before Cisco announced his diagnosis publicly, he delivered what John Chambers called his best presentation ever, to 20,000 people in Las Vegas.
He passed away in February 2021.
SMOP was never just an acronym. It was a leadership philosophy — a daily reminder from a man who understood that technology scales only as far as the people behind it can carry it.
“Your currency as a leader is based on track record, your relationships, and trust. When those three things come together, there’s almost nothing you can’t achieve. [Justice] was the best example of this.”
— John Chambers, Former CEO, Cisco
Source: CRN, “Cisco Founding Father Rick Justice Remembered for Building Customer-Focused Culture, Legacy of Trust,” Gina Narcisi, February 1, 2021
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Procurement Insights 
What AI Governance Needs Is More SMOP
Posted on April 1, 2026
0
Cisco recently published a compelling vision for AI infrastructure — the Secure AI Factory, Zero Trust for digital agents, quantum networking, AI-native 6G. The technical ambition is real and the investment is serious.
But reading it, I kept thinking about a conversation that followed in the comments.
Angel Mendez — Board Director, former Cisco supply chain transformation leader — shared something that stopped me. One of the best leaders he worked with at Cisco, Rick Justice, EVP/CCO, had a phrase he returned to again and again during Cisco’s own transformation years.
SMOP. The Small Matter of People.
Rick used it to remind his teams that it was never about the technology alone. Org issues, readiness, culture — those were the real keys to scaling solutions.
That was Cisco’s internal wisdom during one of the most ambitious supply chain transformations of its era. And it’s the wisdom that’s missing from most AI governance conversations today.
Nine regulatory frameworks have been published in the past eighteen months — WilmerHale, the OECD, the IMF, the FSB, the GAO, Harvard Law School Forum, Grant Thornton, McKinsey, and IOSCO. Each one tells organizations what AI governance should look like.
Not one of them addresses SMOP.
They build the blueprint. They cannot build the internal foundation organizations need to execute against it. That foundation — the process structural integrity that makes governance real rather than documented — is still the Small Matter of People.
In 2007, I wrote about Cisco’s adaptive supply chain model and noted that even then, the challenging piece wasn’t the technology. It was organizational readiness to use it. Nineteen years later Angel confirmed that Cisco knew it too — they just called it something different.
The technology has advanced. The constraint hasn’t.
SMOP isn’t a criticism of AI infrastructure investment. Cisco’s work is important. So is every framework on that list. But infrastructure without readiness is a highway without drivers who know the rules of the road.
Before the next AI commitment is made — ask the SMOP question.
Is your organization actually ready to act on what the technology produces?
Governance doesn’t create outcomes. Process structural integrity determines whether governance can even function.
We see the patterns others don’t — which provides you with the insights you need to get it right at the right time.
Phase 0™ · HFS™ Hansen Fit Score™ · RAM 2025™ · Hansen Models™ 18 years · 3,300+ documents · Zero vendor sponsorships · Zero paid analyst relationships procureinsights.com
In 1998, we asked a single question at Canada’s Department of National Defence: “What time of day do orders come in?” The answer — 4 PM — surfaced a structural misalignment that no technology could fix. Delivery performance went from 51% to 97.3% in three months and sustained for seven years.
Rick Justice would have recognized it immediately. That was SMOP in practice.
That is still the question the nine frameworks don’t ask.
Rick Justice spent more than sixteen years helping build Cisco into one of the most trusted technology companies in the world. He battled prostate cancer for seventeen years — and never stopped showing up. Shortly before Cisco announced his diagnosis publicly, he delivered what John Chambers called his best presentation ever, to 20,000 people in Las Vegas.
He passed away in February 2021.
SMOP was never just an acronym. It was a leadership philosophy — a daily reminder from a man who understood that technology scales only as far as the people behind it can carry it.
Source: CRN, “Cisco Founding Father Rick Justice Remembered for Building Customer-Focused Culture, Legacy of Trust,” Gina Narcisi, February 1, 2021
-30-
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