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Digital Disruption with Geoff Nielson
How AI-Ready Leaders Will Replace You: Erik Qualman Explains
00:50:49
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- [00:00]
A
Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be sitting down with best selling author Eric Qualman. He's been recognized by Forbes and Fast Company as a digital leadership guru. And what I love about Eric is that he's spent his career at the intersection of technology and human nature. As an educator at schools like Harvard and Northwestern and an advisor to everyone from Facebook to Disney to Sony. He challenges us to forget everything we think we know about technology and go back to the drawing board on what makes us human. I want to ask him what he really thinks about AI impacting our society, our work and ourselves. Are we about to see everything change, nothing change, or somewhere in between? Let's find out. Hey, I'm here with Eric Qualman. Eric, super excited to talk to you. Maybe just to kick things off, you know, where you're sitting with your sort of digital leadership hat on, if I can call it that. What's kind of most exciting to you right now? What trends are you looking at? What's top of mind in terms of, you know, what's changing for the better?
- [01:00]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I'm a big fan of the. Technology changes every second, but human nature never does. So some stuff stands the test of time. I always lead Flintstones first, but when it comes to technology, artificial intelligence, I really think it's underhyped long term. It's overhyped a little bit right now, but. But long term, that's what I'm looking for, is those cycles that long term of what is this actually going to become? So I'm really pumped about that.
- [01:27]
A
I want to come back to AI in just a second, but you used a phrase that I haven't heard before. That, that caught my attention, which is Flintstones first. Leading Flintstones first. What is, what does that mean?
- [01:37]
B
It means you can't replace face to face. Whether that's a coffee, whether it's a lunch, whether it's a conference that you're speaking at or going to attend. But when time, distance and safety are an issue, then you can layer in these digital tools to deepen those relationships. Because. Because obviously I've been in technology for close to four decades, but I love the human connection and I love what can technology enable to either remove friction or bring us closer. So that's why I've spent my career just digging in. The tech is really how to deepen relationships.
- [02:08]
A
I like the argument about bringing us closer. And AI is a funny one because, as I'm sure you do, if you follow the news people Will say AI will do, you know, you name it, AI will do it for you, right? Like, it'll, it's pretty close to, to cleaning your dishes, if the news is to be believed. So. But you talk about removing friction and deepening connections. Like when you, when you look at, as you said, long term, this tech is probably underhyped. Are those the two main areas? What could that look like in your mind? Like, where are we really going to see the most kind of, you know, individual and team level benefit from this technology?
- [02:45]
B
I mean, the biggest benefit of artificial intelligence is allowing us to be more human, ironically enough. So can it reduce the mundane and can it give us more time? And then when you have more time, it's up to us to repurpose that to things that matter, whether that's volunteering, developing your community, or just spending time with your loved ones. So for example, if artificial intelligence can quickly tell me if I'm about to have my second child and I need a bigger car, if it can quickly reduce my consideration set that says, hey, you know, 20 of your closest friends have purchased a bigger car because they're in the same season of life as you are, they've got two kids or more, and they've all seem to have purchased one of these two vehicles. This is where they bought it, this is how much they paid or leased for it. All of a sudden that gives me a lot more time and confidence. And so I can then if someone's already done that work, like my friends have already researched it and figured it out, then why do I need to do that? And so let's say that saves me 20 hours, then I can use that 20 hours, then put back into my life. Or a lot of people are using it right now for travel. I use it extensively a lot for travel. So we have a vacation that's coming up. It's probably saved me about 50 hours just from simple searches of is there a direct train from Krakow to Vienna? If so, where's the best place to pick up that train, which station? And where can I buy the ticket for the most affordable price? And then that just saves me doing that over and over. That just saves me tons of time. When that's why you hear these terms like agent, it's a lot of easier, easier for us to grasp that concept when it comes to travel. Because you used to travel agent and so now you're using an agent, AI agent to help you with your travel. And literally it saved me close to 50 hours already.
- [04:45]
A
That's, that's awesome. And by the way, it sounds like you've got a great trip lined up there. Yeah, yeah, if that's any indication. So. So, you know, one of the things I like to get into here is just sort out. There's obviously a lot of benefit here. And if you know, you as an individual or you as Eric, the team lead can save 50 hours of work here and not use a travel agent or not use whatever traditional resources you'd use to pick your car. There's winners and losers here.
- [05:14]
B
Right.
- [05:14]
A
And do you have a sense of broadly. Let's start by talking organizational level. I want to talk about people in a minute, but organizational level, the organizations that are well positioned versus not well positioned, what are some of the qualities they share here?
- [05:29]
B
Just, they always say that the future favors the bold or the brave. That's not really true. The future favors the most adaptable. So any company that's flexible and adaptable is well positioned because we don't know what's going to happen this technology. And so are you able to move quickly and adjust? Are you able to fail? Because failure is not the opposite of success. It's the reason for your success. So really two things. Do you have a culture of adaptability and do you have a culture that embraces failure? They're not going to get it right the first time and so to figure it out quickly. So those are the companies that are well positioned to do that. And obviously this stuff takes a lot of compute power. So you'll hear a lot, you know, computes the new oil. So some of the bigger companies, you need to have deep pockets for that. That capital that's required to, to have these data centers, to have the electricity to do this compute power.
- [06:25]
A
You got into my second question there already. But is adaptability also the secret sauce for leaders right now? Do you think if I ask you the question about who's going to win from a leadership perspective, what are the skills that leaders need in this era? Is it still adaptability? Is that number one? What does that picture look like?
- [06:44]
B
I think number one still your emotional intelligence, your EQ I, ironically those are my initials. But just your emotional intelligence is number one. And then I'd put close second would be are you nimble? Are you adaptable? Are you willing to listen to the younger generation and not be the old man on your lawn? So it's really just about understanding what those are. The two. I think it's just your emotional intelligence and then adaptability to be able to do that. And all this stuff's not Perfect. That's why I say it's overhyped short term, under hyped long term. For example, I mean I live in Austin so it's awesome. You have self driving waymo cars here. Fantastic. But I was sitting there, I gotta go really early tomorrow, 3 o', clock, I gotta get up to go on a flight and I'm bringing my golf clubs and we live in a gated community. All of a sudden I realize, well wait, that thing's not gonna be able to open the gate. They can't punch in the number. So there's like little nuances like that. That's just fascinating to me. I was like, but it's fantastic for we were talking before the show here I've got 8th and 9th grade girls. Something that just dawned on me this week. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's such a business case. There's not a, and most drivers are fine, but there's not a driver that I have to worry about. If I was going to put my 8th grade daughter in a car, now they're just in a driverless car. So there's a lot of things people don't see, including myself. But when you see it, you're like, whoa, that's pretty cool. That's like a huge business case just for like tweens and teens to be able to shuttle around.
- [08:12]
A
So it's really interesting because I'm just trying to like marry that in my mind with the comment about emotional intelligence. Right. Like the implication there is like, and like, I don't know, drivers are a weird thing with this but when you're talking about your family, you're saying like I would rather have no driver than like an unknown driver. Which is like to me one particular story where it's, you know, technology can potentially replace a human there but in other cases, you know, it sounds like the human connection is more important than ever. Is that, are both of those true and how do we distinguish between those two different worlds?
- [08:55]
B
Both are true. I mean it's the Flintstones and Jetsons world. So it's not an or deal. So it's great. So to example, you probably want your nanny to be a real person at this point in time. That might change a little bit. But I want a self driving car for my tweens, but I probably want, if I had a, a one year old then I'd want probably the humanity to be the human.
- [09:19]
A
Yeah, I, I ideally, ideally a human for you for a one year old for sure. So emotional intelligence, you know, one of the things that we're hearing more about, and I've talked to other guests about, is in some ways generative AI. I don't know if you'd call it augmenting or replacing emotional intelligence. But you hear about, you know, people who are dating and it's like, okay, well, how can I just generate, you know, text or content that's going to be most appealing to a date? Or, you know, I'm in a management position and I'm going to have my emails written by ChatGPT. Like, what's. Is that net good? Is that net worrying? If you're a leader who's actually worried about their emotional intelligence and about their human connection, is there still room for a tool like that? And what guardrails would you put around that? You know, that use case?
- [10:09]
B
Yeah, I think that's the key term there is guardrails. And so it's learning to use this new technology. So anytime there's new technology, there's the good and the bad. And we're living through that right now. We don't know the timeline. That's the thing. If anyone knew the timeline and be the richest person in the world, because you heard me say it's overhyped short term, underhyped long term. It's like, well, Eric, what's the. What's the term? I don't know. If you did, you'd be the richest person around. So it's really about leveraging this technology, both the good and bad, but it's really the guardrail. So we're living through it with social media. So we don't have the technical. So you think about cars first come out, we don't have a seat belt. Then all of a sudden, probably good to have a seatbelt in these things. And then you have kids, you're like, probably make it a law that if you're sitting and they're under 14 in the back seat, they have to wear the seat belt. Okay. So there's always that progress in that window. And we're living that right now with social media, teen suicide, especially with girls, way up. And so we're trying to figure out what is the guardrail for that. That guardrail might be that you have to be 16 before you go on social media. So. And I'm a strong proponent of that. I think we're drinking a lot of the lead in the water and we're not helping anyone, any of these kids out. Just kind of like, here you go, good luck. And so that happens all the time with technology. That's in another analogy is interesting to think about is with AI, all of a sudden I teach a class at Northwest University, master's level class, and the students are all really directors or executive director, vice presidents of their companies. And so they want to learn AI. But originally when AI comes out, Northwestern immediately, because it's changed, says you can't teach AI. So then what you want to do is look at history repeats itself. Because really no one listens the first time and it doesn't repeat itself, just kind of rhymes. But on those calls, if you quickly look back, I go, hey, I'm teaching a digital leadership course. These students need to learn it. If they're not coming, not getting it here at Northwestern, they're going to get it somewhere else. But also remember that when calculators first came out, let's go look at the newspaper said, pull up newspaper clippings and show them that this should be banned in the classroom. You can't use a calculator in the classroom. But then in time you realize, wait, sometimes it's good to have a calculator in class. That's good. Even use the calculator for test. And then other times you're not allowed to use it. So it's really always goes back to Flintstones and Jetsons piece. A lot of the stuff that we wrestle with is new from a standpoint of the technology is new, but the constructs are the same.
- [12:46]
A
So what's the what. What's the case for not having AI? You're not teaching AI, not using AI in the classroom. And you know, do you buy that case or where do you stand on it as a teacher?
- [12:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's quickly changed that now they're teaching it immediately, so you don't even have to have that case anymore. But if you had to argue for keeping. Well, there's sometimes to keep it out of the classroom. Because there's some studies at MIT that if you only use generative AI, then there's a part of your brain that doesn't get developed. So if you're a journalist, you have to learn to write. So there's got to be instances where, hey, this assignment, you cannot use any of this generative AI. Next assignment, knock yourself out. You can use any tool you want. And so it's important to be able to develop those pieces of the brain. So this interesting case study that they came out with mit. So again, sometimes it's like, hey, guys, it's all Flintstones right now. You know, no AI for this assignment. Got to Write on your own, go for it. And then like a hot knife through butter, once you let them use the AI, all of a sudden it's a lot easier.
- [13:48]
A
And the classroom to me, and this is one of the things I was excited to talk about is the classroom to me is a really interesting case study of AI, of this new technology. And not just AI, but just it feels like. And I'm curious on your perspective that just technology has entered the classroom in a really big way in the last handful of years. Like call it since 2020. Like, you know, this, this decade kind of post pandemic, you know, virtual classroom. I'm curious from your perspective, how has teaching changed in that time and is it better or worse? And what kind of lessons have you taken away around how you teach now versus 10 years ago?
- [14:33]
B
I think it's a lot better. I think that, I mean the old joke was it's still somewhat true today that the only thing that hasn't changed is the teaching approach. That if you went back a hundred years ago, you walked in the classroom, there's a professor in front of the room giving a lecture. And so I think it's dramatically improved just in the short time, the last 10 years. I mean I've got online, I'm asking students all the time, hey, look that up. That's a good question. I'm not sure the answer. So then it's more peer to peer learning. Now at the same time, what's interesting is we crave that human connection, that face to face. So for the class that I teach at Northwestern, most of these students are flying in from around the world for a week. They get a 15 week credit because it's 8 to 6 now. The feedback that we received was, hey, it'd be great if you could use the city as a classroom. So historically we'd bring in like CMOs to speak or CTOs to speak in the class. And so what that now looks like, like this year what we did is we went. Cause I have a. The person that runs all the Cubs marketing and PR is a connection. So she was kind enough to have her team sit down with all her students and we visited Wrigley Field. They walked us through how they use data, AI analytics and then we got to do a tour of Wrigley Field. Go touch the ivy. So it was awesome. A couple days later, former student had us the shed aquarium. If you've never been to Chicago, amazing aquarium. So they show us how do they attract people to the aquarium using digital analytics. How they, how are they using AI for the animals themselves. And then you get a tour with jazz being played in the aquarium. And so that's that yin yang, that Flintstones, Jetson. So from a teaching perspective, I think that's the right approach, is that. And we always have them do a project that they're going to implement in their companies. I hate dealing with hypotheticals. And so it's like, this is what you're going to do. There's an. You got to identify an opportunity where there's friction for your customer or for your teammates. And this is a safe place. At the end of the week, you're going to present and it's your first presentation that we're going to poke holes in so that you're more prepared to go and implement that within your organization. Whether that's a big company or whether you're an entrepreneur is real world experience. And so that's, I think in my mind, not everyone's shifted that way, but that's the way that we teach. And I think it's a way better way to do it.
- [17:03]
A
I know, I love that. And I mean, in some ways, it's a very different answer than what I expected because it's not like it's a low tech answer, right. As you said, it's more, it's more Flintstones than Jetsons. It's not, hey, everybody, let's, you know, cram into a zoom call. It's like, I don't know, it's like more magic school bus than you, you know, the Jetsons there, right? It's, it's getting out into the world and, and, you know, trip oriented.
- [17:28]
B
The Jetsons component is all of a sudden a student. This happened this, this semester was, hey, I figured out, you know, Professor Qualman, I figured out how to make those gorillas. I've animated them. They're talking. He worked at a barbecue company. So he had two gorillas just. He'd made it within an hour. Two gorillas, Hawaiian shirts with the rub from their barbecue company. Oh, you can put this rub on anything. And then he started just putting on everything on the grill. And so it went viral. But that happened in the classroom. And so the. He raised his hand. I go, come on up here. Like, plug in your computer up here on the monitor and just walk us through what you're doing. And so that's the major shift is that literally every year my class is like 70% different, but then there's a 30% that's at core. Like I said, technology changes every second. Human nature Never does. So that 30% never is never going to change, and then the 70% ever changes every year. So it's kind of hard as a teacher, but you have to be that adaptable.
- [18:28]
A
Yeah. So, you know, I'm going to try not to necessarily boil your entire curriculum down to a few sentences, but, you know, as you've been teaching that class for a number of years, is there, like, you know, a main piece of advice you've been giving students that stays the same year after year? And is there a piece of advice that you're finding you're giving in 2025 that's like something has changed now that you weren't talking about last year?
- [18:56]
B
Yeah, it's a good question. Definitely the same piece of advice. Most of the time, these are very successful people, but most of the time who are doing these things they're going to implement in their company. I go, that's great. You got to think bigger. This could be bigger. And I'll give an example. Like, that's a good idea, but it could be bigger. You gotta get people excited. It's gotta be bigger. Other advice is, yeah, you're busy, but you're not producing anything. You're doing a lot of throughput, but you're not getting the output. And so it's, what are you producing? So someone might ask me, how do I ascend the ladder in my career? You gotta be marking down, what are you producing that's helping that organization? And so you should be writing those downs throughout the time. You should be checking with your boss a lot what. What success looks like for them. But those are the two pieces of advice I find that are standing the test of time. Your second question is a little more difficult. I'm trying to think what's new without just being the bits and the bites. Yeah. So trying to think because, I mean, it's all. It's specific to artificial intelligence. Last year was all Metaverse. The year before that was all social media. So these things shift so fast. The other piece of advice is, hey, you know, be. Just test out the 20%. Don't go all in on this stuff, figure out what's going to work, what's not going to work, and go from there. Like clubhouse, Right. I was like, man, am I missing the boat? Why is everyone so fired up on this clubhouse thing? Oh, my gosh. I have to put in all this time on clubhouse. Well, it lasted like a month, right? Yeah. Or these glasses. Or Google plus, whatever that was called. Guy calls hockeyman, wrote a book. I'm like what? I guess maybe this is bigger than I think it's gonna be. If guy's writing a book on this and it petered out. Right. So it's important to kind of see what's like a flash in the pan and what's gonna stand the test of time. That's really hard to do. So it's try to be as nimble as possible, keep it light so that you're ready when that domino falls. When QR codes become pervasive, even though they're made in 94, a lot of us like yourself, myself, people listening this, 2003, we think everyone's going to use them. QR codes are great. No one used them. World wasn't ready for it. All of a sudden, pandemic hits 2020, boom. So things are slow to the really fast. That's why you need to be in this stuff. And so you're ready to go fast when it's there. But don't over invest.
- [21:17]
A
Right, right. No, it makes sense. And just the value, it sounds like of like the dipping a toe in, seeing if something's really working rather than going all in on, you know, the latest thing.
- [21:29]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:33]
A
Go ahead.
- [21:34]
B
No, I was thinking too, it's interesting a lot of times too, whether it's when I'm brought into companies, it's a lot easier as an outsider to see the bigger picture. So it's hard to read the prescription when you're inside the bottle. So Mont Blanc, they make these fancy watches and pens and they bring me in because this is a while ago, but social media is exploding. So this is a long time ago. So I wrote a book, Social Nomics. Social media is exploding. All right, we need to do social media. So they ring me in, I'm like, all right, cool. Where are we sending them? Montblanc.com. oh, yeah, we don't have a website. No, we only sell through the retailers, the Maison, as they say, in fonts. I'm like, all right, well, hold on. That's where. That's why I wrote the second book, Digital Leadership. Because I was going to these companies, I'm like, oh, these folks don't even have a clue. The bigger picture landscape when it comes to digital. And it's not digital specific. The good thing about digital, it pokes holes in your whole strategy. So you think about search. Like what search word should we be number one for? Well, if you're a travel company, is it cheap airfare? Is it airfare? Is it travel deals? So that really sets your strategy. It really pokes holes in your whole organization. You can't stand for everything. So anyways, going back a little bit to the Mont Blanc example is like, okay, guys, we gotta develop a website first. And this is gonna be painful because you have to tell all your retailers that now you're gonna sell directly to the customer. And then they think you're crazy, because who's going to buy a $20,000 watch online? I go, trust me, they will. It's coming. So we got to adjust these things. So more times than not, it's really hard to see that stuff if you're inside. And so that's what's been fascinating in my career. Just being able to kind of come in and be able to work with these amazing companies and be able to see something that's kind of too big to see for them.
- [23:36]
A
If you're sitting there, well, and you're, you know, it ties back to you saying, think bigger. But we've kind of backed into this question around, you know, basically, digital strategy, digital transformation. I mean, those have both kind of become buzzwords by this point. But I don't want to dismiss them because they're really, really important. And it sounds like, you know, what you're saying is your digital strategy is just your strategy. They're the same thing. It's just kind of a dimension to it. Is that true? And if that is true, how do you typically recommend that organizations tackle it? Who needs to be at the table? What are the big questions you need to ask, and how do you make sure that it's successful?
- [24:20]
B
Yeah, no, it's 100% true. And who needs to be at the table? You need to start at the top. So that doesn't mean that your CEO needs to be programming your social media strategy or AI strategy. What that means is you're not saying a question like, what's our AI strategy? The question is, what is our strategy and how do we help our customer? Let's say it's a B2C company, our customer. How do we remove friction? How do we create? So basically, let's start first principle. Instead of going from A to Z, A to Z, come and say, like, okay, AI. How are we going to implement it? Because the board's saying, what's our AI strategy? So then the CIO comes down to the CTO and goes, what's our AI strategy? Then it funnels down, and then they're trying to come up with something like, this is what we're doing for AI. Rather than the good companies would ask the they'd flip it. Instead of going from A to Z, they have a challenge or a new opportunity, they flip and go to Z. Which for every company is going to be creating a smile for that customer. All right, so how do I create that smile for the customer? Then walk our way back and along that line, there's probably some technology that'll help remove any friction. They'll help create that smile. And so that's a better approach. And it needs to come from the top down. It needs to be pervasive throughout the company, the culture, meaning it's about fail fast, fail forward, fail better. We're going to fail. So. So if we're gonna fail, let's do it fast and let's fail forward. That means we're gonna actually have hard conversations. What didn't work. And that allows us to not repeat the same mistake twice. That allows us to fail better. So that's the companies that. That'll win. A good example of that is I own an animation studio. So we're doing some work with Disney, which at the time, like, why. Why you call it us? You know, why don't you just use the Pixar guys? And so Bob Iger wanted. He wanted a video that showed that they were digital. Like, they just weren't Disney. They're actually a digitally forward company. They're about to launch Disney plus. So they hadn't launched it yet. They're thinking it through. And so I happened to be there doing this animation project just to showcase, hey, this is Disney's actually like a digital first company. And so help them develop the script. And then we, we animated and gave them that thing. But when I was sitting there in Orlando, they had an issue. So they said, hey, I know this is nothing to do with what you're doing with our animation, but it'd be helpful if you came down and kind of joined this meeting. So I go down there and they're having a big debate about whether you should have selfie sticks in the park or not. So this big debate about selfie sticks in the park, I go, this is awesome. Like, I'm sitting there. My girls were young at the time too. So, like, this, this is amazing. There's some good arguments, like, dude, these things could be dangerous. They're just. They're just visually not pleasing. They're blocking stuff. It's just not the experience we want. And so they quickly figure out selfie stick. All right, so then they move on to Instagram, like taking photos in front of Cinderella's castle. So they make A lot of money taking photos with professional photographers. A lot of us, probably listening, have paid for 40 bucks to get that picture with the family. I've got my hand raised, you know, got that picture. So then the question is, hey, all these people have these phones now. They want to take a picture in front of the castle, which is basically in the same location that we're doing our professional photography. Should we allow it to happen? I'm like, all right, it's a good question. I go, let's just pause. Like, how many of you have kids? What are their ages? So most of them had young kids. I go, you're in the park. You're not working for Disney. You're at the park. How many of you want to pitch in front of Cinderella's castle? Every hand goes up, all right, how many you want to pay for it? So half the room they want to pay for. They want to get the professional one. I go, but how many of you want to take it with your phone? So everyone raises their hand. I go, how many of you? So then they're like, okay, I see where you're going with this. I go, what would the expectation be if someone came up and said, you can't take a picture in front of the castle? You got to go through this professional photographer. Is that. Is that the Disney way? Obviously, everyone's shaking their head no. Then. Then the question becomes, can they take it in the same location, or is that going to cause issues for the professional? I go, what would you expect as a parent, as Disney, what's your expectation is? They go, you could probably take it in the same location. Okay, then what would your expectation be? If you ask the professional photographer, do you mind taking it with our phone? What'd your expectation be for the brand you built at Disney? That the photographer be nice and smile and take a picture of the phone? So then a couple lawyers pipe up and go, you can't do that because they could drop the phone. If they drop the phone, it's not only paying for the phone, but it might have erased all the pictures. I go, that's a good argument. But remember, what do you think that mom and dad from Nebraska are thinking when your photographer says, no? Okay, what's the cost of that? That's a big cost, right? It's bad for your reputation. So when you look at it through that lens, all of us, no pun intended. So all of a sudden, it's a different approach, right? So then they go, okay. And then they see the game, the happiest place on Earth became the most Instagram place on Earth just with that change of policy. But if you walk into that meeting, which that was like the third week of that meeting, that could have gone on for months, and they probably would have gone with what the lawyers were saying, rather than actually getting your feet on the ground, thinking about it from the customer's lens and going from there.
- [30:01]
A
I love that story. And one of the reasons I love it is because I've been in some version of that meeting many times, and I'm sure you have too, and you kind of gloss over it and you make it sound so simple. Oh, I just asked a few people questions and they got to the right conclusion. But I'm sure you've also been in meetings where they get to the wrong conclusion as a participant in some sort. And so I wanted to ask you that the approach that you took there when I was just kind of processing what you were asking, you talked about this earlier, but it sounds like there's some sort of implicit, almost like a smile test, like, is this going to make my customers smile? Is that right? Or like, what's your sort of methodology for coming up with a decision that isn't just like, don't use AI in the classroom, or isn't the classically backwards decision?
- [30:48]
B
Yeah, it's two things. It's. It's one I discussed a little bit earlier. It's looking for history for a guide. Because again, a lot of this stuff, it's similar construct, just new technology. Remember, MTV is going to ride everyone's kid's brain and social media is going to be the death of all our tweens. And so it's really about knowing this has happened before. So using history is a guide. So it's super, super helpful. And also to get over humps, right? So people can identify that, especially executives. You can distill it down to that movie trailer example to where it's like, remember when calculators first came out, no one wanted to use them in the classroom. Everyone uses them today in the classroom. It's a good thing, right? So all of a sudden that quickly distills thing down. Or if it's in the moment. I remember late 90s. What? No one's going to give their credit card online to buy something. That's crazy. I go, what do you do when you go to a restaurant right now? Who do you give that credit card to? You give it to a person, they take it back to the machine. What do you think they're doing back there with that credit card? They can do anything they want. This is a lot more secure than that. All of a sudden, you use those kind of examples. That's in a moment. In the moment example, then they can kind of see it a little better. So that's what I found really helpful with working with any folks is trying to figure out a common sense approach, these things. And one of the common sense approaches is what's at the end of the line. And the end of the line is always a smile. Otherwise, you're not gonna be in business. The reason you're in business is you're creating a smile. Yeah. Even if you're a tax accountant. My tax accountant. I smile because I don't have to spend 50 hours doing my taxes for my small businesses. They do it. So they're removing that friction. And God bless them if they use technology to make it easier and faster, because that eventually is going to make it cheaper and faster for me as well.
- [32:46]
A
So there's one more nuance that I want to talk through, because I think it can be a sticking point for some people. You mentioned earlier the importance of boldness, and. And I don't want to lose sight of the fact that there's some level of boldness required in this decision, because you talked about the lawyers. But there's another angle here, and we've talked about it a few times already today, which is there's somebody in this room who's doing the math on the 40 bucks per photo, and they're saying, whoa, whoa. Like, we're going to start losing 40 bucks per photo. Or if it's Montblanc, they're saying, we've got. There's somebody losing money if we go digital. And I'm categorizing all this as digital. So it would be so easy if everything digital or everything with new tech didn't have any sort of disruption or especially no sort of financial disruption. But there's always somebody left kind of holding the bag of like, well, I was the. You know, I was the photographer leader. And suddenly, over a year, like, that's got. It's Disney. It's gotta be probably like, you know, over a million bucks just for that one. Castle.
- [33:53]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:53]
A
What do you need? What do you need from a leadership perspective? What do you need organizationally to get people to the right decision to cut through the. But not every single person can win, and yet somehow we all win together.
- [34:05]
B
Yeah, exactly. No, in that room was a person. Exactly right. The title is similar to what you said, but it was just one piece of the Revenue stream. But it was, it was, it was sizable. It was double figures in the millions from. From the photography. Yeah. So then it became tricky because you're trying to guess what the return is for being the most Instagram place on the planet. So in those instances, I don't know. I was only in that meeting, so I don't know. They eventually went with it. Yeah. But let's say in that example, it could be. I'm a big fan of beta tests. So you know, you're, you got to go into these. That's what we teach at Northwestern as well. Who's going to be the person that's against you in that room? And you need to meet with everyone in that room before you get in there. So you're not surprised. Like you already have people for and against you before you get in that meeting. So you want to meet with all the people before you get. You don't want to be surprised or in that meeting. And so you want to get their advice and attack it and even flip it on them. The person that's going to be the most cantankerous, hey, can you argue the point on the other side? And I'll, I'll defend it. So that's a good thing that you get them on the same page. You can see both sides of that argument. But a lot of times for going into situation. So if we were to use the Disney example is that you'd say, hey, we're going to test it in our least popular park. So let's do it. For example, it might be Paris, I don't know.
- [35:28]
A
So we're poor Paris.
- [35:29]
B
Yeah, we're going to test it at the Paris Disney. So you want to beta test this stuff. That's a way to get approval, essentially. Hey, we're just beta testing in this market. A lot of times it's like, here's going to beta test on this product line. But in the instance once it's determined, then it's like you have to agree. That's why you need that culture of trust. So the person that's going to lose, I'm not going to say the number, the millions of dollars on the photography, they've got to understand that their goal gets reset. Hey, this marketing is going to benefit or the turnstile is going to benefit because there are more visitors, because people are exposed to it via Instagram and see how exciting the new Star wars ride is. That was want to go because of Instagram. And so that department's going to benefit. But my department, which had this, all this revenue from the photos is going to take a hit. So we've got to reset the goals and be fair about this stuff.
- [36:27]
A
It makes complete sense. No, I love the beta testing approach. I love the idea of like actually supporting it with data versus just a bunch of people arguing in a room about what might happen. Makes complete sense. I'm curious again, we've talked about new tech and what it can do and what it can't do and some of the changing trends. As you think about the impact on leaders and on organizations, are you hearing any bad advice right now? Are you seeing anything in the news or is there anything people are talking about that you're like, yeah, that sounds trendy, but I don't really think that's going to take off.
- [37:04]
B
I would say people just say, hey, these jobs are gonna be taken right now. Most of the time that change is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It's gonna change. We don't have a person in the elevator pushing buttons for us anymore. And so those jobs change. But now you have people that are working on the elevators. They like learn how to work them, then fix them. Or if you ever see the movie Hidden Figures, great movie. So great movie. It really showcases three women, African American women that helped us get on the moon. And during that time when they're trying to get on the moon, literally most people don't know this, but computers, the reason they're called computers, you had people that were doing the computations of that map. So in this movie they have them, paper and pencil, doing these long computations, like putting just a bunch of people power to these computations. But obviously then IBM comes along and they can start doing these computations. So then those jobs do eventually go away. But then the heroes in the story, they actually get much better jobs because one, for example, is now needs to train everyone how to use this IBM computer. And so they become much better job positions. So it gets back to that flexibility, adoption. Some of the winners right now. If you want to change your career, I always tell people, look, you could become an expert on AI because this stuff's so new. If you dig into it 24 7, you're going to know more than 99% of the people in the world. And so if it's an interest to you, this is your moment in time. When these shifts happen and it happened, we think about social media. You have all these social media influencers, you have people as social media coaches. All this stuff that occurs, social media photographers, is that when these shifts happen, if you want to change your career and you're passionate about this stuff, then, then those are the winners as well. So you, AI is not going to take your job, but someone that knows how to use AI is going to take your job well.
- [39:06]
A
And it sounds like you're pretty bullish in general about, you know, the impact on jobs that like maybe AI will take your job description, but it's not going to take your job or the, you know, the net number of jobs is going to increase or the value of jobs.
- [39:18]
B
Yeah, they're going to change. I mean, there'll be things that change. I mean, part of the reason it's so slow, the self driving is because the number one job in America is drivers. And God bless them. But I mean, literally, if you, in my personal opinion, I think that if you just went to self driving, I was hoping Singapore just does it. Like that would be the beta test. Like Singapore just mandates everything self driving. It's like, oh my gosh, accidents went down 95%. What happened? Oh, because they're all self driving. They all talk to each other. Yeah, there's a little bit of a learning curve and stuff and accidents still happen, there's still death, but it's deaths. But it's been reduced to 90, 95% reduction. So it'll be fascinating to see how. So sometimes as things move slow because whether it's governmental red tape, whether it's just we're not ready for it, the technology might be there, but you have to wait. Like the QR codes, you had to wait since 94 to have them come out. Now they're pervasive and they're not perfect. Like the key is the Flintstones Jetsons. Right. The perfect world is you go in the restaurant. If I want a paper menu, there's a paper menu. If I want to use a QR code menu to blow it up so I can see it better, then I use the QR code menu. So that, that's Flintstones and Jetsons.
- [40:30]
A
Yeah, Makes complete sense. And yeah, I like the, I, I like the framing of it. And, and you know, if, if, if it's something that's valuable to people, then you know we're going to keep doing it and we're going to make a conscious decision to keep doing it. But you know, if, if the driver, as you said, if you're not even looking for a driver, you're just looking for your daughters to get driven from point A to point B, then you know, what, what's the point?
- [40:55]
B
Or like email or chatbots have A bad name because they're not used correctly. Email's great if you use it well, just like chatbots are great if you use them well. So, for example, if I have a AI chatbot at my hotel, the thing's amazing if it's executing properly. You're still going to have the concierge. But if I just want to know what time's the gym open? Oh, it's 24 7. Great. Or can you book a. Just typing in. Can you book. Rest the reservation at the restaurant for me? Absolutely. Here you go. Or what floor is the grand Ballroom on? It's on the third floor. Here's how you get there. Then there's other people that want to use the concierge. Or it's not giving the right answer, but it's really. Bots are great if they're used well. If you do them well, then they're actually super helpful. And not everyone wants to use it. So you got to understand that there's still that concierge probably there. They might not have five concierge because now you've given them scale with a chat pack concierge that hopefully is functioning well. It's funny, I wanted to know what the example, whoever's been to Sea Island, Georgia, there's a lot of speaking events there. So speaking there and that the Cloisters. And I was just needing to know what time the gym was open. And so they had a chatbot and I texted it and it told me it was at 7. Then I talked to a person at the front desk and they said, opens at 8. So I'm like, ooh, which one's gonna be right? And it turned out the human was right. I thought for sure it'd be the chatbot that was right. And then. So there's still some stuff, like, anyone that's used any of these tools, it still misses some simple things. But that one's just a programming error. That's, like, ridiculous that it doesn't know that answer because that's just programmed incorrectly.
- [42:36]
A
Yeah, but it speaks to what you value, I guess, for your customers. Right. Do you value having a hotel where you can have an always on, always get a quick answer reliably, that's extended service. Or do you value that human connection? And it's interesting because I don't know. And maybe I'll be proven wrong. Like, maybe every single hotel in the world will move to just like that concierge model. But, like, yeah, that case is a perfect case. Why you still may want to have a human you talk to. Right, yeah.
- [43:11]
B
You want both. I mean, and so that's not that you're increasing the cost. Like I said, it's probably reduces that concierge staff down.
- [43:21]
A
Right.
- [43:21]
B
And so it's trying to figure out most of us want, in most instances, kind of both. Do you have the optionality, like, if I can get a quick answer. These phone trees are terrible. No one likes them because they're designed horribly. I push like 20 buttons and it goes to different departments. But if, like Tony Hsieh, before he passed away, his thing was all about sitting there, talking with him, like, what's the key to Zappos success? You know, you sold it for a billion dollars to Amazon. What. What was the key? He goes, I learned early on we don't sell shoes, we sell customer service. That we're in the business of not shoes. We're in the business of customer service. I go, what? What do you mean by that? He goes, well, I looked at our marketing budgets. 40 million. I go, what? What happened if I moved that 40 million over to customer service? And so what would happen is that now I'm not judging my net promoter score, which those listeners that don't know what that is, it really judges. It's a. It's a universal tool that allows you to compare yourself, what your customer service levels are to other people, not only in your market, other people that sell shoes or other markets, like cruise lines, for example. And so he goes, allowed me to say, instead of. Most companies would badger their customer service to get off the phone as quickly as possible, because that costs money. Once I move that $40 million over, if they want to talk to you on the phone about where's the best place to get pizza in Vegas, because that's where Zappos was headquartered, then stay on the phone with that person because I know that's my new marketing. It's going to be that word of mouth that we go above and beyond for the customer. And that's better money spent than the 40 million I was going to spend on traditional marketing and digital marketing is that I moved that over because I think that's the new marketing. That's his speaking, what he was saying, that's the new marketing. So that's why they became so successful. So sometimes it's just thinking differently, but it's always about thinking about your customer first. It's thinking outside in versus inside out.
- [45:25]
A
Well, and it's. I really like that example because it highlights, like, the power and the tyranny of metrics. Right? Like what are you actually measuring? And if you're measuring, you know, how many of these things can a customer service agent resolve? Yeah, sure. I mean, you can send that through the roof, but what are the trade offs? Like, once you flip that on its head and say, like, how happy are the people? Like, and by the way, I'm a huge advocate of just like happy customers, like, happy stakeholders. Like, I feel like that's a good measure. So that's. It's really interesting. I really like that example.
- [45:56]
B
Yeah, it is crazy because you're in their office and that's what they, they had just a whiteboard. They erase the net promoter score every day just to see what that number was handwritten. Nice. There's other stuff on there. I'm like, crazy, dude, you're letting me in here. Like, I can see all that stuff. I won't say anything. I'm. I was writing a book at the time. I go, I won't unless you say, I'm. It's okay for me to put what's on that board. And they went to a party later that night. I was like, this is nuts what's happening here. But I'll keep it off the record.
- [46:23]
A
That's so cool. So I want to. Eric, I do want to come back to something we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, which is the fact that AI may be kind of undervalued short term, but. Or, sorry, it's overvalued short term, undervalued long term. When we look at the long term, call it like 20, 30 or beyond. What's kind of the Eric Qualman version of what the future looks like? What are the big things, long term that you think we're going to see that are different from how things are running right now?
- [46:58]
B
I mean, you're gonna have basically your agent, for lack of a better term, doing proactive stuff for you so you don't have to do it. And it's, it's a long term because honestly, 20 years ago I was at these things called Google dances. So total nerd thing. But it's like all the people that are in search because search was the cat's meow at the time. Like organic paid search. How do you show up high in the rankings? So they'd have these Google dances where they'd give you a little inside baseball sometimes not too much about how you can show up higher. But if they had this big party dance at the end. But I bring that up because at the time, and they still haven't Done this, which is shocking to me because they can flip a switch. Right now I basically use Google Calendar. You know, I use Google Maps. Like all of us, we're using all these tools that are in their family, in their house. And it still doesn't tell me, hey, you gotta leave five minutes or you gotta leave now, Eric, because there's traffic. Google Maps knows there's traffic. It's talking to Google Calendar. You've got a two o' clock appointment. You need to leave now. You know, you probably were going to leave in 10 minutes like you normally do to get there. That's not the case. Things just shifted. So that's just an example of what it. Like, why isn't that here? So for someone like me and probably you and our listeners, it gets a little frustrating. Like why is that so slow? They could turn that on right now. But looking out ahead, it's really getting back to what I mentioned, which I call self, you know, individual redundancy. So removing multiple individual redundancies so that if I have a kid and I also need this will and testament, before is just me, I didn't care. But now it's like, whoa, I actually need to put out this will. Who's this going to go to now? I'm just starting from point a zero, ground zero. I don't know anything about a will. I got to figure out, is there a lawyer that's going to help me do it through a legal zoom. What, what's. How do I do this? But again, proactively, your agent's going to be able to do that for you. You'll be able to look to see what's been done before. Quickly do it. Eric, do you want me to get your will and testament written? Yes, please. Here's your options. We recommend this one. It's going to cost this, if it costs anything at all. So a lot of that underwriting is going away. Those are some of the losers right now. A lot of that simple underwriting is going away. And so that's what gets me excited. Or let's think about your smart home. A pipe just burst. We just, we've got a plumber on the way to fix it. So that agent's already doing that for you. The house already recognized something went awry or hopefully it notices that things about to break before it does. And that's already here. Like drones and AI sensors are being used on these pipelines to indicate that's worn out before you'd have like a manual person kind of go along the Alaskan pipeline to figure out where it's weak. Now it's got technology that can do that for you with AI. So that's what I see out there, just us having it's the greatest time. This is the best time to ever live. Amazing, right? So good. Yeah, there's complications, but it's only get better and better this stuff that we go through, these complications. But gosh, imagine just having to pull out your paper map again and get lost. So it's great.
- [50:25]
A
I love that optimism and it's a really compelling vision. Eric, I want to say a big thank you for joining today. It's been a really great conversation and I appreciate your insights.
- [50:34]
B
No, I love it. Yeah, we'll do it again soon. This is fantastic. Thank you to all your listeners. Love it. Sa.