How AI-Ready Leaders Will Replace You: Erik Qualman Explains

Why is adaptability the real superpower for leaders in the digital age? On this episode of Digital Disruption, we’re joined by Erik Qualman, a digital leadership expert, best-selling author, and motivational speaker. Erik is a 5x #1 Bestselling Author and Keynote Speaker who has inspired audiences in over 55 countries and reached 50 million people. Voted the #2 Most Likeable Author in the World behind J. K. Rowling, his work Socialnomics has been featured on 60 Minutes, in The Wall Street Journal, and used by organizations from the National Guard to NASA. A professor of Digital Leadership at Northwestern University, Qualman’s research and courses are studied at 500+ universities worldwide. Through his animation studio, he has partnered with brands like Disney, Oreo, Chase, and Cartier. A former MIT and Harvard edX professor and honorary doctorate recipient, Qualman is also the creator of the bestselling board game Kittycorn. Erik joins Geoff Nielson to break down what it really means to be AI-ready. He reveals why the leaders who know how to leverage AI and adapt fast will replace those who don’t. He explains why AI is overhyped in the short term but underhyped in the long term, and how the most successful leaders of the next decade will blend Flintstones-level human connection with Jetsons-era innovation. Erik explains why adaptability and emotional intelligence (EQ) are the new competitive edge in the age of artificial intelligence. This conversation explores how AI can remove friction, save time, and ironically help us become more human, while also exploring the guardrails needed for responsible tech adoption. Erik also shares lessons from advising some of the world’s top brands including Facebook, Disney, and Sony and explains why the future favors those who fail fast, fail forward, and fail better. In this video: 00:00 Intro 02:00 The “Flintstones First” approach to digital leadership 04:40 How AI helps us become more human 06:15 Winners, losers, and adaptability in the AI era 08:30 Emotional intelligence and leadership in a tech-driven world 11:00 The need for guardrails in AI and social media 13:00 Teaching AI and digital leadership at Northwestern 15:00 How technology is transforming the classroom 17:45 The 70/30 rule: what changes vs. what never will 19:00 Core advice for leaders and digital innovators 21:30 Avoiding hype: testing new tech like AI and Clubhouse 23:00 Lessons from Montblanc and the origins of “Digital Leadership” 25:00 The Disney+ story: digital transformation done right 27:00 Building a culture of “fail fast, fail forward, fail better” 30:00 Balancing the Flintstones and the Jetsons Connect with Erik: Website: https://equalman.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qualman/ X: https://x.com/equalman YouTube: @equalman Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Geoff Nielson?

  Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be sitting down with bestselling 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.

• 0:43Geoff Nielson?

  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?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 1:27Geoff Nielson?

  I want to come back to AI in just a second, but you used a phrase that I haven't heard before that caught my attention, which is Flintstones first, leading Flintstones first. What does that mean?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  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 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 into tech, is really how to deepen relationships.

• 2:07Geoff Nielson?

  I like the argument about bringing us closer and you know AI is a funny one because you know, as I'm sure you do, if you follow the news, like people will say AI will do, you know, you name it, AI will do it for you, right? Like it all, it's pretty close to cleaning your dishes if the news is to be believed. So when 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?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  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 we 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,

• 3:28Speaker 01

  and they've all seemed 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?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  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 the travel. And I literally it saved me close to 50 hours already.

• 4:45Geoff Nielson?

  That's, that's awesome. And by the way, it sounds like you've got a great trip lined up there. 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 know, you as Eric, the, the team lead can save 50 hours of work here and you know, not use a travel at agent or you know, not use whatever traditional resources you'd use to pick your car. Like there's winners and losers here, right? And you know, 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, you know, the, the organizations that are well positioned versus not well positioned. What are, what are some of the qualities they share here?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  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, to have the electricity to do this compute power.

• 6:23Geoff Nielson?

  You you uh you got into my second question there already, but when is adaptability also, you know, the secret sauce for leaders right now, do you think? Like, 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? You know, what does that picture look like?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  I think number one is still your emotional intelligence, your EQ. Ironically, those are my initials, but it's just your emotional intelligence is number one. And then I 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 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, underhyped, 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.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  And I'm bringing my golf clubs. And we live in a gated community. All of a sudden, I realized, whoa, wait, that thing's not gonna be able to open the gate. It 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 eighth and ninth 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 but and most drivers are fine, but there's not a driver that I have to worry about. If I was gonna put my eighth 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.

• 8:11Geoff Nielson?

  So it's it's really interesting because I'm just trying to like marry that in my mind with the comment about emotional, 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,

• 8:38Geoff Nielson?

  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, are, are both of those true? And, and how do we distinguish between those two different worlds?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  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 nanny to be the human.

• 9:18Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, I, I ideally, ideally a human for your, for your 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

• 9:59Geoff Nielson?

  about their emotional intelligence and about their human connection, is there still room for a tool like that? And, and what guardrails would you put around that, you know, that use case?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  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 you, 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 we think about cars first come out, we don't have a seatbelt. But all of a sudden, probably good to have a seatbelt in these things. And then you have kids like probably make it a law that if you're sitting and they're

• 10:53Speaker 01

  under fourteen in the backseat, they have to wear the seatbelt. Okay, so there's always that progress in that window and we're living that right now with social media. Teen suicides, especially with girls way up. And so we're trying to figure out what is the guardrail for that? And that guardrail might be that you have to be sixteen 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. Uh, good luck. And so that happens all the time with technology. That's what, and 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.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  And the students are all really directors or executive 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, it 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.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  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. It's good even to use a calculator for tests. And then other times you're not allowed to use it. So it's really always goes back to that Flintstones and Jetsons piece. Uh, a lot of the stuff that we wrestle with is new from a standpoint of the technology's new, but the, the, the constructs are the same.

• 12:45Geoff Nielson?

  So what's the, what's the case for not having AI, not teaching AI, not using AI in the classroom? And, and you know, do you buy that case? Or where do you stand on it as a teacher?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  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 it out, well, there's sometimes to keep it out of the classroom. Cause there's some studies out of 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 gotta 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.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  And then like a hot knife through butter. Once you let them use AI, all of a sudden it's a lot easier.

• 13:47Geoff Nielson?

  Well, 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, you know, is it better or worse? And what kind of lessons have you taken away and around how you, how you teach now versus 10 years ago?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  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 of the answer. So then it's more peer to peer learning. Now, at the same time, what's interesting? As 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

• 15:16Speaker 01

  the world for a week. They get a 15 week credit because it's eight to six. 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, because 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. Couple of days later, former student had us to the Shed Aquarium. If you've ever been to Chicago, amazing aquarium. So they show us, how do they

• 16:01Speaker 01

  attract people to the aquarium using digital analytics? 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 Jets. And 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 if you're 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

• 16:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 17:03Geoff Nielson?

  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 know, than Jetsons there, right? It's, it's getting out into the world and, you know, trip oriented.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  The Jetsons could go on and there's 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 them two gorillas, just he'd made it within an hour. Two gorillas, Hawaiian shirts with the rub from the 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,

• 18:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:27Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. So, you know, I'm, 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?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  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 gotta think bigger. This could be bigger. And then I'll give an example, like, It'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,

• 19:39Speaker 01

  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 bytes. 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.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  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 gonna work, what's not gonna 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 in Clubhouse.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Well, it lasted like a month, right? Yeah. Or these glasses or Google Plus, whatever that was called. Guy Kausak, he wrote a book. I'm like, what? I guess maybe this is bigger than the thing 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 to this, 2003, we think everyone's gonna 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.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  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.

• 21:17Geoff Nielson?

  Right, right. No, it it makes sense. And and just the value, it sounds like of like dipping a toe in, seeing if something's really working, rather than going all in on, you know, the latest thing.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:30Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Um, yeah.

• 21:32Geoff Nielson?

  Go ahead.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  No, I was thinking too, is 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 bring 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, so as they say in France. I'm like, all right, well, hold on. That's where

• 22:20Speaker 01

  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, 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, this is like, okay, guys, we gotta develop a website first, and this is going to be painful because you're going to tell all your retailers that now you're going to sell directly

• 23:06Speaker 01

  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 gotta 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 if you're sitting there.

• 23:38Geoff Nielson?

  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,

• 23:49Geoff Nielson?

  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, you know, dimension to it is. Is that true? And if that is true, how do you typically recommend that organizations tackle it? Who, who, 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?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's 100% true. And who needs to be at the table? He needs to start at the top. So that doesn't mean that your CEO needs to be programming your social media strategy, your AI strategy. What that means is you're not saying a question like, what's our AI strategy?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  The question is, what is our strategy? And how do we help our customer? Let's say it's a B to C company. Our customer, how do we move, how do we create? So basically, let's start first principle. Instead of going from A to Z, A to Z company would say like, okay, AI, how are we going to implement it? Cause 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.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  They have a challenge or a new opportunity, they flip it and go to Z, which for every company is going to be creating a smile for their 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 if we're going to fail, let's do it fast. And let's fail forward. That means we're going to 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.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  So that's the companies that that'll win. A good example of that is.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  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 helped them develop the script and then we, we animated it 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,

• 26:49Speaker 01

  but it'd be helpful if you came down and kind of join 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 is, 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.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  A lot of us probably listening have paid 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 picture in front of Cinderella's castle? Every hand goes up. All right.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  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 gotta 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? Is that going to cause issues for the professional? I go, what would you expect as a parent? As Disney, what's your expectations? They go, you could probably take it in the same location. Okay. Then what would your expectation be if you asked the professional photographer? Do you mind taking it with our phone?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  What would your expectation be for the brand you built at Disney? Did 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's you think that mom and dad from Nebraska are thinking? When your photographer says no?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  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 fun 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, and going from there.

• 29:59Geoff Nielson?

  It's, 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 know, you, you kind of gloss over it and you make it sound so simple. Oh, I just asked a few questions and they got to the right conclusion. But you know, I'm sure you've also been in meetings where they get to the wrong conclusion as a participant in some sort. And, 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 like implicit, like almost like a smile test. Like, is this going to make my customers smile? Is, is that right? Or like, what's your sort of methodology for coming up with the decision that isn't

• 30:41Geoff Nielson?

  just like, don't use AI in the classroom or isn't the classically backwards decision?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's two things. It's, it's what I discussed a little bit earlier. It's looking for history for a guide. Cause 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 as a guide. So that'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 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.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Or if it's in the moment, I remember late nineties, 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 their 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.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  That's what I found really helpful with working with any folks is trying to figure out a common sense approach to 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 going to be in business. The reason you're in business is you're creating a smile.

• 32:21Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Even if you're a tax accountant, you, 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.

• 32:45Geoff Nielson?

  So there's one more nuance that I want to talk through because I think it like, it can be a sticking point for some people. You, you mentioned earlier, like the importance of boldness. And I don't want to, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that there's some level of boldness required in this decision because you, I mean, you talked about that 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 Mont Blanc, they're saying we've got, we've got, there's somebody losing money if we go digital.

• 33:25Geoff Nielson?

  And I'm, I'm categorizing all this as digital. So, you know, it, 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, you know, holding the bag of like, well, I was the, you know, I was the photographer leader and suddenly over a year, like that's God, it's Disney. It's got to be probably like, you know, over a million bucks just for that one castle.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:53Geoff Nielson?

  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.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. No, that 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. So then it became tricky because you're trying to guess what the return is for being the most Instagram place on the planet.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  So in those instances, I don't know, I was only in that meeting, so I don't know. They eventually went with it.

• 34:37Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  But let's say in that example, it could be, I'm a big fan of beta tests. So you know, you're, you gotta go into these, that's what we teach at Northwestern as well. Who's gonna 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 it 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 we're 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 contentious, 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 situations, so if we're to use the Disney example,

• 35:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:28Geoff Nielson?

  Poor Paris.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna test out of 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, hey, we're just gonna 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 gonna lose, I'm not gonna say the number, the millions of dollars on the photography, they've got to understand that their goal gets reset. Hey, this marketing's gonna benefit. Or the turnstile is gonna benefit because there are more visitors because people are exposed to it via Instagram and see how exciting the new Star Wars ride is, everyone's gonna want to go because of Instagram.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  And so that department's gonna benefit, but my department, which had this, all this revenue from the photos, is gonna take a hit. So we've got to reset the goals and be fair about this though.

• 36:26Geoff Nielson?

  It makes, it makes complete sense.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:28Geoff Nielson?

  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, uh, makes complete sense.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:38Geoff Nielson?

  Um, you know, 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, what are you hearing any bad advice right now? Like, are you seeing anything in the news? Or is there anything people are talking about that you're like, yeah, that sounds trendy, but like, I don't really think that's gonna take off?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  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,

• 37:45Speaker 01

  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 wanna change your career, I always tell people, look, you could become an expert on AI,

• 38:30Speaker 01

  because this stuff's so new. If you dig into it 24/7, you're gonna know more than 99% of the people in the world. And so if it's of 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 wanna change your career and you're passionate about this stuff, then those are the winners as well. So. AI is not going to take your job, but some of the notes how to use AI is going to take your job.

• 39:05Geoff Nielson?

  Well, 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, the value of jobs.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  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

• 39:30Speaker 01

  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 and now they're pervasive and they're not perfect. Like

• 40:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 40:30Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, it, it, it makes complete sense. And yeah, I like the, I like the framing of it. And, and you know, 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?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Or like email or chatbots have a bad name because they're not used correctly. Email is great if you use it well. Just like chatbots are great if you use them well. So for example, if I have an AI chatbot at my hotel, the thing's amazing if it's executing properly. You're still gonna have the concierge, but if I just wanna know what time's the gym open? Oh, it's 24/7? Great. Or can you book a, just typing in, can you book a rest, the reservation at the restaurant for me? Absolutely. Here you go. Or what floor is the grand ballroom on? Oh, it's on the third floor. Here's how you get there. Then there's other people that wanna 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 gotta understand that

• 41:39Speaker 01

  there's still that concierge probably there. They might not have five concierge, because now you've given them scale with a chatbot concierge that hopefully is functioning well. It's funny, I wanted to know their examples, and whoever's been to Sea Island, Georgia, there's a lot of speaking events there, so speaking there. And at the cloisters, and I was just seeing 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 7:00. Then I talked to a person at the front desk, and they said it opens at 8:00. So I'm like, woo, which one's gonna be right?

• 42:15Geoff Nielson?

  And?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  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. It doesn't know that answer, cuz that's just, it was programmed incorrectly.

• 42:36Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, but it speaks to, 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, you know, reliably, that's extended service, or do you value that, you know, human connection? And it's, 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, that case is a perfect case why you still may wanna have a human you talk to, right?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you want both. I mean, and so that's not that you're increasing the cost. Like I said, it probably reduces the concierge staff down.

• 43:20Geoff Nielson?

  Right.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  And so it's trying to figure out what's, most of us want, in most instances, kind of both.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  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, it goes to different departments. But if like Tony Shay before he passed away, his thing was all about, well, I was sitting there talking with him. I'm 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. They're, we're in the business of not shoes. We're in the business of customer service. I go, what do you, what do you mean by that? He goes, well, I looked at our marketing budgets, 40 million. I go, what would happen 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,

• 44:14Speaker 01

  it really judges, it's a, it's a universal tool, allows you to compare yourself, what your customer service levels are to other people, not only in your market, other people that sell shoes. So, or other markets like cruise lines, for example. And so he goes, it 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 dollars over, I go, if they want to talk to you on the phone about where's the best place to get pizza in Vegas? Cause that's where Zappos was headquartered, then stay on the phone with that person. Cause I know that's my new marketing. It's gonna be that word of mouth that we go above and beyond for the customer.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  And that's better money spent than the 40 million I was gonna spend on traditional marketing and digital marketing. Is that I moved that over, because I think that's the new marketing. That was his, I'm 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.

• 45:24Geoff Nielson?

  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.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 46:04Geoff Nielson?

  Nice.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  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 was writing a book at the time. I go, well, unless you say I was okay for me to put what's on that board. And then I 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.

• 46:23Geoff Nielson?

  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 2030 or beyond, you know, what's kind of the Erik Qualman version of what the future looks like? Like, what are the big things long term that you think we're going to see that are different from, you know, how things are running right now?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  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,

• 47:12Speaker 01

  20 years ago, I was at these things called Google dances. It's a 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 page 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 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.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  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 2 o'clock appointment. You need to leave now. You know, you probably were gonna leave in 10 minutes like you normally did 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.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  So that if I have a kid and I also need this will and testament, before it was just me. I didn't care. But now it's like, whoa, I actually need to put out this will. Who's this gonna go to? Now I'm just starting from point A, zero, ground zero. I don't know anything about a will. I gotta figure out, is there a lawyer that's gonna help me? Am I gonna do it through a legal Zoom? What's, how do I do this? But again, proactively, your agent's gonna be able to do that for you. They'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 gonna cost this, if it costs anything at all. So a lot of that underwriting's going away. Those are some of the losers right now. A lot of that simple underwriting's going away.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  And so that's what gets me excited. Or let's think about your smart home. Hey, a pipe just burst. We're 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 thing's 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

• 50:07Speaker 01

  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.

• 50:24Geoff Nielson?

  I love that optimism and it's a, 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.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  No, I love it. Yeah, we'll do it again soon. This is fantastic. Thank you to all your listeners. Love it.