Leadership in the Age of AI: Turning Fear into Opportunity with Scott Wright

You're talking about rolling out a cutting-edge AI tool poised to revolutionize the way you do business. But instead of applause from your team, you're met with worried looks, whispered fears, and a team that's suddenly disengaged. Employees are asking, what does this mean for my job? And am I being replaced? This isn't just a morale issue. It's a big, expensive problem. Fear and uncertainty around AI can lead to talent loss, plummeting productivity, and a toxic culture that stifles growth. How can you navigate this shift ensuring that your team feels empowered and your business stays competitive in the age of AI? And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, a podcast that challenges Small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode! I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And today, my guest is the AI Culture Guy, Scott Wright. Today, we will be pulling back the curtain on how AI is reshaping the workplace and uncovering what leaders need to do to keep their teams engaged, motivated, and thriving in the face of rapid change. My one request for you today is to please, please, please make sure that you subscribe to this podcast and please make sure that you share it with your circle. I'd love to see the business community really supporting the work that I've been doing all these years. And it's entirely free. So, we all know running a business is no walk in the park, especially when the ground beneath you is shifting faster than ever before. And that shift, it's called AI. Sure, artificial intelligence promises efficiency and innovation. But what nobody tells you is how it's quietly shaking the foundations of your workplace culture. It's hurting your team's morale and your ability to retain top talent. With this being so brand new, your team is probably like most, ill-equipped to adapt, both emotionally and skill-wise. And you're not just facing a tech upgrade issue. No, you're staring down a big, expensive business problem. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, are you prepared to keep your employees aligned and engaged in a rapidly changing AI-driven workplace? Or are cracks already starting to show? I'd really love to hear your thoughts, your fears, and your light bulb moments. So, go ahead and share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. Put your comments down and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, today we are joined by somebody who's not just ahead of the curve. He's practically bending it all on his own. Scott Wright, known as the AI Culture Guy, is an expert at helping organizations navigate the cultural and operational shifts brought on by AI and emerging technologies. With a background that spans engineering, business, cybersecurity, and even CEO-level leadership, Scott brings a unique blend of technical expertise and people-focused strategy to the table. He's worked across industries empowering teams to adapt to change while building cultures that thrive under pressure. As AI becomes a game changer and sometimes a stressor for workplaces everywhere, Scott is here to share actionable insights on how leaders can really guide their teams to not just survive but thrive in this new era. Scott, welcome to the show. It is so great to have you today.

Thanks so much, Marc. It's just a pleasure to be here.

Before we dig into today's topic, could you tell us a little bit about how you serve your clients right now?

Yeah, basically I just like to help organizations create what I call an AI-ready culture. And what that means is looking forward and saying, you know, it's easy for people to say, oh, you just need to envision what's going to happen after AI is adopted throughout your organization. And for me, that's a little too big a chunk for people to really be able to absorb. So what I like to do is help people sit down and think through what they're going to see in the future. And it's not actually that hard.

Yeah, so from your perspective then, I mean, this is such a huge topic. So from your perspective, what is the biggest challenge organizations face when introducing AI into the workplace? Because there are a ton of fears around it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one thing is it's really hard for any individual to envision how their job might change. You know, like they think AI is just gonna come in and do everything. It's not gonna do everything, certainly not right away. But there's definitely a methodology that we can use to help people envision what it is likely to look like because AI is used in a number of different ways. As we know, there are chatbots. We've all heard of ChatGPT and, you know, your favorite one might be Copilot or Gemini or Claude. You know, there's so many of them now and it's not just a fad anymore. People think, you know, in a lot of businesses I see management going, well, let's just wait this out and see what happens. But if you do that, it's going to actually bite you. So, I think the biggest challenge is just getting on top of it and being ready to say, okay, where do we start?

Yeah. Now I can imagine that there's some part of the audience right now thinking all they heard was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So why don't we define what artificial intelligence is? Because it's actually been around since the 1980s in some form or another, right?

Oh yeah. I mean, it started out, you know, there were all kinds of promises made in the '70s and '80s about how artificial intelligence was going to, you know, take over everything. But it's evolved and there are different aspects of it. We don't have to get into technical details, but it's gone by different names. You know, we had expert systems for a while and then there's deep learning. And if you hear all this stuff, what it really means is the ability to predict what someone's going to need and provide that kind of processing or information or even control as needed. And we're really just being modeled. The artificial intelligence aspect of this is to try and model how our brains work. And it's not going to be perfect. And it certainly isn't going to evolve the same way ours did, but there is a lot of power there. In fact, one of the things that I know is, you know, commonly said by experts. So for example, Dario Amodei, who's one of the founders of Anthropic, which is the company that runs Claude, He says in 5 to 10 years, it's likely that most of our jobs, parts of them at least, will be done 10 to 100 times faster than they are now. So when you can imagine something like that, you say, wow, okay, that's a little different than what I was thinking. Somebody's just going to come in and replace my job. It's how does it impact certain parts of my job? So we actually have to help people pick their jobs apart a little bit and say, What parts of those things will AI actually be able to help?

Yeah. And so, you know, I do, do know that there are some people out there who are like so anti-AI, but we've been using AI for decades. I mean, it used to be that when you called a company, it went to a switchboard and somebody had said, yeah, I'd like to speak to John Smith in accounting. And they say, one minute please, I'll connect you. And then they'd go and do their switchboard magic. And then before you know it, another phone would ring and he would answer the phone and you'd have your conversation. And now we have AI doing that for us by saying, if you'd like to speak to John, please press 2. If you'd like to speak to Peter, please press 3. If you'd like to—

right?

And so that is a form of artificial intelligence because it kind of gives us the option to make choices and it responds effectively. Is that fair?

Yeah.

I mean, I think a lot of the people on the leading edge of AI would say that's a very, very simple, you know, capability that we could just say it's software, it's programming. I can program a telephone system to ask you something and make a choice and Mm-hmm. But there may be elements of artificial intelligence where it may know who's calling, what their status is as a customer, and saying, okay, so it's likely they're going to want to talk about the next, the last piece of software they bought from us and maybe our latest promotion. And it will start to route things because of the knowledge that it actually has more than just being able to make some conditional decisions. So there's a lot more complexity that's being taken care of within these more advanced systems. And it's so complex, it's almost hard to imagine. And that's why I don't like to go into the technology of it too much. So it's really more about looking at ways we can help people just deal with the actual reality. And that is, am I going to be asked to do things that I don't want to do? Well, that's possible. But first, how do we actually get there? What is it going to be? What is my particular job going to look like in the future? And that's really all we need to do to start with. We don't have to get into the technology at all.

So why is AI adoption not just a technological issue, but a cultural and people issue as well?

That's a really good question because AI is very good at conceptual management and processing. That means something that is made up, you know, in our minds, or a good example is software, right? Everything that we develop as software is done conceptually. We can code things, we can set up algorithms that say, how should this be done? What decisions should be made? And because it's all conceptual, it could almost all be done to some extent by an artificial intelligence. Whereas compared to something that deals with the real world, maybe a police officer doing a patrol, Out in the streets. You know, that's not something that AI can do on its own. It needs help. And so there will be aspects of jobs that have to interface with the real world. And that's where there's going to be a lot more value in what we do is helping the AI and working together with the AI in order to provide better value. So when you imagine that some part of your job is going to be done 10 to 100 times faster than it is today, What's that going to do? Well, it's likely to free up a little bit of time. First of all, if the most time-consuming part of my job is conceptual and can be done with the help of AI, then I can be more productive. I could do a lot more things in a day or in a week or in a month than I was before. What am I going to do with that time? Is the business going to say, well, we're just going to crank out more widgets? Or is it going to say, let's start thinking a little higher level, create more value, look for new opportunities?

Yeah.

To open new business lines and put people to work at a more strategic level. And this is not really new because I've been saying for a few years, you know, as we automate people's jobs or outsource people's jobs, the role of the humans and the individuals in the organization become more valuable. We can leverage their knowledge because now the simple things that can be done by automation are being done and it gives people more time. A good example of that would be the publishing, printing and publishing business. You know, 500 years ago, when somebody wanted to publish a book, they would have to think about it. They would have to write it out, you know, with whatever ink, uh, quills and, and whatever, and they'd make mistakes. So then they'd have to do edits on it and create a new version of it. And eventually they'd get a nice copy. And then, oh, guess we've got to copy a bunch of these for people to read, right? So that was a very, very manually intensive, labor-intensive process.

Yep.

But then along came the printing press, and all of a sudden you could say, well, I can take this good copy and have many thousands of copies made very quickly. And now that gives me more time to just think about the concepts and writing. And then you think about typewriters. Now I don't have to think about writing with a quill anymore. I can actually just use a typewriter and it becomes much faster. And then comes word processing. So I don't even have to send the type from the typewriter. I can just send a file. And now we're at a point where you can publish a blog post in seconds. You know, if you think about it, you can just use your mind, write, and it's published. So, it's an analogy like that that I would like people to think about for every job and say, what parts of my job could be made more efficient, more quickly done, and allow me to spend more time on higher-value tasks? And that's what we need to help people understand in the future going forward. Yes, we're actually going to do some parts of the things that they do now. Maybe it's parts that they enjoy doing, but hopefully we're going to find better value, more rewarding things for them to do than the menial stuff that the AI will do.

So, in your experiences, do you think that there— do leaders have any misconceptions about how AI will impact their teams? Do they— is there any kind of myth-busting we need to do there?

Well, I think it's often the case, especially, I think, especially on the technology side, because that's where it's getting adopted first, right? The business teams, the technology teams are going to say, I want this technology so that we can be more productive and be leading edge and be competitive. But they treat everyone as being sort of interchangeable. And what we know from a lot of studies is people's personality types are different. And so, if you don't respect what the perception of people are when they hear about how things might change, we're actually Kind of discounting or disregarding the fears that they might have, and that's not good. So, we really have to look at how they will react and what we can do to put a positive spin on what we're doing because they have to be bought in in order for them to cooperate and for us to not have a drop in morale. So, we really need to be able to paint the picture of why we're doing this, how it's going to benefit the business, how it's going to benefit the employees, and create a better environment for us. And there are an endless number of possibilities that are being, you know, discovered and explained in terms of how things will change, everything from biology to neuroscience, to economics, to governance, to even how our workforces are changing. And part of this will be HR teams using AI themselves to do things like HR planning, compliance training, reporting, performance reviews. All these things eventually will be impacted by AI, but we have to look at how are we going to keep that as a positive to help people understand the benefits that we're seeking. Yes, there are going to be risks. There are going to be things that people fear, maybe with justification, but really we're going to be able to try if we start early enough. to mitigate those risks and help people all get on the same page.

Yeah. So, you mentioned the fear component of it. You know, I think as leaders, I think we need to be hugely sensitive to the pulse of our teams. What behaviors or attitudes among the employees can be there to be able to signal fear or resistance to AI? What should leaders be on the lookout for?

Well, certainly, there could be, you know, people, if they start to realize or even guess that AI is going to be a threat to them. They're going to stop cooperating. They're going to stop participating in tasks that, you know, and it may be a bit of passive-aggressive. It's not like they're rebelling necessarily, although they might, but it might just be higher absenteeism or, you know, missing meetings and things like that. So those are some of the clues you might see of people who are not so hot on the idea, but certainly it's also good to watch for the champions, the people who say, this is cool. I can envision how this is actually going to help our organization. And you want to foster that and help them spread the word of how this is going to be a good thing for the organization.

I guess it's really no different than other change management scenarios where— because people are fearful of change, right?

It's true.

And often that comes from internal change in politics, right? A new leadership comes in and changes strategy. And of course, the HR teams are relatively familiar with that kind of situation and how to deal with it. But what's less familiar are the external forces that come and act on the organization. That's where I got into cybersecurity, you know, 10 years ago, realizing that things are going to change here now that the internet is, you know, causing everything to go online and attackers are finding it much easier to, you know, launch phishing or social engineering scams. And now it's a daily thing in the news that we're trying to battle. And that's where I created my last business was based on cybersecurity And phishing and social engineering attacks that impact people. And that actually not only impacts the culture, but having a strong culture, if you're ready for it, really reduces the amount of incidents and losses that occur because of it.

Mm-hmm.

And so, what I see now with AI is another wave of change that's coming externally that are forcing people to think about how are we going to deal with this? It's not just an internal change of management and change of strategy. Everybody, I like to think of it kind of like an analogy of back in the Middle Ages when a lot of commerce was done on the ocean and you're using sailing ships to conduct trade. And so everybody on their ships gets really good at trimming the sails and making sure they all know their job so that the sailing goes smoothly. And when a storm comes along or the wind changes, everybody sort of knows what to do. But what happens when a major disruption comes? Maybe a steamship invention comes out and all of a sudden your competitors are now using much faster boats. You know, you've got to get ahead of that. You've got to decide, how is this going to impact the skills I need? I need some people that can operate steamships. So it's been the kind of change that's happened over centuries and millennia really, but now it happens much faster. And so this is where we really have to start thinking more ahead.

I love that. And, you know, the more you say that, you know, I was thinking about the, the invention of the automobile, right? I mean, What did, what did it take to support masses and massive masses of horses on the road with carts and without carts? And, you know, what did you need to support that kind of infrastruc— what infrastructure do you need to, to create that? And all of a sudden the automobile comes around. You no longer need, you know, people on the streets to shovel poop. You don't need horseshoers. You don't, right? And, but, but in itself, it created a whole new industry of stuff as well. And so I also see that in many different changes.

Even going back to the days of hunter-gatherers, you know, you couldn't have— it goes back to meaning, you know, people are saying, you know, will work still have meaning when we have AI doing everything for us? And it's a good question, but look to the hunter-gatherer, you know, times when it would have been hard for them to imagine a world where you didn't actually go out and have to hunt your food every day. They find other things that they can do that bring more value to their lives.

Yes.

And so that's the way we're actually going to be moving.

So, I'd like to start talking a little bit about some strategies about how leaders can start working with their teams to really kind of alleviate some of the fear and the hesitation around AI. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back. I am speaking with the AI Culture Guy, Scott Wright. Scott, we are really talking about a huge challenge here. I mean, we talked about— we tie it to Other change management things. But really the idea around this idea that is gonna affect the teams as they work right now, you know, and I recall, like, I remember getting into bookkeeping when we're still running ledgers and we're still flipping through ledgers and so on. And then, you know, like, Acctpack came out or Simply Accounting came out and it just kind of simplified everything and made things so much easier in the long run. And to your point, we no longer need to take hours and hours and hours just to process a day's worth of receipts. Now we don't need to have clerks in every corner of the office with, with their pencils and, and making sure things are accurate. We can trust technology to a certain degree. When it comes to AI and we shake this, this ball, this, this, uh, snowball of, of opportunities, what are some of the things that you're seeing as far as how we alleviate the fear and kind of expose the world to the opportunities?

Yeah, I mean, the fear is a symptom of the fact that people don't have knowledge, right, about what's really happening, a lack of transparency. And I think I heard your call with Chris Dyer talking about transparency and how that can be really effective to talk with employees about, you know, whether it's your financial results or your strategic plans. Sometimes those are too sensitive to share when it's early, but as soon as it's possible for you to start sharing the vision, that's when you can get people on board. And that's when you can adopt those champions. who can all of a sudden say, yeah, I'm not just at the top of the ladder here telling people what to do. I understand why we're trying to do this, and I can see how this is going to benefit not only the business, but the employees, the customers, all of that. So it really comes down to having a clear vision, having good communication with people, and providing people with the tools that they need. And that's part of the process, I think, we need to dig into a little bit. I think I have been working on a formula that will, I think, make a lot of sense to people. It starts out with what we call the comparative advantage. And that's a term that has been used within AI, but it really just means those parts of your job that can be done more quickly by AI. And if you were to take your job and say, what's one task that you do in a day that takes a long time? And say, maybe there are parts of that job that AI could do faster. And if I could do that faster, that changes the whole look of what that job really is. And so we have to map out in a larger, higher-level sense, certain types of jobs, whether it's accounting or software development or customer support, what those phases of the jobs are that are going to change because of AI. So that comparative advantage mapping is really important because That will help us create categories of change that we will need to address. And then once we've done that—

go ahead, sorry, Marc.

Yeah, so I just— because doing the comparative analysis is really a cool idea, but what happens if the leaders aren't sure what AI can do for them? Because a lot of it is we get exposed to it in little snippets of maybe there's an app, maybe there's a piece of software, and maybe we don't have clarity over, you know, what is it that we're doing day to day that could be replaced by something that's AI so that we could start taking the brilliance that we've hired and get them really to apply their superpowers in a more productive way. How do leaders start uncovering kind of some of the opportunities that are out there without falling into, hey, there's a squirrel, let's go for that, or the next shiny object?

Yeah, it definitely takes discipline, right? So, I mean, we do need to— once we've mapped out what each task looks like in terms of the phases and parts of it that take certain amounts of time, we can have people with some AI knowledge and understanding to say that type of task can be done a lot faster. And once we start identifying which tasks can be done more quickly, that's where we're going to say, okay, that means we're going to spend more time on these other tasks that are higher value. So it will take some insights from AI experts, And so, if you look at any AI transformation project that's, you know, in your roadmap right now, it'll have technology expenditures, it'll have planning, but it'll also have implementation, consulting and implementation expenditures. So that'll mean, how do we analyze what parts of this we actually need? And it's those people who understand what the AI your organization is going to use will be doing. And then you can translate that, take their output and say, okay, that means these tasks are going to change. Now, we want to try and get ahead of that curve to some extent, so we can make some educated guesses on the types of tasks that are likely to be accelerated by AI before we get the official word from the technology consultants who say, here's how this is actually going to change your job role.

Yeah. And so, having said that, while we're on the conversation about hiring outside help, how can people get in touch with you? If this is really resonating. Look at me jump on the opportunity.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, Scott Wright, and I do a lot of posts, so you should see me there. I do a lot on cybersecurity, but I'm very passionate now about AI. In fact, I'm on a podcast called the Shared Security Podcast we've been doing since 2009. So you'll find me doing a lot of posts around cybersecurity and shared security, things like that. So, LinkedIn is probably my preferred place to meet up and connect. But you can also get me at scott@aicultureguy.com.

Wonderful. And we'll put the link in the show notes as well. So, you're talking about your— this is your workforce vision model that you're talking about, right? We have this idea of being able to do kind of an audit of competencies and capacity. And then we have the next step. What comes in after that?

Yeah. Keeping it on the employee perspective is really important because you can easily draft a logical cycle that says, here are all the things we do after we do that competence mapping and things like that. We have to look at what we call reflective value generation. It's a new term I've made up because that's where we use the creativity of the people in your organization. And we say, this is where they're going to be able to add value. And that's the first thing we want to do is make sure people know they're going to be able to add value, add more value than they're adding now. And beyond that, we want to go to the next step, which is really what we call affirming and alignment, which means we want to tell people, you know what, you do have the skills we're going to need for implementing this new AI vision. And there are some skills you're going to have to brush up on or that we need you to acquire. All right. And so that's basically communicating with the employees early on about where their strengths will be seen and where they may have to make some changes. Then it can go on to say, if we really want to look at the functional capabilities, we can start mapping out where do we want to add training? Where will we need to actually hire people? Because we have nobody that can do these things. And what I call the functional flow part of it. And then we'll look at the training and support implementation. So, all of this, you know, comes much before the training itself. We have to start communicating with employees, providing that vision, and reducing the amount of fear, as you say, so that people will buy in and that we will— if we understand that someone really isn't going to be a fit, we need to let them know early on and be able to help them either adjust or find something else to move to. Rather than just saying, oh, guess what? We're turning on the AI system and we don't need you anymore. That's kind of the worst way to do it.

Yeah. Or we're bringing on the AI system. We just need you to hang around a little bit until we get everything settled, and then you can start seeking your happiness elsewhere. Yeah, because I think that's part of the challenge as well, right? It's like when people bring in, you know, their boss, you get a brand new boss and it's like, hey Steve, I love the fact that, you know, you're such a good employee. We're bringing in a new boss. Can you please train him? And then, the employee right away goes to, I have to train somebody who's gonna be managing me? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, or firing me eventually.

Right.

And so, that's the same challenge with the AI stuff. I really love that you focused on that idea about capacity building, about this idea that we can transition people by investing in our people and getting them trained and finding out this is a perfect opportunity I think for leaders to be working within their teams and figuring out what the passion points are within the team because as you evolve, you're going to be evolving people outside of their current job descriptions.

Yes, absolutely. And, you know, people have a vision in their mind of what their job will look like in 5 to 10 years.

Right.

But everybody is going to have to realize that things are changing very, very quickly. You know, that 5 to 10-year horizon when parts of your job are going to get done 10 to 100 times faster is coming very quickly.

And now it's 5 years, then it's 3 years, then it's like overnight, like overnight we're seeing changes in the marketplace every single day. It's absolutely really incredible.

Yeah. So what I recommend actually is that people start just doing a bit of reading on this. And this is something that they can get from me if they connect with me. I'm putting together a resource package to start thinking about what will it look like in the next 5 to 10 years as far as HR and AI culture. So, where can you learn, you know, without the hype, what things will be shaping up as? You know, how many different types of AI are going to exist in this organization? A lot of people imagine, you know, there'll be this big machine or something plunked down in the middle of the organization, and it's going to do every aspect of everybody's job. That's not the way it's going to work. There's going to be dozens or hundreds of different AI engines doing different things, and they're going to need to be coordinated. They're not all going to know how to talk to each other. That's where the human aspect of things will be needed, at least for a while, until the AIs learn how to talk to each other. And then we'll have to go up another level and say, how else can we provide more strategic value?

Yeah. And so a lot of what you're talking about is kind of like the repetitive kind of technical stuff. But the one thing that I imagine that will never ever go away is the need for the human touch. At being able to talk to another human being, even though there's some pretty good AIs out there that when you talk to them on the telephone, you don't know they're AI. It's pretty, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

There's some really ridiculous extremes you can go to and say, well, now we have all this automated outbound sales messaging, right? What if I set up an automated inbound bot that just manages all the incoming email? Right. And eventually everybody's email will be done automatically and you won't be doing any email anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'd like to get into some challenges that leaders face when they're trying to get their teams on side and some cautionaries and pitfalls. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I hope you are getting a ton of value from today's episode. As you can tell, Scott and I are on a mission to support businesses just like yours. So, if you belong to an organization that could use our help, or you or somebody you know might be planning a leadership retreat or a conference and you'd like us to talk more about this topic today, We'd love to explore how we could be of service to you and your people. You know, it's really interesting, you know, this because the magic of it all, and I call it magic just because I sit with my mom who's 90 and I expose her to a little bit of what this is all about. And she just thinks it's magical. It's like, like, it's like, who's typing this stuff in or who's making it up and how do they know all this? But, but at the same token, you know, her big fear is the fact that, you know, isn't it going to cause more fraud? Isn't it going to be Giving people the opportunity to start ripping other people off and that sort of thing. And those fears themselves, I mean, you have the internal fear within the confines of an organization, but just the kind of, you know, if there's computers taking over for human beings, where does that leave humanity?

For sure. I mean, I think we're a long way from having, you know, robot overlords that tell us what we're going to do. But You're absolutely right. And this, you know, is something I spent a lot of time in my cybersecurity world talking about, you know, things like deepfake audio and deepfake video where attackers, cyber attackers who used to use just a phishing email can now get people to— they may, you may get a voicemail message that sounds like your boss. It sounds exactly like your boss asking you to go buy gift cards.

Yes.

Right.

And you're absolutely right. It's going to be hard for people to figure out who to trust. And that's a whole other podcast talking about trust.

Yeah.

But one of the things that I think that we will start to see is that a lot of projects, AI projects being done within an organization, may be led by a technical leader. And that is something you got to watch out for because the technical leaders don't really appreciate, you know, the personality differences and all of the other things that we need to be sensitive to in the culture side. And they might actually start to see the people as being a bottleneck to the progress of this initiative, whereas the people are actually what's going to make it successful.

Yeah, well, it's interesting that you say that because I was talking to a gentleman who is developing, um, EV technology, and he says right now, he says the biggest challenge to safety of electric vehicle, autonomous electric vehicles right now, the biggest challenge is that there's human beings on the road. If you were—

he's—

they've even done like a— they've taken all the accidents that have happened with an electric autonomous electric vehicle, and they've actually calculated that in North America alone, if we just converted all the cars to automated cars, we would have 125,000 less accidents that affect human life.

Wow.

If we let the cars take over. But we still have people constantly in the grind. And so that in itself, when you have a low-trust environment and fear, will lead to things like sabotage. Maybe it's not— nobody's talking about blowing up the computer, but maybe there's certain behaviors human beings will start to elicit, certain behaviors that will push initiatives and slow initiatives down. And so, how do leaders recognize some of that?

Yeah, that's actually very similar to what I have been speaking a lot about in the area of insider threats. You know, it's basically the threat from the inside, which isn't necessarily, as you said, somebody violently attacking. It could be from various different mechanisms and different motivations, right? Sometimes people are motivated more by the fact that they're either being extorted, you know, maybe Somebody has, maybe they owe some gambling debts or something like that, or they have some mental health issues. There are many things that drive people's behavior that could lead them to sabotage or cause some disruption that we don't really imagine. So, it's hard to imagine what people might do. And that is something from a security point of view that management actually needs to understand as well, is the potential for insider threats. From various different things that are not necessarily overtly malicious.

Right. And it's just human behavior, right? It's people just trying to—

Exactly.

But it's no different than when a new person comes into your team where people want to protect their kind of placement in the world and they want to be able to continue to affect their role in the world. And then when something comes in that challenges that, it can be really challenging and they might sabotage that. And again, Not overtly malicious, but maybe just precautionary, or it could just be a way for me to communicate.

Just looking out for their best interests, right?

Yes, to secure my best interests.

That's the culture part of it. That's the culture part of it because people, if they don't believe the business is acting in a way that is in their interest, they're going to diverge. Their goals will diverge from what the organization's goals are. And so, that's why it's so important to make sure that we are transparent with employees about our goals and what are we trying to do with the business? How are we trying to grow and how do we need employees to help us do that? And if you're going to trick or deceive employees just so that they can stay around long enough for you to get the AI systems running, don't think that's going to end well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so for those tuning in, when they think about this and they're thinking about, yes, I should kind of figure out how I'm going to bring AI into my team, what kind of cautionaries and pitfalls should they be aware of?

Yeah. I mean, one of them is that, uh, you know, the technology leadership, you know, might not fully appreciate the cultural aspect of what we're doing. And so, that means HR needs to speak up. They need to participate. They need to be asking to be part of that project to understand early on how it's being done, what the motivations are so they can start working on the communication and strategy for educating staff and upskilling staff. One of the stats that I've heard is that, I think it was World Economic Forum says that 44% of workers' skills will need to be updated because of AI in the next 5 years. So that's 6 in 10, or sorry, not 6 in 10, but— 4 in 10. Something like that. We'll need to be looking very soon at How those people will need to be retrained.

Right.

And that means we've got to set their minds with an expectation that there's something coming that in order for them to stay relevant and valuable, which we want them to be, here's the opportunity we have. So, that's one pitfall. The other is that, as I mentioned before, personality types need to be considered. Some employees will feel uncomfortable with the pace of change. And that's where we have to reassure them that this is being done in a controlled way, that you are being considered in terms of your value. And we're going to look for ways to make sure that your value is as much or more going forward and that we're using your skills to grow the business. Another pitfall is that a lot of employees may envision the worst-case scenarios. We talked about, am I going to lose my job? And so again, it comes down to that communication aspect so that people will be able to see the exciting new growth opportunities that are ahead of us and why the vision is there so that they can actually be brought on board as early as possible. I love that. Finally, I would say some individuals will begin to adopt new technologies in unexpected ways, going back to our talk about Insider threats. You know, in cybersecurity, a lot of times people just cut corners. You know, they don't, they don't do things. They don't follow the security procedures we need them to, but it can happen in any aspect of the business where people are cutting corners because they want to get their job done faster. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to do things that's in the interest of the organization as a whole. And that's sort of what we talked about a minute ago was, you know, the malicious versus unintended threats through this whole process. So, we need to have a set of clear principles for how AI is going to be adopted and used from a personal point of view. Give employees the confidence in themselves and that the future of their jobs is actually bright.

Yeah, I love that. Scott, this has been so fantastic. Now, I have to try something because I really want to get this— I really want to get this podcast out to the world. So, if you'll excuse me for just one second.

I know what you're doing.

Hey, ChatGPT, good morning. Hey, I am sitting here talking with Scott Wright on my podcast, Marc Haine Live. If I was to reach out and let people, the audience, know why they should tune in, what advice would you have for my audience?

Good morning, Marc. That's great that you're chatting with Scott Wright. For your audience, you could highlight Scott's expertise and unique insights. Mention any particular topics you'll cover that are relevant to your audience's interests. Also, emphasize the value of the conversation, such as learning new strategies or gaining fresh perspectives. And of course, your audience loves your engaging style, so let them know they can expect a fun and insightful discussion.

So there we go. If for no other reason to share this episode with the— with, with your circle, Chat GPT just said how you can make that happen.

It's amazing.

Absolutely.

You're so hip, Mark.

Really provide valuable insights.

Now, now I can't get her to shut up. Okay, Scott, this has been truly fantastic conversations. Could you just remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Scott Wright on LinkedIn, and I'll also Scott at Lovely.

Thank you so much. And as we wrap up, do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

Yeah, I would just like to say, you know, it's unfortunately whether— if you aren't huge on change, it's a bad time to be in the world generally. But AI tools and technologies are going to be adopted by your organization's technology and business leaders. And if you're not ready to face the challenges of keeping all your members of your team aligned and productive, it's going to be tough in this upcoming wave of change. So you need to prepare now and look for that long-term shift. It's not going to be a fad that goes away. We need to get ready for the coming artificial intelligence tools that are going to be adopted. So make sure you are AI ready.

Yeah, thank you. And I love that you use the magic word tools because I think the, uh, the word tools tells you exactly what it is. It's like a hammer to a carpenter. It is a tool that we use to make ourselves better, make our businesses better. And I have to say, Scott, thank you very much for joining us today. I really appreciate you being here to share your knowledge, your passion, your expertise. It's been brilliant. Thank you again.

So much my pleasure. Thanks very much, Marc.

So, was this of value to you? I'd love to know. Maybe you're thinking, hey, we could really use a complimentary 30-minute brainstorming session with Marc. Well, good news. You can snag a spot on my calendar. Just hit the link that's in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com and you're all set. And if you want to get more information, Scott has offered that he's got all sorts of documentation that he's willing to share as he develops his ideas even deeper. Get onto his mailing list because I know it's going to be a— make a world of difference to you as you kind of step into this new world. As always, I am at your service. And if you haven't done so yet, please, why don't you make sure that you subscribe to this feed and follow me on social media? Be sure to tune in next week when I have another fabulous expert who will help us create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that your customers and your employees deserve. So, you'll join me, won't you? Thanks again for being here today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you Thank you for joining us this week on Experience Leadership.

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