Artificial Intelligence Podcast: ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney and all other AI Tools

Change Management in the AI Era with Rich Cruz

• Jonathan Green : Artificial Intelligence Expert and Author of ChatGPT Profits • Episode 382

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Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast with Jonathan Green! In this insightful episode, we delve into the dynamic world of change management in the AI era with our special guest, Rich Cruz, an expert in organizational development and change leadership.

Rich shares his valuable insights on how traditional change management principles can be effectively applied in today's rapidly evolving AI landscape. He underscores the importance of adaptability, drawing parallels between past technological shifts, like the introduction of personal computers, and the current AI revolution. Rich offers practical advice on bridging knowledge gaps through continuous learning and emphasizes the significance of building on existing skills to prepare for AI-driven transformations.

Notable Quotes:

  • "We adapt. We've got these things on our shoulders called brains, that help us to learn... But at the same time, one of the things I find really interesting is that we're afraid." - [Rich Cruz]
  • "If you can approach AI the way you approach a microwave... when I do this, it does that. It becomes a lot simpler." - [Jonathan Green]
  • "The bots are not gonna be able to do that. That's a person. And we have to be able to relate to people." - [Rich Cruz]

Rich also discusses strategies for leaders to implement AI tools without causing friction or fear among employees. He suggests a human-centric approach, ensuring that new technologies complement rather than replace human capabilities, fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.

Connect with Rich Cruz:

Rich highlights the role of AI in enhancing human potential rather than replacing it, advocating for a balanced integration that values human interaction and critical thinking. If you're intrigued by how AI is reshaping the workplace and seek expert guidance on navigating change, this episode is a must-listen!

Connect with Jonathan Green

Change management in the AI era with today's amazing, very special guest, Rich Cruz. Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast, where we make AI simple, practical, and accessible for small business owners and leaders. Forget the complicated T talk or expensive consultants. This is where you'll learn how to implement AI strategies that are easy to understand and can make a big impact for your business. The Artificial Intelligence Podcast is brought to you by fraction aio. The trusted partner for AI Digital Transformation at fraction A IO, we help small and medium sized businesses boost revenue by eliminating time wasting non-revenue generating tasks that frustrate your team. With our custom AI bots, tools and automations, we make it easy to shift your team's focus to the tasks that matter most. Driving growth and results, we guide you through a smooth. Seamless transition to ai ensuring you avoid costly mistakes and invest in the tools that truly deliver value. Don't get left behind. Let fraction aio o help you stay ahead in today's AI driven world. Learn more. Get started. Fraction aio.com. Now Rich, I'm excited to have you here because you're an expert in change management and this is a time of great change. And there are people at all ends of the spectrum who are like, AI's not a big deal. It's not gonna matter. People are like, it's changing everything. The sky is falling and every job is gonna disappear and the robots are taking over. And I think that. It's causing problems in. For me, a core level of adaptability, which is that if you see it as I can adapt to anything except ai, it becomes this friction point. And I think it's created a lot of stress in people in management. Who think they're gonna be replaced by AI decision makers and lower level employees who think, oh, the entry level's gonna be an ai. And for someone who's an expert in this field specifically, I kind of wanna get your initial perspective on how traditional change management principles still apply even in the brand new world of ai. Yeah, for sure. Thanks a lot, for having me on. And I love talking about this.'cause we've, we, this is not the first time we've had technological change, Jonathan. It's been we've had technology changes since the automobile. We've had technology changes since the personal computer. I remember going through. I worked for a publishing company and we went from waxing paper to do our layouts. To digital and people going, I'm gonna lose my job.'cause I only know how to cut these pieces of paper and glue them down where they need to be with this wax. I see it to be akin to that because I. You can, as people we can learn, we adapt. We've got these things on our shoulders called brains, that, that help us to learn, to adapt. But at the same time, one of the things I find really interesting why I love this field of change management is that we're afraid, right? We have, we get into the, our. Amygdala the, that reptilian part of our brain just wants to put us into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. One of those types of responses. When we hear that there's gonna be a change that's gonna disrupt the way that we're gonna be, and AI just sends that into overdrive, when we have conversations. Yeah, I think that. We have to see it exactly in that context, which is that like we have had major shifts. Computers didn't exist a hundred years ago, or even really 50 years ago. Cell phones and news, right? My kids can't believe that I had a pager. They don't understand what it is. I'm like, oh, someone would message me and then I'd call them back on a payphone. They're like what's a payphone? I'm like I would pick the phone in a gas station, and you call the house and you call the house phone. They're like, what's a house phone? So all those technologies that were revolutionary, there was a time before telephones, I think. That's the first important thing is to realize that there will just be different jobs. Some jobs will disappear, right? Sure. And they're replaced by other jobs. There's not someone who comes and pumps the gas in your car anymore. That job disappeared. Most places. Sure. But those people still have jobs. And I think that's the important thing to start with. And then to just, once you see it in that context, to think, okay, AI is a pretty dramatic technological change, but so is the fax machine, so is the cell phone and people still have jobs. The economy has gone up since then, not down. And so then I guess my next question is to think how should someone. On an individual level, think what skills do I need to add to ensure that I survive this phase? Like when two companies merge and there's two people with the same job, one is gonna stay and one isn't. Sure. How did you make yourself. Put in a stronger position. One of my perspectives has always been if you're the person with a unique skill, like in the nineties, if you were the only person that knew how to fix the fax machine as your secondary skill, you were bulletproof. Then if you're the only person that could fix the website in the early two thousands, or if you're the only one that knew had to manage the social media, I feel like if you're the one person, the first person in the office, the answers your bosses, every AI question you can establish a beachhead in that way. What are some of your other perspectives on how, and then we'll talk about the organizational, but on the individual level, what should someone do to say, okay, I have enough knowledge to establish my backup or to improve my resume if things don't work out here? What are those first steps? Yeah I think a lot of this comes down to understanding what are the tasks, what let's start with this. What's the work that needs to be done? So let's break down and do a work analysis to get from a strategic level, right? What is it that we have to break down in order to get the job done? And then we have to break that work package down into, from a job analysis standpoint, what are those tasks and the competencies that are required to do the tasks that make up that work? From there it's comes down to assessing personal, personally on an individual level. Hey, what do I need? What do I need to learn? That what's that gap? And sometimes I don't know what that is. So that's where having, a either a valid or reliable assessment that can, find out, what is your competency in artificial intelligence? What's your competency and tolerance for change? So there, there are certain ways we can go in and have these psychometric tests as well as competency tests and then seek out with curiosity, how can I bridge those gaps, right? It's those, it's. And it's almost invariable, right? When we shut down and say, I don't want to learn this, I don't want to grow, I want to just do what I've been doing for the last 15, 20 years. And that's it. Because it's, my wrapped up in my comfortable shell it's that time where we are stagnant and we don't grow and that's when we lose our competitive edge, right? There's so much. So much opportunity to learn artificial intelligence. Google has, their skill shop. They have a certification course just in the basics of how to use it. Microsoft has the same thing through LinkedIn learning. There's so many different types of ways to learn free and paid that it's you just have to be curious and open to the learning. Yeah, I think that one of the problems with AI is the mistaken belief that it's really hard to gain a basic proficiency, and I think part of this is because of just the AI companies have such bad user experience. The first time you load up chat GPT, it's just a blank page. How am I supposed to know what to do? Like it's, I can't think of a worse user experience combined with a more powerful tool. And I remember when I first started using it three or four years ago, I would say what can you do? And the list of options was like, I can write a song for you or help you with a recipe. I'm like, Google does those things. Those are not useful. What it, this is a terrible list. And I think that. There's this fear that it takes a really long time. I think most people, if you sit down for one day and say, I'm gonna spend eight hours, just figure this out. You can become a very proficient user in one day. Absolute. That's, I don't disagree. That's not the same for Photoshop, like other tools, like if you wanna get good at Photoshop years, and I think that's the first kind of belief I try to shatter, which is it's not as hard and scary. And then and I deal with this all where people like Jonathan, you're a programming engineer. You're coding. I'm like, I'm not. I'm really, I do everything in a notebook by hand. I'm really good at drawing pictures of when this happens. Then I want this to happen. And then if this or if that, it's just a flow chart, but right. If you can figure out, that's all most automations are. If you can do those two things, go. I'll spend one day with ChatGPT, and I can look at each process and go when I'm designing a layout for a magazine or for a book, the first thing we do is we choose which pictures we want to use. Then we decide which. Which layout? And then we choose which pieces to put in there and do the colors go with each other, and then what's the font gonna be? And if you break it down into one by one step, it's not as scary. It's like that hide need elephant one at one bite at a time. That's right. And I think that's. Really powerful lesson for people who are on an individual level thinking AI is so hard, it's gonna pass me by. And I find that the best users are the ones who think it's gonna be the hardest for them. The people that approach it non-technically, because they don't care how it works. They get the best experience. Nobody knows how a microwave works. You put in a frozen burrito, you push a button, hot one comes out. No one knows what happens in between those two beeps. That's right. Sure. And that's. If you can approach AI that way and not care and just go if when I do this, it does that. It becomes a lot simpler. Now at the organizational level. There's a lot of pressure for businesses to be AI forward right now, and I've seen this in my lifetime a few times where it was like you have to have a website. Or actually first it was like you have to have a MySpace page. It's if you don't have MySpace page, oh boy. No one knows who that is anymore. Like my kids have no idea. And then it's then you have to have a, this, and then you have to have a social media and then you have to have an SMS campaign. And for a while they're like, I remember what everyone was telling me, you have to get on Web3. And I was like, I don't know what that means. They're like, it's a Metaverse website. I was like, what? I don't, yeah, I get dizzy in headsets. It's not a world I wanna live in. And so sometimes people go the Metaverse thing didn't work, so should I really go in another direction? I can see people getting. Lost because of they thought they had to do something and then it didn't work out right. They get they the metaverse thing, maybe AI is a fad. So at the organizational level, there's this pressure from investors or from board of directors often to we need to implement ai. What do you mean? I don't know. Just do it. It's like it used to be, you need a website, from the perspective of training your team, managing it, a restructuring and kind of area of expertise of change management, what's a methodical or. Strategic way to implement AI and bring in a new tool that doesn't cause friction or stress within the team. As a consultant, I always say, let me do a project that the team wants before I do a project that the leaders want. So they can see I'm on their side.'cause I don't, sure. When you bring in a consultant, you often think, oh, consultant means someone's getting fired. And I don't, I wanna allay that fear from the groundwork because if I was an employee and I thought the AI project might become my replacement, I'm sabotaging that project. Oh yeah. Like I'm gonna make sure it doesn't work. Oh yeah. Human nature. Sure. From the top down perspective, what's the right way to implement tools in a way that is not reactionary, not going too fast, but also not too slow? That's let me bring this in a way that, I guess it's because I think it's very hard to change behavior, and if you try to do it very quickly, then people just keep doing it the old way and don't tell you that's right. So how can you do in a way that you can actually slowly retrain your team in a way that they actually will stick with the new systems and actually you'll get that maximum long-term benefit. Yeah, I honestly, so I've spent 20 something years now as a scout leader, right? So it's all about skill building and and then what you're doing is you're taking somebody's existing set of skills, knowledge, skills, and abilities. KSAs, right? Building upon that foundation that you've built. So if you can find common ground to the tasks that they're performing today and how this relates to how that task is done now and the benefits that it can yield now but also put into the con they're not thinking about the future right now. Right now they're thinking about my status quo just left. It's gone. And there's this grieving process. There's bridges has a change format where, or framework where you're moving from the, it's, there's the ending, right? We're moving from the status quo, and that ending is happening and people are grieving this process. We have to acknowledge that. But put it into the context of we're gonna be moving into this new beginning. It's not gonna be maybe the easiest road and acknowledge that, but building on what they know and putting it into what they know and building upon that is will it'll foster that adoption because they'll be much more comfortable about. About that adoption. In fact, sometimes they'll become an advocate when they see, oh yeah, my life just got a little easier because that's faster and I have a little more time here. It's always about trying to build on what they already have, if that makes sense. Yeah. I think that this is a really good perspective because sometimes we buy the tool. And then look for the use case. And I've seen this with, some of the companies that I've worked in, soldiers, they go we've implemented this AI tool. And I go, why? And they go, 'cause it's awesome. Or they offer us a great deal, or the founders are really amazing. And I'm like, what problems they gonna solve? I don't know. Yeah. And sometimes in leadership, we don't remember how we made decisions like why we choose this tool or that tool. We've been using it for 20 years. It's just the way we've always done it and Right. I think. The methodical approach. I always say I look at this same thing when I look at a startup, but I think if they're gonna succeed or not, I go, what problem do you solve? And they go, we're just do something really cool. I'm like, if you don't solve a problem, you're, that's not good. That's right. That's what people buy. Yes. We buy cool things when we're Rich and when things get tight, the those the first things we cut out. Like the Netflix subscription, the first thing to go and I. Look at that, and I say the same thing. It's it doesn't matter to me which AI tool you use. As long as first you go, this is the problem. This tool solves in a way, and my employees use different tools than I do. Okay, sure. And. It worked. But that's the important thing is I think in a different way, and I have a slightly different job. So if I say what's the right tool for what you're doing, right? If you code in a different way, then I want the tool that works for you rather than the tool that I think will work for you. And this is a lesson I learned in high school when I bought my sister a dress for Christmas. Huge mistake. Like worst mistake I ever made. Thank God I kept that receipt. It was like, there you go. End of days there, right? Yeah. I learned do not buy clothes for women they haven't already seen. Oh my gosh. And it's the same way that like when someone, sometimes someone goes, Jonathan, I bought you a new tool. I go, what? Now? I Now you have this obligation to learn it and use it. And if you don't like it, then the person's feelings get hurt. Sure. So I really like this approach of. It's slightly different than mine, which is I'm like, problem solution. But it's also look at the process and see where someone is and think how can we accelerate what they're already doing? Yeah. I think that sometimes it's very tempting to say things like, we're gonna replace all of our phone sales team with AI sales team. And it's let's. There's gotta be something in between those two wild steps because Sure. It's an unproven technology. There's a lot of, I have a lot of issues with that area, but it's also, it creates a lot of fear and you don't even know if it works yet. I think that's, when I think about a hype cycle, I think that's what it is. We get excited by something that isn't proven yet. And that's the difference. I remember cell phones first came out, you couldn't hear what anyone was saying. So much static. And that's right. Call it analog. You're like those little Motorola or Nokia phones. Yeah. You could hear, yeah. It's can you hear me? And that used to be the most important message. You start over there. Can you hear me? Can, how about now? How about now? And you're walking around the house and you're standing on the roof and you're doing holding on the bunny ears, which my kids don't know what those are either. So I think that. Kind of create that mindset is the one that I worry about, which is that we believe in something before we know if it works or not. That's because the promise of AI is so much bigger than the reality. Like what they say, you watch an open AI commercial, the stuff they say, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wish it could do, can't do any of that. That sounds amazing. If it did that that would be amazing. I catch AI's making mistake 20 or 30 times a day. Sure. Like it will get I've seen this week I've caught AI getting, doing them. Addition, wrong addition mistake where I say, whatever you don't do this, and then immediately did that. The idea that it's infallible. And my, the biggest problem with AI for me is that when it lies to you, it is so confident. Like at least when my kids lie to me, they start looking to this there's some tells. AI has no tell, there's no tell. Like when an employee is lying about being sick, you have a chance of catching them. When an AI is lying, you have to verify yourself through different methods. And that's one of the things that I try to say is that it's really powerful, but it's still a tool. Yeah. You still need someone to manage it in that. I also think right now we're seeing a lot of people that wanna work a hundred percent remotely. So whenever I have someone to work with and they have boys come into the office, I'm like, don't. Replace them because you won't get. It's very hard if people don't wanna work in Amazon in their offices where they have five star chefs and like massage rooms and like ping pong tables. They don't wanna work anywhere. I've never worked in an office like that. I can't even imagine how nice that is. If you don't wanna work there, you don't wanna work anywhere. And now that people have gotten a taste of remote work and work from home and AI tools making, oh, I can definitely work home more and more. So I say that like the employee will come to the office is more valuable because it's coming to the office has become a rare skill. Sure. It's interesting, right? And suddenly just the ability, y'all come into the office, you go, oh my gosh, you're special. That can become the skill that makes you very bulletproof. And so I always, I think that it's very important to think about when people talk about company culture. I think about you don't want all of your employees secretly sending out resumes all the time, or secret looking for jobs, because I've seen that happen at a few places recently. Sure. And you want people not to be worried that you want to. Get rid of them, replace 'em with ai. And I think that sometimes we get so excited at the top that we don't communicate that well enough that what our actual goal is. It's oh, we're gonna bring in a bunch of AI tools. Why? Because when you, if you just listen to commercials, the why is to replace everyone and lower your overhead and make a bunch of money and fire everyone. That's what the advertising says and that's why people are justifiably worried. Sure. So from that perspective, how can leadership. Communicate change in a way that is not scary and that removes this kind of, the thing that would trigger sabotage or fear or people sending out their resumes or thinking, oh, we've only got a little time left. Yeah. You did an episode, a few a few episodes back where you were, you I cannot remember the name of the consultant, but I like how you were centering it around a human-centric. Workplace. And I think that's where leaders have an opportunity is to help people to feel like their contribution is important to getting the tasks done. Whether or not their stuff is being partially done by a, by ai, partially done by robotics. I mean there's all kinds of technological changes that are happening here, right? And people are feeling like, oh, I'm not using. All of my skills right now, so I'm expendable and replaceable. But the reality is that we have the ability to, to what you were saying before, we have the ability to leverage critical thinking that. The artificial intelligence cannot really do now. And it's not just that, it's it hallucinates and it, it makes grammatical mistakes, it makes factual errors. And certainly I've seen the fair share of mathematical mistakes as well. But, but it's the people connection. I think that's super important that leaders have to be able to communicate to their people that they make a difference in the connection that they have because after all, the person who's actually like the end customer, which is the purpose of an organization being around as the customer. That's not a robot, that's not a, that's not artificial intelligence. That's a person. And we have to be able to relate to people. And the, the bots are not gonna be able to do that, at least right now, right? They feign it, but but there's a point where, we have to have a very human-centric workplace because that's who we're serving. Yeah, I think that's a really important point because we don't want to talk to robots. Like most of us don't. Some people enjoy it. I don't. Some people do. Yeah. And, but it's like you, there's something about talking to a person who. Understands how you feel, knows what it's like to breathe, has driven a car before and can answer I think there's a value in that won't go away because no matter how well you train in ai, it's a facsimile of life. It's not, it doesn't know how you feel. It doesn't know what it's like. And one of the things I find interesting is that a lot of people they're, they love how AI always agrees with them and. That we've seen that a lot. There was a shift where they made the AI less agreeable and people got really upset. Like it's not friendly enough and it's not pretending to be, and I believe the biggest value in life comes from. Surprise or conflict like. Yeah. I never know what my wife is gonna say to me. She walked in here right before our call and she said something surprising to me, and that's what makes life worth living. If I That's right. Knew what she was gonna say before she walked in here. That's so boring. And I think there's something about talking to a person, buying a product from person, connected person. I believe, and I hope that this, I think the future will be that we. Do more. We go back to more face-to-face, hands shake sales and more human communication. Because social media's so flooded with Bachi. I'm just gonna talk to a person. I went for a walk with three of my kids and my wife yesterday on the beach for half an hour, and then we had a burger together. Without doing the internet, we were just walking and communicating. And I think, I hope that we start to say, you know what? The AI is. For work, like AI is my job. It's not my friend. Sure. They're very separated from me and I think that's the future I'm hopeful for is that we wanna buy or talk to people and do business with people. I think that we're gonna see a fracturing of the economy where we go, you know what? I'm gonna go to the mall now because at least. I get to go and try it on and talk to a person and talk to a person who works in the store and like I'd like to see a shift and that's my hope. I hope that I'm right when we see a shift that direction and it's like I'd rather buy from a smaller company where if I call them, I can talk to a person, they'll answer my questions instead of a huge company where I just talk to an AI for 30 minutes and they can't solve my problem. So Sure. I that's my hopefulness and that we do see the value in the human communication that like I prefer to do business with people like. As when people come to the podcast, they do a pre-interview. I have a human who does that call. And I can have an AI that does it, but it's, I was like, someone asked me, I was like, gross. That was my first thought was gross. I wouldn't want that.'cause first of all, I. She depends on that job. And it's, it took me time to fi find someone who's amazing and a lot of interview. It took me like three months to find someone to do that who's awesome. And the thought of replacing her, I don't like that. And it's no, I want to create the, and it creates the right culture that I want. I think there's value in that. I just think that it's tempting to use AI everywhere you can, but it's not always the right move. That's my perspective. That makes sense. Now, I love your perspective and a lot of what you do and help people in change management. Can you explain a little people for people who aren't exactly sure exactly how change management works, what your approach is, and like where they can find you online and see some of the amazing things that you're doing? That certainly drew you to my attention? Yeah. Yeah. We, as we like to say in our podcast, we have the Harmonious Workplace. This podcast usually we drop on Mondays, but we like to end every. Every one of our podcasts with Make Change Your Friend. And we live by that because that's, as trade as it sounds. That is the most constant thing that we have is our, we have to be able to evolve and change and because everything else is changing, external forces, internal forces, and what we're able to do. Or at least what we aspire to do is help organizations to, adapt their structures, adapt their leadership, adapt their their workforces, their culture. To some extent, even though we want stability within a culture, sometimes that has to change. And then their digital capabilities as well, right? As change change management professionals, organizational development professionals. That's what we strive to do. Over@harmoniousworkplaces.com where we have our podcast, our blog, we have our I could do a little shameless thing here. Hermie, the HR Hermit Crab. That's our book, and he's a cartoon crab that's all about change. Because that's what they do. They change their shell all the time. They have to adapt, right? All that is on our website again, at harmonious workplaces.com. You'll find us on LinkedIn, YouTube Herme is he has his own Instagram account. So yeah, we try to make sure that we're accessible because change is everywhere. And our, we need our clients to be able to find, where we can come in to help. That's amazing. Thank you so much for being here today, Rich, for a wonderful and happy episode of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. Awesome. Thanks, Jonathan. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Monday with more tips and strategies on how to leverage AI to grow your business and achieve better results. In the meantime, if you're curious about how AI can boost your business' revenue, head over to artificial intelligence pod.com. Slash calculator, use our AI revenue calculator to discover the potential impact AI can have on your bottom line. It's quick, easy, and might just change the way. 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