EP:10 AI Adoption is not just a Skill issue | Nick Tasler

AI adoption isn't failing because of bad tools or untrained teams. It’s failing because of the unaddressed fear underneath.

In this episode of What the futr, Sandesh Patel and Nick Tasler  (Organizational  Psychologist & Leadership Speaker) discuss  the psychological barriers to AI adoption and what leaders need to do before deploying AI tools.

Learn: 

1. Why AI’s failure to deliver ROI has nothing to do with skills
2. How identity threat and fear of obsolescence are hindering AI adoption
3. What companies should do differently before rolling out any AI training program
4. What the future of AI adoption looks like

Listen if you are: 

1. A business leader frustrated by slow AI adoption. 
2. An HR wondering why the AI training isn't sticking. 
3. A manager trying to get team buy-in without the pushback.
4. A founder looking to integrate AI into your company’s workflow.

Subscribe for regular episodes.

👉 Explore the platform: https://futrconnect.io

👉 Business inquiries: sandesh@futrconnect.io

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:15:12
Sandesh
Today we have a very dear friend of mine, Nick Tassler. I have known for many years. We first met in college. In this world of I, we talk a lot about change, and, I'm so fortunate to have a friend like Nick that this is what he does for a living. He writes about it, he speaks about it.

00:00:15:12 - 00:00:42:22
Sandesh
He travels around the world, talking about how to change and some of the challenges I've seen in the field with clients and partners and vendors and salespeople and architects and engineers, is this huge dark cloud above them? It's basically saying change or you're going to go obsolete. And that is very daunting for a lot of people. But ultimately that bleeds into companies.

00:00:42:22 - 00:01:07:05
Sandesh
So today I thought I'd bring on Nick, an absolute expert to, teach us a little bit about where some of the, the key factors that we can learn from to change not just our organizations, but ourselves, so that we can ultimately change our organizations. So, Nick, great to have you, from Puerto Rico. Tell us a little before we dive in.

00:01:07:06 - 00:01:12:13
Sandesh
So tell us a little bit about yourself and how great you are.

00:01:12:15 - 00:01:43:07
Nick
I mean, how much time do we have here? Because I got so many things I want to add to this conversation. Let's, Let's see. So my name is Nick Tassler. I'm an organizational psychologist. I've written five books, on decision making and change. And, basically, I spend my days, coaching, salespeople and leaders and, helping executive teams, figure out how to work together.

00:01:43:09 - 00:01:46:01
Nick
That's basically, my life.

00:01:46:02 - 00:01:58:22
Sandesh
I see on LinkedIn that you're traveling literally around the world. Where is the coolest place that you've traveled to to give one of your talks the coolest?

00:01:58:22 - 00:02:31:10
Nick
You know, cool is such a loaded term. Probably recently, the most interesting was, Richard, last year I got to, go to Saudi Arabia a couple times, many and, talk with, the leaders of their economic development agency, which is a big thing happening in Saudi Arabia. And that was, that was that was cool in that it was very different from any other thing I'd ever experience.

00:02:31:10 - 00:02:39:07
Nick
I've been to the Middle East before. I've been to Dubai. Dubai was interesting. Riyadh is like a like kind of a different level of interesting, though.

00:02:39:09 - 00:02:47:10
Sandesh
Yeah. I think well, what you're kind of touching on is some of those cultural differences, right. Yeah.

00:02:47:12 - 00:02:51:09
Nick
Significant. Significant cultural differences.

00:02:51:11 - 00:03:14:13
Sandesh
So that even makes change, just a little more dynamic depending on the cultures that you're dealing with. Because obviously us in the Western world, you know, we think everyone should have the same culture we do. Right? Yeah. But of course, it's so different, around the world. So that is fascinating. We should get into that a little bit, too.

00:03:14:15 - 00:03:40:13
Sandesh
I will definitely double click into that one here. But as we get started, I'm going to tee this up for you. So I is creating more change than ever. They're changing companies. They're changing people's careers. They're changing value. And what is value? They're changing skill sets is changing education systems. It is going to be extremely impactful.

00:03:40:15 - 00:04:07:10
Sandesh
But as my friend Biffle said, I would say nobody knows anything. We really don't know what's going to happen with all of this change. So when you are going to these clients and having these conversations, tell me about your approach and kind of what are you trying to do? In these engagements with these clients?

00:04:07:12 - 00:04:44:16
Nick
Well, I'd say the first thing, the main thing is before we can talk about. So I let's take that as an example. So using AI as a skill set. And so that's immediately where I think lots of the corporate change efforts start. How do we get people skilled up to use AI. And I kind of like back up the train a little bit and say, okay, we actually need to focus on first is make sure that they have the head space to absorb the knowledge and the skills that you want to impart on them.

00:04:44:20 - 00:05:14:05
Nick
Right. So I adoption, and, and or the lack of it, which is a big problem right now. I just read this article in In Fortune, about some something. I'm not getting the numbers right, but it was something like 60 to 80% of AI adoption efforts in corporations have, are essentially failing. Like, they're not getting the ROI that they were supposed to get from the billions of dollars they're pouring into it.

00:05:14:07 - 00:05:31:06
Sandesh
You might be talking about the MIT study that everybody is talking about. Yeah. It's the, it's 95% is the number. And that, you know, these pilots are failing. It's it's a number that people just keep using over and over and over. So yeah, you're you're right.

00:05:31:08 - 00:05:59:09
Nick
Yeah. So it's even grimmer than, than my, rosy view took in. But I'm 95% right. So what I would say one of the major issues is that, it's first a mindset problem, but we're solving for a skill gap. Okay. And so it's kind of like, all right, you're you're in I appreciate this one. Okay. So do you remember, let's say it's circa 1998.

00:05:59:13 - 00:06:37:03
Nick
Okay. Okay. We are in Lake Okoboji for a little event that we called Bogey Bash. Okay. And one of our friends, let's just call him Jerry. Either gets thrown off the the boat, the pontoon, or jumps in. I don't really remember the story. I'm already in the water. And Jerry starts yelling, Dassler! Dassler, help me, I can't swim, I can't swim, so he's asking, first of all, he's asking for me.

00:06:37:03 - 00:06:59:21
Nick
Why is he saying tassler? Well, because everybody knew I was I was lifeguarding that summer and, because everyone kept calling me Hasselhoff like Hasselhoff. Baywatch, right? Yeah. So it's clear in everybody's mind that I'm the lifeguard. And so he's like, that's our dazzler. I can't swim, I'm laughing so hard I can barely get over to him because I'm like, what are you talking about?

00:06:59:23 - 00:07:23:10
Nick
So let's so I go over to him and I and I, and I'm trying to get him back to the boat, which I'm basically drowning myself because I can't stop laughing. We we get on to the boat and, and he, he catches his breath and then he is like, well, it's not actually that I can't swim. I have a fear of deep water.

00:07:23:12 - 00:07:28:09
Nick
I.

00:07:28:11 - 00:07:50:23
Nick
What do you mean, a fear of deep? I've never heard of such a they know what to get heard, know a fear of deep water. But it turns out, it turns out it's a real thing. Right? And, Okay, so what does all this have to do with? I. I like you. Trying to teach him how to swim wasn't the problem.

00:07:50:23 - 00:08:17:06
Nick
I believe he knew how to swim. He could probably do laps in the pool all day long, but when he got into water where he couldn't see the bottom, he had this paralyzing fear, right? And so when we address this problem as a skill problem, you give him swimming lessons, right? You teach him how to use AI, but skills are in the hands of fear.

00:08:17:06 - 00:08:43:17
Nick
Is is in the head, it's in the gut. And so you can train them all you want. The AI training is great. All the subscriptions, all the incentives, like all that is great if it's a skill adoption problem. But if it's a fear problem that I'm going to be obsolete and I got so much stress filling my brain right now that I can't absorb any new knowledge, that's a completely different issue.

00:08:43:19 - 00:09:14:02
Sandesh
Yeah, yeah. Oh, God. That's a that's a great analogy. You know, I there's there's this there's this correlation between change and failure. And part of that change is that risk that you take. It's a, it's, it's a step towards something that is not for sure. In fact, it's extremely uncertain. And I think that I know that really causes people to not, not want to change.

00:09:14:04 - 00:09:28:03
Sandesh
What what have you seen in terms of the what makes humans, at the end of the day, why has change always been such a challenge for us?

00:09:28:05 - 00:10:05:10
Nick
So there's two things here. The first thing is this myth that humans often fail when they try to change, right? That we fail at change. And it's a myth. I mean, like like you can't. I just literally last week I opened this article in HBR. I've written for Harvard Business Review. And so no disrespect, but I can't even tell you how many articles I've read about change in Harvard Business Review that start with this line.

00:10:05:12 - 00:10:44:02
Nick
The brutal fact is that 70% of change efforts fail, or they they cite some statistic which, by the way, there's zero evidence for that zero zero evidence at all that most organizational change efforts fail. But we always queue up. Here's the solution with here's the problem. Most organizational change efforts fail. And it's based on this. Actually this this researcher in the UK back in like 2013 actually went through the data, went through the data and actually tried to find the source of this statistic that keeps getting thrown out and it doesn't exist.

00:10:44:02 - 00:11:06:11
Nick
It's not in it started in this article. It was book re-engineering the corporation. If you've been around for a while, it was the big deal in the in the early 90s. Right. This book written by Michael Hammer. And in that book he says it is our estimate. Him and his coauthor, the 50 to 70% of re-engineering efforts fail.

00:11:06:13 - 00:11:35:00
Nick
Okay, now a couple of things there. One, specifically re-engineering. This is this very specific thing they're talking about. Not all change. That's one thing. The second thing is hammer got so tired just in the next three years of people misquoting the line and extrapolating it out to every kind of change possible that he himself, in his very next book, re recanted the line and he he said that was our unscientific estimate.

00:11:35:02 - 00:12:05:14
Nick
So not based on any data are unseen scientific estimate from their own experience in re engineering. And yet 30 years later, some of the smartest, greatest researchers are still citing that statistic. So let's just get that out there right now. Okay. The fact of the matter is that adaptation to change is the rule of human existence. It is not the exception.

00:12:05:16 - 00:12:30:20
Nick
Successful adaptation to change is the thing that human beings have been doing since the dawn of time, like all of us today, are evidence that we can successfully adapt to change right from caves to cities, from horses to highways, from writing letters to doing LinkedIn posts, adapting to change is what we do, right? More wired for that. So the question is why?

00:12:30:20 - 00:12:53:14
Nick
Why is it so scary? Right? Why do we, you know, why do we resist it? Right. Well, there is actually an explanation for that. And it is an evidence based explanation for it. The fact is that every time we're faced with a change, right, we're going to hear two voices inside our head. And the first voice is going to be the voice of our survival instinct.

00:12:53:14 - 00:13:11:15
Nick
It's the first voice we hear every time. And our survival instinct is going to tell us to pay three times more attention to everything that could go wrong, rather than everything that could go right, three times more attention to what we might lose rather than what we might gain. Right. And that that is the first voice we hear every time.

00:13:11:15 - 00:13:31:10
Nick
It's our limbic system. It is the oldest part of our brain. It is has one job and that's to survive and that's it. And it's kind of good at helping us survive. But is that all? We're really so early here for survival, I mean. Right, I'm setting a pretty low bar, isn't it?

00:13:31:11 - 00:13:32:05
Sandesh
Yeah.

00:13:32:07 - 00:13:51:10
Nick
The good news is we have a second voice and that is our growth instinct. Okay. But it takes a little longer to hear the second voice in. It's quieter in. Our growth instinct is going to tell us every time we say, I'm worried about something and say, but I wonder what's around the bed. I wonder what new skills I'm going to develop.

00:13:51:11 - 00:14:03:00
Nick
I wonder what new part of myself I'm going to learn about that. I never knew I had before. Right? Right. And that voice is there. But we have to manually crank up the volume on that voice, right?

00:14:03:02 - 00:14:33:18
Sandesh
Yeah. I just this morning I heard somebody talk about it was, a conversation about just how life is hard. And if you some people's mindsets these days is, life should be, you know, enjoyable every day should be relaxing and peaceful and I should just have an abundance of space and time, and just feel no stress, no pressure and just chill.

00:14:33:20 - 00:14:41:03
Sandesh
And the reality of it is, like, I, I hoped for that in my life. Right? Like, that's what I aspire for.

00:14:41:05 - 00:14:42:04
Nick
I'll do is to.

00:14:42:04 - 00:15:10:01
Sandesh
Get to that point where I'm not so stressed. But I've come to that realization that life is suffering, and it's my job to figure out how to make my whole life work. And I can get and do so many things, but I'm going to have to put the effort into it. So when you are talking to like individuals, right?

00:15:10:01 - 00:15:28:04
Sandesh
Like if somebody is watching right now and they're thinking about at work, if they don't, if they don't adopt AI and get on board and do this like there could be a financial hit for them, they could lose their job. They might it might be hard to get another job. You know, everything else. I mean, there's a lot of this happening, right?

00:15:28:04 - 00:15:52:17
Sandesh
So the amount of people, to your point earlier that aren't even subscribing to some of these LMS, whether it be cloud or Grok or, you know, open AI, whatever it might be, to me, it's like, if you can't make a $20 a month investment in yourself to go learn this stuff, that's a problem. So and that's where a lot of people are.

00:15:52:17 - 00:16:23:20
Sandesh
Even people in tech are stuck in this place. So how would you have a conversation if like an employee that says tassler, the expectations are so high here. They want us to change overnight. And by the way, this is real. Yeah, I'm in the field, I see it, I, I'm with executives and, you know, you hear comments like, oh, we're going to reduce our workforce by, you know, 20, 30% in the next 12 months.

00:16:23:21 - 00:16:44:10
Sandesh
It's like, oh really? How are you going to do that if there's really no plan or strategy? And why would there be? Because it's just all new. You know, I don't care if you're a CEO of a company. Just because you're the CEO of the company doesn't mean you're an AI expert. But I bet you there's people in your organization that know I way better than you.

00:16:44:12 - 00:16:55:21
Sandesh
And that's not a dig on the CIO. So, like, how do you go to these individuals and like, what would you say to them? What can they do to actually get some motivation to change?

00:16:55:23 - 00:17:28:16
Nick
Yeah. So one of the things I would say and this this maybe sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but one of the more surprising findings in the, the change research in recent years is that people are actually up to four times as likely four times more likely to embrace change when they emphasize what's not changing, rather than what is, can and so in it's in it's this idea of if we really like can I get Freudian on it.

00:17:28:16 - 00:18:00:10
Nick
Right. It's it's this notion of the continuity of identity, continuity of identity. So when we talk about organizational change or any kind of change, really the most fundamental like existential threat is the threat to my identity. Like if this changes, who am I? And if I am not me, then what's the point? Right? And this is this is the fundamental fear of human existence, right?

00:18:00:12 - 00:18:20:11
Nick
So we have to we have to kind of like get it that and you don't have to necessarily, go to a therapist. One of the ways you can do that is in a very practical ways, you just focus on what changes. So let me give you an example or, what, staying the same. So right now, I'm working with this, this coaching cohort.

00:18:20:14 - 00:18:51:11
Nick
There's three guys, three sales leaders at this, distribution company. Okay. And the very first thing we're doing is we're talking about if the industry changes as it is, if the company changes, regardless of what changes happen, technology changes, whatever. What part of you do you refuse to lose? So, like, what part of you are you going to bring into whatever new world happens to be around the corner?

00:18:51:13 - 00:19:11:23
Nick
Okay. And so what we're doing here is we're taking the conversation away from all the uncertainty, away from all that's changing. And we're getting them to like, sort of dig down into the core of who am I? And, in this case, it's not, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty simple. Like one of the guys, he's like, I'm a relationship builder.

00:19:12:00 - 00:19:36:09
Nick
That's what I've built my whole career on. He's like in his 50s, had a very successful career leading a sales organization, and he's like relationships. That's my that's my thing. That's been my calling card. That matters no matter what happens with AI. Right. That is not changing. Okay. Another guy, he's younger, like, like a new up and coming high potential guy.

00:19:36:11 - 00:19:57:22
Nick
His big thing is, his ability to ask why. So he's in sales now, but he came from an engineering background, and so it's like his courage and his way of thinking, but he's constantly asking, why? Why are we doing this? Why is it done this way? And can it be done better? That remains the same with AI, with anything else.

00:19:57:23 - 00:20:20:03
Nick
Okay, so I just like two examples, but what we're doing here is we're highlighting what about them is not going to change. Like what is like the sort of your signature part of you. And it's not it's not dependent on the job. It's not dependent on the technology. It's not dependent on the industry. This is a fundamental part of what makes you successful.

00:20:20:08 - 00:20:27:21
Nick
So we're like building their confidence in the version of themselves that won't change. Does that make sense?

00:20:27:23 - 00:20:48:03
Sandesh
100%. And, I've. God, since I've known you, you and I have gotten into this, the psychology of so many things and topics. But I think what you're with, with Freud, you. I think what you're like hitting on is the ego and is where the ego kind of can show up in so many different ways and change.

00:20:48:03 - 00:21:21:04
Sandesh
I know for me, you know, every time I'm going through change, there is this chance that I could absolutely fail and that I might be taking too big of a swing. I might have, not read it correctly. I didn't I didn't read the move effectively or accurately. So there's always this, like, I hate to say it, I don't I don't feel like this anymore, but it's what are people going to say?

00:21:21:04 - 00:21:31:12
Sandesh
What are people going to think of me if I try to do this thing and but then I completely crash and burn, like then what happens?

00:21:31:18 - 00:21:52:11
Nick
Yeah. Yeah. And and that's, it's a very real threat. So I was, I was giving this talk to a, a group of salespeople, not long ago. And one of the. These guys like what? I know, I've been told independently, this guy is like, he is the rainmaker for this organ of all the salespeople. Like, he's the guy.

00:21:52:11 - 00:22:08:15
Nick
He's the one. Right? And, at the cocktail hour after I'm done talking to to the team, he, like, corners me. And he's like, Nick, I understand why we're supposed to be making all these changes. I know why we're doing the the org change the reorg and everything. Like, I get it, I'm out in the field every day.

00:22:08:15 - 00:22:26:22
Nick
I understand how the market's changing. So but I don't know if I have it in me. I don't know if I have what it takes to make this change. And it was like I thought he was joking. You know, I thought like he had a few cocktails and he's like, you know, messing with me. And, he was he was dead serious.

00:22:26:22 - 00:22:48:13
Nick
And, once I step back for a second, I was like, of course, this makes perfect sense. Like 90% of the leaders that I, that I work with, whether it's their executive team or coaching, this is the fundamental issue is they're winners. They have been winning the majority of their career, so they're at the top of the heap.

00:22:48:18 - 00:23:10:16
Nick
When this change happens, they have the most to lose and they have the most to lose. Not just, well, probably financially for one thing, they have the highest salary, they get the highest commissions, whatever. So that's part of it. But then the other part is you're alluding to is the reputational loss, right? Is everyone knows them as the winner.

00:23:10:18 - 00:23:32:09
Nick
They expect them to keep winning even though the game has changed. The rules are different. The playing field is different. And so now it's like, yeah, you take the the the young kid coming in. Well, he doesn't have much to lose because nobody expects anything out of it. You take this one. You're the guy. Like what? What do you mean you can't do this and this.

00:23:32:10 - 00:23:49:21
Nick
You're like, you're the man, right? And that's scary. Even though with all, like, the claim that we've outgrown our insecure teenage self that doesn't care what people think, we're still human beings. We are social animals and we care about reputation.

00:23:49:23 - 00:24:18:08
Sandesh
Absolutely. Me being in in sales for 25 plus years now, you know, I mean, everyone has an ego, but, there's all there's a certain type of an ego that shows up with salespeople. Definitely. Some are just motivated by money. But it's not like for me, I was motivated by money because I had no money. But then it became more around the purpose of, like, what I'm trying to do.

00:24:18:08 - 00:24:42:19
Sandesh
And I love to win. I'm like winning. I it's this state. My insecurity is losing. My my insecurity is not being liked, which is, you know, and anytime that gets threatened, my, my levels of consciousness go down because now I am more fixated on what are people going to think? How is this going to impact me? Am I going to make less money?

00:24:42:22 - 00:25:02:10
Sandesh
I'm going to lose my job like, you know, blah blah, blah, blah blah. It's a lot of it is on the reputational damage side. But to be honest with you, especially in sales, our egos, it's funny, all these sales folks that have picked this career, we're all terrible at losing. We. Yeah, you know, and you lose a lot.

00:25:02:12 - 00:25:05:05
Nick
And you say, you know. So I don't know if.

00:25:05:05 - 00:25:08:05
Sandesh
I picked the right career for me. It's like like.

00:25:08:09 - 00:25:09:23
Nick
It sucks.

00:25:10:00 - 00:25:32:04
Sandesh
To lose and that so many times when I'm thinking about making a change, doing something different, there's always this voice in the back of my head like, don't screw it up with, like, you know, you think you really think you can do this? You know, I'm just a little more aware of it. One of the things so you mentioned, man, mentioned earlier too.

00:25:32:04 - 00:25:56:06
Sandesh
So you mention that 50 year old sales, executive. Right. One of the things I've been thinking about, I think about change we're seeing now, the millennials are by far the largest part of our workforce, right. And so there is, to me, this generational shift that is happening as well. So let me explain that a little bit.

00:25:56:08 - 00:26:28:05
Sandesh
I'm turning 50 this year, and I'm definitely in this boat to where, you know, if I look at that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You know, I'm definitely in that self actualization where I'm really more focused on my purpose, my legacy that I leave and you know, growing and getting more wisdom, as I'm getting older. But with that, I, I see people my age and a little bit older.

00:26:28:05 - 00:26:45:08
Sandesh
They're more like, you know, I got five years left. I got ten years left. I'm not looking to rock the boat. Yeah, I just want to get through this and then peace out and good luck to you guys with all this eye stuff. But I don't want to deal with it. And then you have these young kids.

00:26:45:08 - 00:27:08:14
Sandesh
That's why I feel like so many of these companies are hiring young kids. If you're a 50, 55 year old sales guy this year in tech, you're going to have a tough time getting a job. I'm just telling you, it's it's the market has changed. Can you speak a little bit to when you're talking with companies, you have all different generations.

00:27:08:14 - 00:27:22:10
Sandesh
You have you have people that are closer to retirement, to people that are straight out of college. So people psychologically are going to be in different phases of their life. And it shows up at work.

00:27:22:12 - 00:27:44:09
Nick
Yeah, it absolutely does. So one of the paradigms I talk about always in every group, just because it's like I need to, I need to center people on where we are. And I talk about this idea of the growth curve. Okay. And I, I think we should call it growth curves, plural, because I talk about it as though it's, it's one thing.

00:27:44:09 - 00:28:04:19
Nick
But the fact is, throughout the course of our lives, all of us, we go through many growth curves. Right. And so lots of times in this case, in particular, if you take just like if you think of the career growth curve as one big thing, and then there's a bunch of little ones in between, the younger people are near the bottom of the growth curve.

00:28:04:20 - 00:28:25:18
Nick
The older people are near the top of the growth curve, okay. And when you're near the bottom of the growth curve, you're looking up. And in this case, well you're at the bottom. So change of of almost any kind is more of an opportunity to climb the curve. Right. It's a it's an opportunity a change in your situation when you're at the bottom is a good thing.

00:28:25:20 - 00:28:52:17
Nick
When you're at the top, you're looking down. All you see when you see change is threat. It's like I could slide back down the growth curve. And so yeah, we talk about it differently. I think one of the evolutions in my thinking throughout the course of my career, you know, like I started out as like a, mostly like a personality psychologist, like my first book was kind of on these individual differences between why some people are more risk managers and other people are risk takers.

00:28:52:17 - 00:29:13:09
Nick
Right. And there's there's evidence for that. But the more I've gotten out there and the more the more teams I work with, the more leaders I work with, the more I see it in a practical way, it's less about is Sandesh, a risk taker or a risk manager? In my terms, a potential seeker or a risk manager?

00:29:13:10 - 00:29:34:11
Nick
It's less about. Is he as a as a human being or where is he right now? Is he in a potential seeking place or is he in a risk managing place. Right. So where is he at on the growth curve? Because all of us can be either one depending on our situation. And I think that's what you're seeing in the generational piece.

00:29:34:13 - 00:29:35:21
Nick
And is that makes sense.

00:29:35:23 - 00:29:45:19
Sandesh
Absolutely, absolutely. And I but it's something that people don't talk about it. No. You know, well, we don't talk about it.

00:29:45:21 - 00:30:14:15
Nick
I think when we do talk about it and it's not anybody's fault. It's just like it's a squishy and abstract topic. So when we do talk about it, we just immediately resort to stereotypes. Millennials are this and you know, boomers are this. And you know, Gen X was latchkey kids. So we're like this, right. Right. When it's like, well, first of all, you run into trouble when you make a sweeping generalization about 40 million.

00:30:14:15 - 00:30:16:18
Sandesh
People just because they were born.

00:30:16:18 - 00:30:40:21
Nick
In this decade. Right? Right. Already you're you're on unstable footing. And I just say that right there. Okay. Right. And quite often what we're talking about, like the, the words you used most researchers would say, what you're proving right there is it's not a generational difference. It's an age difference. The millennials will be just like you in 15 years.

00:30:40:23 - 00:30:41:10
Sandesh
Oh, right.

00:30:41:10 - 00:31:04:11
Nick
Yeah. You were just like them 20 years ago, right? It's because a 20 something with no kids, no family sees the world differently than a 50 year old who's sending kids to college. Right? It's just our life stage is different. So it's. I feel like it's sometimes counterproductive to talk about millennials are like this and whatever.

00:31:04:12 - 00:31:31:15
Nick
Like, let's just understand that we're in different places in our life. And so we have different needs. Now, the one thing that I think doesn't change, and this is this is kind of what I like to bring everybody back to, is there is a pattern behind every great achievement, every big win, every great success. You I millennials, Gen Zs boomers have ever had.

00:31:31:17 - 00:32:00:14
Nick
Right. And it's a really simple pattern. It's also the same pattern behind every great leap forward in human civilization, every business transformation, every technological advance. Are you ready for it? Yeah. Okay. Change around us. A lock's growth inside us, which leads to the big wins that are up ahead of us. Change happens, then you grow, then you win.

00:32:00:16 - 00:32:35:00
Nick
I challenge you to think of any achievement in your life. Anything you're proud of from your your days in school, playing sports to career to parenting to leadership that didn't follow that pattern, that didn't. This great achievement was preceded by a season of change. Yes. Which forced you to make some alteration, some adaptation, which we call growth, which led to this achievement that you never would have gotten to had it not been for the change, the spark, the growth that led to that win.

00:32:35:02 - 00:32:52:03
Nick
And I think that is true across generations. Maybe now for a younger person, the, great achievement is, is a raise, right? It's a promotion, right? To get to, director instead of senior manager. Right?

00:32:52:04 - 00:32:52:19
Sandesh
Right.

00:32:52:21 - 00:33:10:23
Nick
For an older person, maybe that great achievement is more. We'll talk about it more in terms of legacy. What kind of legacy do I want to leave? But it's still a great achievement that a change it's going to force you to grow, that's going to leave that legacy that you otherwise would not have left.

00:33:11:01 - 00:33:31:04
Sandesh
Yeah. Just as you're explaining it, I'm just thinking about my own life and, you know, from straight out of college, you know, when I graduated, I just moved to California. I had no money. I had no clue. I might remember my Delta 88. And, you know, it was old show. You know, I had major issues solving duct taped up.

00:33:31:05 - 00:33:51:07
Sandesh
Had no job. I was living in a hotel room for the first week, had no place to live, and I. But I made that decision that I was just going to go there. And I still don't know why. Like, I still don't completely understand why I did it, but it was hard. It was hard that I wasn't making enough money to afford to live in California.

00:33:51:09 - 00:34:17:07
Sandesh
And I had no money, so I'm just going into debt every month. But through that, I grew so much because now I had to. I had to adjust to my circumstances, and I and I made this decision. I was there, you know, quite candidly, for the first two months, I was like, did I just make this stupidest mistake in my entire life here?

00:34:17:09 - 00:34:46:07
Sandesh
We just go back to Chicago and call it the day. But that growth happened after that change, and that's why earlier when we were talking about with change, there's also this tolerance of failure that has to come with it. Yeah. And I think where companies where I see them is like so in the Silicon Valley, I love the way they, they think about things because they're like, if you're not changing, you know, if you're not changing, then you're not growing.

00:34:46:09 - 00:35:10:08
Sandesh
There's no value there. So, you know, we rather you change and fail and we're going to be like, yeah, right. On where in other parts of this country companies don't have that kind of tolerance. It's very much. Yeah. Okay, fine. We'll we'll spend $5 million on this project and we're going to do this. And these are going to be the outcomes and there should be no problems.

00:35:10:10 - 00:35:41:17
Sandesh
And the reality with AI is it's such a science experiment and it's not just that like the technology is not the issue. I wouldn't say it's the people, it's the processes that we have. We have organizational structures. It's like it is breaking everything and you start to see it like where the gaps are coming up. I think companies need to have more of a risk tolerance and an accepting of failure.

00:35:41:18 - 00:35:44:17
Sandesh
Not to say like, hey, when you fail, you're like, all right, you know?

00:35:44:20 - 00:35:45:05
Nick
Right?

00:35:45:08 - 00:36:06:19
Sandesh
No, it's what did we learn? What did I learn? And by the way, this was part of the whole plan that we were going to have issues, that we were going to run into challenges. And this might not work, but we made that conscious decision. And now the question is, is what do we learn from that? How can we improve and reiterate and reiterate?

00:36:06:19 - 00:36:21:01
Sandesh
And I feel like a CIO is is worried about the CEO saying, what the hell is going on? You just spent $50 million on AI. Like what? Where's the value? Yeah.

00:36:21:03 - 00:36:47:17
Nick
Yeah, no, I, I so I like to talk about it in terms of the two different kinds of optimism. Okay. And so I think most of us have been sort of conditioned to believe that to be optimistic is to believe that everything's going to work out right. Everything is going to go, according to plan. We're going to make a plan, we're going to work the plan, and the plan is going to work.

00:36:47:23 - 00:37:15:22
Nick
And that's what being optimistic is about. And that is a particular brand of optimism that I like to call fragile optimism. Okay. And fragile optimism feels great temporarily. Like when you convince yourself that you finally figured out the plan, you know where you're going, and we're going to go there and we're going to follow the plan A, B, C, and we'll get to XYZ.

00:37:16:00 - 00:37:37:23
Nick
Great. You feel awesome, right? We know that, having that plan makes your brain increases your confidence. It increases your risk tolerance. Everything right makes you feel great. The problem is when things don't go according to plan, a few days, weeks, months later, all of a sudden that fragile optimism shatters into a million little pieces.

00:37:38:01 - 00:37:39:01
Sandesh
Yeah, okay.

00:37:39:03 - 00:37:57:13
Nick
But so the. So what's the solution to be pessimistic, to say we're probably going to fail? Well, no, that's not exactly. Well, we want either. Right. Because then people aren't gonna aren't going to even give it a try. Which quite often happens a lot when we talk about most change efforts fail. 70% of all change efforts fail.

00:37:57:18 - 00:38:34:21
Nick
Right. So what's the solution? Well, instead of fragile optimism, you replace it with agile optimism. And like you said, there's certain businesses, you know, the, the cliche for the tech companies is that they're like, it's in their DNA. And I think in a lot of them it is. And it's not so much in other companies, but agile optimism, is where we believe that we are going to lay out a plan, that's probably going to get us to an outcome that we like, maybe not one that we necessarily can predict at the moment, but it's going to be a good outcome on the way to that outcome.

00:38:35:02 - 00:38:57:22
Nick
There's going to be lots of failures, learnings and insights that will arrive that will help us arrive at that outcome. So Fragile optimism is believing that we're going to get this outcome agile optimism is believing that we're going to see a bunch of insights on the way to an outcome that we're all really excited about. You see the difference.

00:38:58:00 - 00:39:32:10
Sandesh
Big time, big time. And a lot of it is, again, it's between our years. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's it's how we think. And to that point to yeah. This is again not something that is popular to talk about, but I don't think anybody would disagree with me. We are in a mental health crisis. And it's there's a fear like, like for me that it's going to get worse with the amount of change that is going to happen.

00:39:32:12 - 00:39:58:22
Sandesh
And, and, you know, it's so disruptive and so in such a short period of time. What are your thoughts on your how do you motivate people when you know that they're struggling, that, you know, when we just got out of the pandemic, right. I mean, that happened, which was, by the way, look how well humans changed when they looked right as unities, as individuals and everything.

00:39:58:22 - 00:40:03:16
Sandesh
We we figured it out, right. It wasn't, so purging. Yeah.

00:40:03:18 - 00:40:25:13
Nick
Companies that were like, I remember I was working with a defense contractor at the time, one of the major defense contractors in the US, and, I had to do I was supposed to give a talk. It turned into a virtual talk, like two months after the pandemic, for obvious reasons. And, and I remember them saying, like, you wouldn't.

00:40:25:14 - 00:40:53:15
Nick
The absolute unthinkable. So this is this is a major defense contractor for the United States. They have these all their their whole business, billion dollar contracts. You do not take laptops out of this building because you're literally harboring, like, national secrets, right? 45 days after the after the pandemic started, lo and behold, guess what? They figured out a way for people to take their laptops out of the building and nothing happened.

00:40:53:17 - 00:40:59:14
Nick
Right. And I just it's it's just, it was like a fascinating case study.

00:40:59:16 - 00:41:23:06
Sandesh
Yeah, it well, it just speaks to, like, the power that humans have. You know, we sometimes underestimate, you know, if we really want to do something, we can do it. But with the pandemic and then all these other things that have been going on with political, unrest and, you know, financial uncertainty and, you know, pricing prices going up and things costing more.

00:41:23:11 - 00:41:42:09
Sandesh
You know, you don't, you know, people think, these executives are so rich and, you know, they've, they don't have pain or suffering like, they don't care about it because they're, they're they got money. There's no so. Well, you know, what are they worried about? What I find so interesting is they are often the ones that are struggling the most.

00:41:42:11 - 00:42:04:01
Sandesh
You should. And it's all in their minds. So to me, when I think about what you do for companies, I'm also thinking because I see it in the industry everywhere, man, every conversation I have, you know, I'm not I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer. I'm just I, I'm trying to figure out how to fix this is to get people to be more positive.

00:42:04:01 - 00:42:15:14
Sandesh
Because every time I talk to someone, it's like, if you have a real conversation with somebody, you see that they're they're struggling. The most of them are they're not going to come out and say it. Right. Yeah. How's your.

00:42:15:14 - 00:42:16:15
Nick
Day going? Hey, how are you?

00:42:16:15 - 00:42:38:02
Sandesh
How you been? Good, good. How you been? Good, good. You know, people don't want to really tell you. And you don't really want to hear what is going on in people's lives, but you. But but there is that pain there. So yeah, knowing that humans are struggling, how how do leaders have to change the way they approach transforming their business?

00:42:38:04 - 00:43:06:15
Nick
Yeah, it's a good question. So I think two things come to mind. So one is I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding about the role of stress in our lives in in the human condition, in general. And I don't know if we've been conditioned to believe it, or maybe it's like hardwired into us, but somehow or another, we've all arrived at this conclusion that stress is the enemy of, high performance and happiness.

00:43:06:17 - 00:43:36:03
Nick
And in fact, what we know is that. It's the avoidance of stress that is the enemy of high performance and personal happiness. It is the avoidance of stress. Right. So let me give you an example. How many times have you made yourself twice as stressed by worrying about the fact that you're stressed? Yeah, right. I mean, every morning.

00:43:36:05 - 00:44:03:20
Nick
Yeah, all the time. All the time on what? Look, I mean, but my my father, this is no joke. He's had nine heart attacks. Nine, his eight siblings and three of them have died of heart attacks. Okay, my dad's still alive. Nine lives. But, wow. You know, heart conditions are hereditary, right? We know that. So what does that do for a guy like me?

00:44:03:22 - 00:44:24:08
Nick
But knock on wood, at the moment, I, I tend to be. I tend to be healthy. But the bigger issue, I think, is we have all like, that's my story, but you have your own story, I'm sure about, you know, like health, history, family or whatever. Like your doctor told you, you got to up the Lipitor or whatever it is.

00:44:24:08 - 00:44:52:15
Nick
Right? But we're always focused on. I can't be stressed because that's, you know, it's my heart condition or whatever. And what we know is that people that worry about being stressed are the ones that have the biggest problems from stress, right? Two people with the exact same amounts of stress. One that sees stress as a problem that they have to fix, the other that sees stress as a normal part of a healthy human existence.

00:44:52:17 - 00:44:57:01
Nick
That person is going to live, on average seven years longer. Think about that.

00:44:57:02 - 00:44:57:19
Sandesh
Right?

00:44:57:21 - 00:45:33:22
Nick
Right. So like we need to talk about the mental health crisis, but we need to talk about it in a way that's not just all about self-care and about like, you know, drawing a bath and lighting some candles. Like we need to talk about engaging with the stress, not running from it. Right? Looking at it as, an impetus for growth, for the things that we want in our life, because you can't have a meaningful life, you might have a pleasurable life, but it's not going to be a meaningful life if it has no stress.

00:45:34:00 - 00:45:58:04
Sandesh
Such a good point, because I think society wise, when we say mental health, people think of, oh, people are weak, humans are weak. So nobody wants to show that weakness. And then again, that's where the ego shows up. And then you see people, like myself, you know, sometimes I say and do things because it's just a byproduct of my stress.

00:45:58:06 - 00:46:29:16
Sandesh
And my own ego, my egoic identity is now being challenged. And so I react in a certain way. But I, I definitely, I definitely think that we need to think about this more in the world of AI because, like, organizationally, people aren't spending as much time with each other anymore. Right? Like, you know, people are so many companies shut down their offices, you know, they're having in-person meetings.

00:46:29:16 - 00:46:49:19
Sandesh
It's just not as common as it used to be. And I feel like, like the more onsite meetings I go to, the more I spend time with people, like, genuinely like even to yesterday just had with one of my business partners. We just had lunch and, you know, it was just a different, like, feeling I'm feeling for.

00:46:49:23 - 00:47:05:00
Sandesh
It's like, wow, that was great to catch up with him. You know, looking for him to do business with him. You know, you just caught up on life and work and whatever else. And I think that that's missing and I'm like the like what you said earlier too, about what that gentleman said about one thing he didn't want to change is the relationships.

00:47:05:00 - 00:47:24:11
Sandesh
I'm the same way as him. It's like, no matter what I do as an occupation, I know I want to work with people. I want to be around people, and I want to build relationships. It's not about the money. The money will come, but the relationships between humans, I think, is the key with,

00:47:24:13 - 00:47:52:10
Nick
Definitely in it. Okay, so there's another there's a there's another wrinkle to this. So I know you and I talked about, I talked about before the idea of, like, AI and cognitive offloading AI. Okay. And that that's, like like you actually brought that to my attention, I and I, and I've thought about that more and and cognitive offloading, like, basically I allows us to offload our thinking.

00:47:52:12 - 00:48:17:04
Nick
Right. So we don't have to like really deeply engage with something. We just give it to AI and it tells us the answer. And I think that's definitely true. And what are the the ramifications, the implications of that, that's like that. That's one big topic. The other thing I've noticed recently, like I'm working with this executive team right now that it's the having let's just call it communication issues.

00:48:17:06 - 00:48:40:00
Nick
And the other thing that it occurs to me that I does and I don't know if I in particular is the issue in this case, but AI offloads, it offloads disagreement. Okay. Let me give you an example of that. So it's not just offloading thinking. It's offloading disagreement which leads to a, misalignment. So you know, we both we have this issue.

00:48:40:00 - 00:49:01:18
Nick
Let's say let's say Bob and Alice are, two managers and they're, they're supposed to be merging their teams, let's say, right, a reorg, and they're going to be like merging their teams. Neither of them really wants to, but they go and they they put it into AI. And, you know, Claude gives them an answer the night before the meeting, like, okay, this is why it's a good idea.

00:49:01:18 - 00:49:30:05
Nick
Pros and cons, etc.. And they can't really argue with the logic because ChatGPT and Claude, they've got really good logic. So they're like, okay, so they both come to the meeting and they're like, yeah, I guess we'll, you know, we'll do the merger. And you know, here's, here's the reasons why. And we talk about it. But but the real issue that wasn't addressed by AI, and that maybe didn't get addressed in that meeting because they both came in with their AI answers.

00:49:30:07 - 00:49:56:07
Nick
Was that, you know, Alice has seen Bob in previous restructurings, play favorites. She doesn't know how it's going to affect her team. So it's like structurally it makes sense. And then Bob thinks that Alice, you know, kind of like micromanaging her team and he's not really sure if he wants to invite that into his organization. But they're not going to talk about they're going to talk about the strategy of it and the nuts and bolts of it.

00:49:56:09 - 00:50:16:03
Nick
And then you talk about the logic of it, because that's what AI is incredibly good at doing. I can't, you know, I give Claude a question and I can't argue with his logic. Right. He's smarter than I am. So they go and they agree to do it. But Alice's concern never got talked about. Bob's concern never got talked about.

00:50:16:05 - 00:50:42:17
Nick
And it seems like alignment. But the disagreement didn't disappear. It was just dressed up in really pretty logic that no one could. No one noticed it anymore, right? Yeah. It's like it's like, you know, a marriage where we're where people aren't fighting. The has no fights, like, that's not peaceful. That's two people that stop telling each other the truth.

00:50:42:19 - 00:51:16:20
Sandesh
Right? Absolutely. You hit on a huge pain point happening with companies right now here. The AI is no longer a the CIO's responsibility. You know, they now that's why I think organizational structures just they are slowly changing. But they're going to have to change because now AI is their business. Whether you're in marketing, finance s or sales or whatever discipline that you're in, you're going to need AI.

00:51:16:22 - 00:51:37:04
Sandesh
And you also need to work with all these different departments. Now that is not negotiable. You have to work with security. You have to work with legal, your governance. You know, maybe it's sales, maybe it's finance. And now you need to break all these silos. And gosh, there's so many silos within organizations, right? This is my this is my thing.

00:51:37:04 - 00:51:46:16
Sandesh
Yeah. You know, and stay out of my thing. That's why I think there has to be this layer that kind of makes people change together.

00:51:46:18 - 00:52:16:02
Nick
You know, and, you know, like the, the the protecting your turf, protecting your silo. It's like been totally amplified because everyone everyone is like like it's already it's already been a thing. Right? Silos. That's existed for a long time. Yeah. But now now put on a layer of existential threat like it's it's, I mean, it's just like it's off the charts now, like, everybody's got to feel like they got to protect their turf.

00:52:16:04 - 00:52:37:23
Sandesh
Oh, for sure, for sure. So as we start to land this plane here, what what are your thoughts about the future? Like what? What does the future look like for Nick Tassler? And how are you going to change yourself to adapt to this? You know, this new world of AI?

00:52:38:01 - 00:53:07:10
Nick
Well, I can give you a very real example, right now. So the transition that I'm going through, is a lot of my, my business, for the last ten years was was built on Google, and I had figured out how to get Google ads like wired, super efficient. And it did wonders for my business.

00:53:07:12 - 00:53:38:20
Nick
Well, now, people just aren't searching Google for their answers anymore. I don't, I, I asked Claude, I asked ChatGPT and so probably to you so probably does does everyone else. So that's like oh that's that's the danger. Right. On the other hand, so I'm, I'm taking my own medicine here. Like, what's the thing that I want to that I want to pull through into the future?

00:53:38:20 - 00:54:02:15
Nick
What do I want to refuse to lose about me? And I've had to think about that. Like, what doesn't? I change? And for me, what it doesn't change is the fact that that, the fact that I can speak pretty well to, a leader or a group of leaders in a way that engages them in a way that they find interesting and insightful.

00:54:02:17 - 00:54:23:20
Nick
And that's something that Claude or, ChatGPT can't really do at the moment. It can write to them, but it can't really do what what I can do. So I have to, like, lean into that. Now, the flip side is, even though it's hurting my Google Ads business, it's allowing me to be so much more effective as a coach and a consultant.

00:54:24:01 - 00:54:50:19
Nick
Things that would take me hours of like debriefing, thinking about planning it does in seconds so I can effectively work with, probably not an exaggeration ten times as many people in a single year versus what I had to work with before, because I can just stick to what I'm what I'm good at, and that's being in front of the person having like, a real human conversation.

00:54:50:23 - 00:55:03:21
Nick
And I don't have to spend so much time on the back end in the back room planning, structuring, whatever. Because I does that for me in an instant. So like, that's my journey out of what's yours.

00:55:03:22 - 00:55:36:10
Sandesh
Well, like, the one thing I'm not going to give up is relationships. I'm actually doubling down on it. And, you know, I think it's part of my whole, you know, self factor actualization in the hierarchy of needs. So that is like, what I won't compromise, and the way I'm trying to approach everything that I'm doing with I, I think this speaks to like, us just getting older is I'm really trying to approach it in terms of like being in service to to whomever it is that I'm working with.

00:55:36:12 - 00:55:59:04
Sandesh
You know, there's always been tension between clients and vendors. That's always hard as a salesperson. And I'm really trying to train myself to be like, how can I support this person? How can I help this person? I think I have value to help them accomplish some of these really hard things. But how do I serve them? How do I serve my internal team?

00:55:59:06 - 00:56:22:10
Sandesh
How do I serve our partners? And, and our communities? And that's part of the reason why I do some of the things that I do, quite honestly, is I don't make money from, you know, there's no there is no, credit at the end of the year. And my balance sheet. Right. It's all debits. But it's an investment that I wanted to make.

00:56:22:12 - 00:56:45:03
Sandesh
Because I want I this is part of the legacy of like, I want to do cool things with cool people. And this allows me to do that. And so that's where I'm going to focus and then take taking a lot of risks. Definitely. Gonna go for change and and know that I'm going to fail and, and it's I already have multiple times.

00:56:45:05 - 00:57:06:07
Sandesh
But I see, like you were saying, you know, with, first you change, then you have that growth and then you get that outcome. And that's exactly what's happened with me. I mean, I made this change, you know, started this podcast, started content, and, man, I thought about it forever before I did it. Yeah, I once I did it, like now I look back.

00:57:06:07 - 00:57:19:22
Sandesh
It's been a year now and I'm so glad that I did it, even though it's been so hard and so much work and I would really like to make money from it. But, someday. Someday. Yeah. And that's.

00:57:20:04 - 00:57:41:19
Nick
But it's but it's like, it's part of that is part of that legacy. Like you have to find the win for you, like, as a, as a human being. Aside from Sandesh, the, the sales star and, the leader, it's like, okay, so that all that's going to end soon. So. So who do I what's my win as a as a human.

00:57:41:19 - 00:57:48:18
Nick
As a person? And you know, this is this is part of it. This is an active service, right? This pod actually was.

00:57:48:20 - 00:58:13:06
Sandesh
Actually working with younger sales teams. It feels really good. They're like my nieces and nephews ages, you know, and and, the ones that are interested in, like, learning and changing and growing, you know, I'm finally in a position where I think I have some value to give them, and in my career, I've had people do that for me, you know, so it's part of that paying it forward kind of mentality.

00:58:13:08 - 00:58:46:00
Sandesh
But I hope that that's where this world goes more man, because like, all I see is people being less and less human, how we treat each other, it shows up in families, it shows up at work, it shows up in meetings, it shows up in the news and content and all this stuff. You know, it's like people love to hate this cancel culture, when to me it's if there's no better time right now than to embrace the people around you and, and really get closer with people.

00:58:46:05 - 00:58:47:22
Sandesh
Don't push them away.

00:58:48:00 - 00:59:23:09
Nick
Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm bullish on the human condition, the human story. So I think we're in a phase right now, but I don't think it's permanent. You know, it feels like it is, because it always does. Right? Every every new thing that happens, it feels like it's permanent. But I think all ready already. We're starting to see that this way of interacting that's become popular in the last ten years or so, for various reasons.

00:59:23:11 - 01:00:00:01
Nick
Yeah, it's starting to run its course and people are already starting to, to grow out of it, you know, and I and I think in what role AI is going to play in that, I don't know. I mean, of course there's all the doomsday scenarios about like, we won't know how to talk to each other anymore. I think personally there is I think it's possible that I will teach the next generation how to be kind, how to be polite, and what I mean is, like, if they rely on AI as much as we all think that, they probably will.

01:00:00:03 - 01:00:04:22
Nick
AI is nice, right? It's. Yeah, it's it has really good manners.

01:00:05:00 - 01:00:06:05
Sandesh
Yeah.

01:00:06:07 - 01:00:25:14
Nick
And, you know, I think that's going to get kind of baked in there and, and maybe this is too rosy and optimistic, but, you know, for a lot of people that maybe their friends aren't nice or maybe they're maybe, you know, maybe they maybe they had shitty parents and they were rude, you know. Yeah. Well, Claude's nice, right?

01:00:25:14 - 01:00:33:10
Nick
He he always speaks to you respectfully. He tells you to go take a nap when he wakes. You need to take a nap.

01:00:33:12 - 01:01:00:08
Sandesh
And then if you look at history, man, like, when these big events happen, when, you know, for us in our bit in our tech world, right, when cybersecurity where we're getting all these ransomware breaches and then you have this cloud movement to now I what I have always found so interesting is when that change starts and that's and now it's an issue that people have to deal with.

01:01:00:10 - 01:01:27:15
Sandesh
It is so common that what people popularly think is going to happen doesn't come true. There's a variation of it, maybe, but it's not that where you know it. Yeah. Covid hit. Now we're always going to be working from home. Everyone's going to be selling all their real estate, you know, all offices. There was some truth to that for sure.

01:01:27:17 - 01:01:42:16
Sandesh
But now look at how many people are back in the office and getting back out there. Right. So it's, don't don't believe the hype, you know? Yeah. And there's no reason to, like, start stressing out about that stuff, you know, you can't control it anyways, you know. Yeah.

01:01:42:18 - 01:02:05:15
Nick
And and I think, you know, what is somewhat different about AI, in terms of, like when you compare it to other previous waves of, of changes is like every other wave of change, the internet, whatever. People had, you know, like about a decade to, to get used to it. With AI, they got Tuesday afternoon to get used to it.

01:02:05:18 - 01:02:30:18
Nick
Yeah. I yeah it's boom. And so like like we haven't we will we will adapt. That's what we do. Right. It's called habituation. I mean, there's a million psychological studies showing how and why we adapt. Right? We will. Right. But I feels more urgent because the normal timeline has been so condensed. But. Yeah, we'll get there.

01:02:30:20 - 01:02:42:05
Sandesh
Yeah. So, Nick, if somebody is watching and they say, hey, would be great to have Nick Tassler talk to our teams, how do they reach you? How does that all work?

01:02:42:07 - 01:03:00:03
Nick
Yeah. So the the best way you can, you can email me Nick and Nick tassler.com, or you can just go to, Nick tassler.com and, is a little contact form on there. You can fill that on. Of course, I'm on LinkedIn too. So, you know, feel free to.

01:03:00:05 - 01:03:05:07
Sandesh
Look me up there. Fantastic. Dude, this is fun. You know, it's.

01:03:05:07 - 01:03:05:21
Nick
Yeah.

01:03:05:23 - 01:03:29:21
Sandesh
Part of what I do this podcast thing to me is because we just establish I'm a relationship guy, and this is what's great, you know, like. Yeah, a friend, a friend that I've had for, you know, more than two decades now, we go from partying together to talking about our kids and change in a business in, like, just real, real stuff.

01:03:30:02 - 01:03:30:20
Sandesh


01:03:30:22 - 01:03:34:17
Nick
Didn't see this conversation coming in 1999.

01:03:34:19 - 01:03:47:05
Sandesh
You know, not not even close. Not even close. But, hey, man, thanks a lot for joining the show. I, I super appreciate you. Always wish you the best. And, I'm sure we'll, we'll be in touch.

01:03:47:07 - 01:03:48:15
Nick
Likewise, buddy.

01:03:48:17 - 01:03:50:09
Sandesh
All right. Thanks, man. You bet.