Organizational Transformation in the AI Era: Building Teams that Adopt, Adapt, and Thrive

The biggest differentiator is not which company will have the most AI, it's really everyone will have AI. The real differentiator for me, as I'm thinking that far ahead, is which companies know how to combine that AI enabled speed with human trust, human judgment, and human adoption. You're listening to the B2B revenue executive experience, a podcast dedicated to helping executives train their sales and marketing teams to optimize growth. Whether you're looking for techniques and strategies or tools and resources, you've come to the right place. Let's accelerate your growth in 3, 2, 1. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the B2B revenue executive experience. I'm your host, Corey, and today I'm talking to Travis Hailer. He's a transformation and change management expert, author and strategist whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and organizational effectiveness. Now, he's previously held senior transformation roles at Google and currently serves as the Senior director, Global Strategy and Transformation at Salesforce. He is also the founder of the Neurological Nomad, a platform dedicated to helping leaders better understand the human side of transformation, adoption, and organizational change. Travis, welcome to the show. Hi, Corey. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to get into it. And first, as always, I want to start with your background. You know, anyone looking at your LinkedIn would know that you grew up in a small town, come from a family business, and I think you've often credited those early experiences with being really foundational to how you approach your work today. So walk us through. What was that like and how do those experiences carry over? Yeah, I love this question. Not a lot of people have ever asked this question. So it's kind of cool to talk a little bit about the origin, I guess. I guess I learned my first lessons in transformation, like, really before I had the language around what it meant. And so growing up in a small town family business, you learn really quickly that business is not just transactional, it's deeply relational. People remember whether you showed up, like how you showed up, how you made them feel. And in a family business, there's really nowhere to hide from anything. Everyone is looking at your business as well as they know your reputation before you walk in the room because they've either interacted with you or someone else has interacted with you. And I think that really shaped how I lead today and the way that I think about people. Because, you know, whether you're in a small town business or you're in a large organization driving transformation, like at Google or Salesforce, I think the fundamentals don't change. You know, the scale changes, but the fundamentals don't. And old question is, do people trust you? Do they understand where we're going? Are they safe? To be honest? You know, do they, do they believe that the changes being done to them or with them? And I think that's the biggest lesson that I've carried with me is that organizations are not machines. They're a group of people. Those people have fears, habits, loyalties, all their own stories. So that's to be kind of where my origin, my background growing up has really shaped me. And then that led me into this space of psychology and neuroscience and school, clinical, um, so in, in college, that's what I studied. And then coming back after living in Denmark for a while doing neurological research, I. I wasn't sure really what to do with that. I, I loved people, I loved understanding them, but I wasn't sure I really wanted to be a psychologist. And so in my 22 year old mind I was like, there's only two options really. It's either go psych or business. And they were very discreet items in my mindset. And so I was like, I'll go business. So I went back and got an MBA and really focused a lot on organizational transformation and structure and behavior. And I got into consulting out of college, out of my MBA program. And what really started to show up for me was this like re merging of those two worlds and how every time I'd get into a boardroom or with leaders and the things that I would say would land, I was like, gosh, that's interesting. I wonder why it's landing. And that kind of snowballed over the years to me, creating this hypothesis that my understanding of human psych, behavioral psych, neuroscience was actually the differentiator in how I was able to communicate change to leaders and help them understand what people would go through. And that launched the neurological nomad. And going back to Harvard to talk through what does neuroscience really look like? What is neuropsychology? And that's really got me to where I am today in this world of neuroscience and how change happens and resistance. So it's kind of how we got here. It's been an interesting journey. Yeah. Wow. A fascinating journey and really a tremendous story. You know, Travis, I was really struck by one thing in particular that you said when you said that organizations are not machines, that they're fundamentally sort of a collection of human beings. Right. And all the emotions and all the messiness that goes with that. So what you Said about organizations not being machines really hit a chord along that, because I'm thinking we could look at them and say, they are machines, right? They seem sort of unstoppable. They seem to be on the cutting edge of things constantly. However, inside, I'm sensing it's a different story. So can you talk to us a little bit about, like, what your experiences at Google and Salesforce have been like and how they've reinforced, you know, your conclusion that that change is really about the people. What's really interesting about what you said around these companies not being machines and thinking about them as they are, because, like, Google as an example, is a tech behemoth. I mean, it is. It is redefined what corporate America looks like over the last 25 years. Right. What's interesting about it is it's not a machine, but it is a movement. It's something that people wanted to get behind and wanted to be a part of. And I think that's what has built it to where it is today. And I think Salesforce is very similar, and I think that's where tech is building differently and that a lot of these companies are more movement than they are machine. Meaning they, they have both the. We create incredible products, we move the markets, but we also stand for something too. And in many ways, you know, like, Salesforce has their 1,1,1 model where, you know, this is how we give back. We give 1% of our profits, 1% of our time, 1% of our. Our product to help people. And that's just generally the blanket is help people. Google wants to do, you know, great things in terms of, you know, creating accessibility to information. And, and that was what they're kind of founded on. So they, they did create these movements that feel very mechanical when you look at it from the outside, but it really is a collection of people coming together, wanting to drive this movement forward. And so for me, how that has kind of shown up in my own experience is that I've had really, really incredible opportunities to work with some very driven and motivated people who are truly trying to change not just the world, but the product set, the way that people interact with technology. That has also opened the door for me to see firsthand how even people who are so dedicated to this mission and this vision and the way that we are wanting to move forward still struggle with change. And I think that's one of the things that people kind of look at, like Google, when I was there and leading global transformation, they would say, oh, well, what do you even do? Google's Got to have it all figured out, because all the. I mean, they've got to have the best of the best, right? And what's interesting, and I've said this in many forums, is it's almost like it's the wrong thing that we. That we anchor on, because we sometimes do ourselves a disservice by saying we hired the best people who are on the cutting edge, who are the early adopters of all the technology, and we assume that that translates to change, and it doesn't. And so we don't always invest what we should in helping people change. And that's been kind of the message through the last 10, 11 years of my career in tech has been, you're right, our people are more adapt to change, but it doesn't mean that they don't need the support in order to do it. And so that's. That's been interesting to me. And it's also been what I think has shown up as the thought leadership that I've been involved in with the neurological Nomad is helping leaders also become change agents because these companies are growing quickly, and AI will only make that, you know, even more obviously. And so helping to really drive that idea that change is not just a discipline, it's also a skillset. And part of that skill set is understanding the foundations of why people resist change inherently. I'm curious why. Why is that? You know, from your work, from the neuroscience and neuropsychology, are there fundamental problems or patterns that you see time and time again with people's resistance to change in these environments? Yeah. So what's really interesting about resistance, in my mind and the work that I've done, the research I've done, is that it's incredibly repeatable and it happens to everyone. So resistance is not actually a choice, it's a reaction. So our brains are wired to resist change. And that goes back to the fundamentals of how we evolved as human beings. You know, it's things like threat, it's things like habits, all this, you know, all of these things exist for a purpose. It's keeping us alive and ensuring that we have the resources available to us to do what we need to do to stay alive. And I think it's really easy for us to forget those fundamentals of, like, why we're here, because our brains do incredible things, right? Like, we're here talking about a very meta topic of, like, how our brains work. And we're able to do that because of our brains. But at the very foundational levels, our brains are Here to keep us alive. That's what it does. Now, the easiest way to stay alive is to not rock the boat, right? If it's working, don't break it. And so that's foundational in humans. And then once you kind of understand that, and this kind of goes to the book, the. And with the work that I've done, there's six barriers that really exist within the brain. The way that the brain works and how it reacts to change. And once leaders really understand those foundations, a lot of times I get the, like, aha face in the. In the talks where you can tell a leader is thinking about a conversation that they had with someone where they're like, just get on board. And once they hear the foundations and the neuroscience behind it, they're like, oh, shoot, that was like, totally the wrong move. That wasn't at all what was happening. And I think that's what the power of understanding those neurological foundations, it makes a lot of sense, especially when you say that it's not a choice but a reaction. You know, I think it's easy, particularly now, you know, with the. I mean, I'm not going to argue that tech is not advancing at what feels like a breakneck. Great, because it is. And I think it's definitely doing so faster than previous generations have seen. But, you know, I mean, you can go back to the Victorians, and they're complaining about the pace of change, you know, and, you know, rioting against the telegraph. So it's nothing new, even though we like to think of it is. I'm curious about the point you ended on, too, when you mentioned that leaders have that aha moment. Oh, wait, that was not the way to go about this. But I'm thinking, why has it taken so long for these concepts to, I guess, trickle down into the mainstream? Or why aren't leaders more aware that these are the underlying things they need to incorporate? I think it's two parts. One, I think if you asked any leader what training they had to become a leader, the answer is not a lot. It was because they were really good at something. They had potential. You know, they were able to help people kind of do the job that they were doing. So they got elevated to a management level. We don't do enough with our leaders to help them understand what true leadership looks like. We. We oftentimes anchor in capabilities, not necessarily, like actual skill sets of leadership. And so I think one. There's just. There's no path that really teaches leaders this. This is one of the reasons why I've targeted leader groups because most of the leaders I talk to are like, very thankful to start having some of this understanding around. Okay. I understand my team a lot more. That makes it a lot easier for me. Also, I don't feel so alone and like I'm just failing time and time again to do these things. And at Salesforce, I've been privileged to be a part of our VP+ learning journeys with this type of content to help our leaders really understand what does change look like and what does it mean to lead transformative change through disruptive moments. And so that's been incredible. So that's kind of part one. Part two is really the reason I wrote the book. It's around the fact that we have focused as a society on frameworks and solutions, but not defining the actual problem. So I oftentimes get into rooms and I was on stage at a leadership conference not that long ago, and the first thing I said was, nothing I'm going to share today will shock you. It'll all be foundational items that you've been told time and time again you do. It's things like communication training. It's things like empathy. These are things you've learned over the hard knocks way, which is you figured out that it worked because you had to learn the hard way. But what I'm going to tell you is the thing you haven't had, which is the why they work. And I think when you can connect those two things, it changes the way you look at people. And we haven't done that yet. And that's. And as I've gone through this kind of journey of my own organization and this idea of resistance and how it's based in our neurology, I continue to see that when you connect those two things, it's really a missing piece that a lot of leaders haven't had and don't understand. And that's why we struggle to lead really good transformation at our organizations. Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, one of the examples we continually talk about in the sales world is, you know, the frontline managers. Right. They were the best individual contributor on the team. And then all of a sudden they've got. They're managing seven to 10 people and they're told, you're a sales coach. Go out and do it. How do they do that? Why do the things that they do work? That's a black box. But they're told to do it time and time again. Let's get into one of the concepts. I think we've touched on a few times and feels like we're dancing around, but I want to dive in a little bit more, which is we've talked about the reaction to change, and sometimes change being perceived as a threat. And even in those moments where our rational brains might, you know, Travis, you might sit me down and say, hey, Corey, here's why we're doing X, Y and Z. Here's why it's going to be beneficial to the company, beneficial to you. And my rational brain might agree with you. However, then I go back to my desk, and part of my brain that was designed to, you know, sit in a cave and eat berries all day and look out for wolves is going in a completely other direction. So I guess, neurologically speaking, why does that happen? It's an interesting kind of paradox of how we are. Like the brain is not ever asking, is this strategically sound? Right. I mean, it does eventually, but the brain is really asking, is this safe? And that's a really different question. So a leader is looking at change from an efficiency growth lens, whatever that might look like. But employees are experiencing that same change as uncertainty, loss, threat, all of those things. And so it's very, very different. And I think that's especially true with AI today. And, you know, so we oftentimes articulate change and things like this is going to make us more productive. But the brain here is, am I going to be replaced? And so those things don't always match in who's sending the message and who's receiving it. And when the brain detects that threat, it really starts reallocating resources towards protection. So not to get too nerdy with all of you on the, on the neuroscience side, but it's what I love, so why not? The amygdala is actually the area of the brain that will become more active. So your attention narrows. People become more vigilant, they scan for risk, and they're less open to that learning, less creative. They're less able to process complexity. And oftentimes, when you know you have a hammer, everything's a nail too. So you're also hypervigilant on everything. Seems to confirm your bias, which is that this is a threat. Right. And so when teams operate in that threat state, performance is not usually going to improve. It usually contracts. And that's where you see mistakes, and that's where you see people defaulting to old ways of working, slower decision making, less honest. Um, and. And that all happens in the brain. And what, what I've seen of leaders, how they kind of think about this. And where this changes a little bit is that we often use pressure to accelerate that change. So that can work, but too much pressure actually pushes the brain in further into that state, which makes it actually even harder. And that doesn't mean that we, like, remove accountability or, you know, not creating some form of pressure. But I think it's more about reducing uncertainty and threats, that people can actually think through it and get to the point of saying, oh, this is logical. This strategy does make sense, but we gotta get there first. And we're already 10 steps into that, and people are still going, am I threatened? And they're not even saying, does the logic make sense? So they're not getting on board in that space. And I think, you know, in the revenue space and sales, this happens all the time. We're moving so quickly that we're already onto the next three changes before someone's even determined if the change was threatening or not. And we kind of push at that speed. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I can see how you might end up trapped in that cycle. Right. When you have someone who is, you know, maybe agreeing or not even to the point of, you know, logically this makes sense. Right. But under threat and going back and then they start seeing threats everywhere, you pile urgency on top of that. It just gets worse. Trust is, you know, broken again and again. So how can leaders help teams? Well, I guess one, you know, I'll back up. How do they even recognize that this has happened? Because I'm thinking they might not, because their perspective is fundamentally different. They might not know what's going on with their team. Their team might not be comfortable sharing these concerns. Right. Yeah. And that's. That's common, I think. Psychological safety, we talked about that for many years. It's so important to be able to have that within your teams. But it doesn't happen overnight. And, you know, a lot of leaders are like, okay, so if I implement all these things, then my changes will go better. And I'm like, no, not initially. It'll take, you know, two or three changes for people to be like, oh, doing it this way actually does xyz. Okay, I'm here for it. I'm trusting it. So I think for leaders, it's starting that process now of identifying what is it that you have within your team that maybe is stopping you from getting that information. So maybe this psychological safety. The other thing is that all of these ways of thinking have some tells that a leader can start to look for. And part of it's just Scamming for it. Really, a lot of leaders aren't even looking for it. So they're, they're just on the change and driving the change. They're not always looking at like, how's the team reacting? Like, and a couple of things I point to are people will get hyper fixated on process and clarifying process. So especially when you're changing things like within go to market as an example, when you, when people are really trying to determine the threat, you'll hear questions that get really hyper fixated on the steps of the process and the policies themselves. And that's a really good indication. It's like, okay, they're identifying threat right now. They're not even at a point of adoption and logic. They're really trying to figure out, so you want me to do X, Is that good for me or bad for me? And so you'll see them kind of hone in on that. I know that we live in a virtual world at this point in business oftentimes, but I think if you have the luxury of being in person, body language is also huge. As leaders, you can see people physically react in many ways that their brain can't stop them from that reaction. So, you know, it's the, it's the crossing of the arms and the leaning back. Like they'll lean away from you physically if they're not really tied into the thought or not sure if it's safe to engage. So there's all these kind of little tells, but we need to be looking for them. And none of them are super secret. I think we as people understand some of them pretty inherently because we deal with it every day. But, but it's really just taking the time to look and seeing what's happening within your team. And I think I'm having one of those aha moments you described earlier, because the process, one, I'm thinking, oh, yep, I've seen that and lived that time and time again and had no idea that potentially that's where that was coming from. So that's a great one. Okay, so say, you know, we find ourselves in the cycle. That's how the team is reacting. What are a few ways that leaders can help teams break out of it? The one thing that I talk about a lot and probably the most impactful is twofold. One, it is thinking about and empathizing with what's happening within the team. And this is where a lot of leaders get really scared. And I talk about it a lot in the book. There's a lot in here that's really scary, this vulnerability thing that Brene Brown has been talking to us for the last 15 years about. Really, really scary for leaders, but it's really important. And, and I liken it to, you know, there, there are a couple ways that you can build your team and trust within your team. Some of it is just doing what you say you'll do and consistently showing up in that way. Right, that's great. The other is going through massive, overcoming massive barriers together as a team. So that's why, you know, when you think about groups and like you brought up the military, you know, they do these kind of group things together because it bonds them, it helps build trust within them. And it's an amazing opportunity to go through transformation with your team. And a lot of leaders will say, well, I'm not even sure I'm bought into this change, so how can I drive it with my team? I'm like, actually, that's a privilege. It doesn't feel like it, but it is. Because the moment for you to be really honest with your team and say, hey, you know what, I'm going through my own process of understanding. I also just found out about this. I'm not entirely sure what it means, but we're going to get through it together. Tell me your questions, I'll tell you some of my questions and I'll get answers for us as best I can and I'll keep you updated. And going through that process together is an incredible team building moment. And that empathy is really important. So empathy and not undervaluing, that vulnerability of being empathetic towards your team, the other side of it that comes along with the empathy is understanding loss. So all change. And this is the point where in the stage moment where half the audience sits back and nods with me and the other half the audience leans forward ready to come fight me. All change equals loss, full stop. There is no change that does not have loss attached to it. And like I said, this is the moment when people are either with me or ready to fight me. And the things I hear a lot are but promotions and more money things. Every change equals loss. You have to give up something to change. And it might not always be a bad thing, but you do have to give up something. And the three losses that happen a lot within our workplace is competence, it's control and it's relationships. And those three things are almost always present in every single change. And so as a leader, leaning into that loss and acknowledging that loss, if you as a leader can do that and empathize with it, that will help you drive your team out of that loop of resistance really, really quickly because your team feels seen, heard, understood. And with that understanding, there's almost an inherent assumption of support. And that's oftentimes what people need to get through that kind of resistance spiral. So that's oftentimes where I tell leaders to start. It's with empathy, it's with understanding the loss. Yeah, that's fantastic advice. I like that point too, of the change always comes with loss, because that feels, that feels very candid, that feels very human. And I think that, like you say, sometimes at the leadership level, we tend to either by design or not, focus on what the benefits will be and sort of gloss over the pain or the loss that will inevitably be there. But, you know, maybe it won't be in the. In the tragic ways that people are envisioning. Yeah, I want to talk about a concrete example real quickly because I think anyone listening right now is kind of screaming or whispering at the screen. What about AI? Because over the last year, we've really seen that narrative shift or that narrative been tested in a way. And the narrative I'm referring to is AI is a teammate, not a replacement. Well, of late, we've seen a lot of AI being a replacement. And you know, that, that, that thinking has kind of shifted as we've gotten more toward agentic workflows and things going off and running, coming back on their own, providing teams with exactly what they need, and they can maybe do so with 25% less headcount. However, I think also there's been some talk of maybe certain companies using that as more of a scapegoat. Right. So maybe that's not really what's driving the layoffs, but it's very, a very convenient narrative right now. So I guess, Travis, I'm, I'm curious where, for leaders that are sort of navigating the change and AI transformation is on the books for them, I guess, at a high level, what advice would you give them as far as how to really balance that narrative? Because it feels like a particularly sensitive one right now. Yeah, it is, it is. And you're right. I think there's probably some truth to certain layoffs being tied to efficiencies that AI can bring, but there's also a lot of non truth to that too. In. And to your point, like, once the narrative is out there, it's really easy to pile onto it because it's like, oh, it's not our fault. The whole industry is doing this. Right. And So I think that's, that's unfortunate because it kind of taints the AI transformation narrative to basically almost inherently mean layoffs. But for, I mean, we're all going through AI transformations, right? I think if anyone, if we were in a room full of people and we said, is anyone not going through an AI transformation? I wouldn't expect anyone to stand up. And if they did, I'd be like, so your company probably won't be here in five years if you're not going to go through some form of AI transformation. But thank you for standing up and glad that you felt psychologically safe to do so. But I think the, the big thing for AI transformations and I actually am launching a couple of things around AI transformation because I think the neurology of it is so important. So I'll make sure that you have links to that when, when this goes live. But the big thing for me is thinking about this from a human side of things and what's actually happening. So there's a few things that I like to lay out when we talk about AI and today, the way that we're approaching it in many cases is exactly what you said. It's a partner in crime, it's your best friend, it's your coworker. You know, it's supposed to help you do this. And we give it to our organization. We say, okay, play with it. Like, find the efficiency. It's almost like a, like, you know, where's Waldo game where they're like, yeah, just find it. Like, go out there, search for it, find it, play with it, see what happens. Problem is, is that in the, in the brain and the way that we as humans adapt and the way that we engage is not in that way. So the term I've used, or I guess the phrasing I've used most often is it's like showing up to a stranger's house and asking them for their bank account and PIN numbers. Inherently that person's like, heck no, I'm not going to give you that. Why would they? Right? But the reality is that it's actually two sided. If I asked you that question, you're assuming that what I want to do is take all your money, but the assumption could be flipped. I actually want to give you a million dollars because I think you deserve it. I do need that information to be able to do that. AI is the exact same thing. But we tell people, go play, find the efficiency. Figure out how you can be more productive. What's happening in the brain is they're Immediately going to the narrative that you just talked about, which is, oh, they want to replace me. This could be the end of my role. This could be the end of my career. Or the flip side is, and the side that we don't typically go to, this could make my career too. This could be the thing that launches me so far forward because I'm so able to do the things that I'm amazing at. And sales is a great example of that, because sellers get bogged down by a lot of process, policy, all of those things that AI is actually extremely good at. And because it's repeatable and so it allows them to do more of what they're amazing at, which is selling, relationship building, all of that. So thinking about AI in that way, it's really about creating clarity in what AI means for your company. How is it actually going to help move the company forward if you're a sales team, as an example, or let's talk about things like, hey, what of these processes that we deal with every single day? Can we hack with AI? And it's kind of creating that team formation that we talked about a little bit ago around, how do we solve a problem with this tool and let it be your coworker? How do we make it our coworker together? Not, how do you, Corey, go find a way to make your job more efficient? That's scary. A problem that we're trying to solve. That's teamwork, right? That's us coming together. We're going to tackle something and we're all valuable. So that's the first part. The second part is really in the starting point, talking about how you're actually going to lead or work differently and then giving that time to do it. Because that's right now we're just adding to cognitive load at this point. We're just saying, oh, with all the work you have going on, by the way here, learn a completely new tool that no one's ever used before and a completely new skill set. But also, we don't have any more time, so just do it whenever you can. So creating that time and creating those moments for people to actually engage it, figure out how it works. Because what's happening right now is we get it in fits, it starts and stops, and we'll essentially be like, oh, that's awesome. And then the work gets heavy and then you're like, ah. But I got to put it on the side because I can't deal with that right now. I got to go back to the way that I was working and so you never actually get people to adopt it. They're just constantly playing with this idea of how it works, not actually using it as a habit. And I think those are the two fundamental things that AI transformation requires for it to be really successful. And I think. I don't know that there's anyone that's doing it really well today. And I'm not saying that, you know, we're doing it well either, but I think those are. I keep seeing it time and time again, the neurological barriers that are happening within AI transformations. Yeah, I think it's incredibly well said, and particularly the distinction between, you know, I've seen that tension play out many times. I feel like over the last year, we either have to come full stop to actually figure out how this thing works and then set it up, but then at the same time, no, because, you know, the momentum that we need to keep carrying is pulling us in this direction that, you know, it's going to be piecemeal. We're going to revert back to old behaviors or old workflows. So, yeah, that definitely resonates. Okay, I've got three more questions for you, Travis. So two are the ones that we ask every guest at the end of the episode. But first, you've got a new book coming out June 23rd, Rethink Resistance. So I want to talk about that a little bit. And so what was the thesis behind that book and what was the problem that you were really setting out to solve? Yeah, I'm really excited about the book coming out. It's been a dream of mine to write a book and seeing how the idea of neuroscience and understanding that from a leader perspective coming together into a book, I think is really exciting. So, yeah, Rethink Resistance. Embracing Neuroscience to Lead Transformational Changes. And the thesis behind it is really what we've been talking about today, which is just understanding foundationally how people go through change and what happens. And the idea behind it is really about. It's geared towards leaders. One, because I think leaders have the most impact on change in our organizations today, and they have the least amount of support and skill sets that have been built in that space. So it really kind of made sense to target that group and help them with this book. But I think for me, what I hope comes of it is that leaders maybe breathe a sigh of relief a little bit, because there's ego in leadership. And I don't think we like to talk about that a lot. We don't like to acknowledge that as a leader, we have a bit of Ego with that leadership. It's required, by the way. It's not a bad thing. It's required to be a leader. You have to have some level of ego and trust and confidence in yourself to be able to be a leader. Right? And what I see is when you go into these organizations and you. You try to make change, most leaders walk in and they're like, I want to create the best narrative. I want to, you know, create the long list of the silver linings, and they'll throw that out, and they're waiting for their standing ovation, and then it never comes. And the reason is because of that natural resistance that people experience in those initial phases. That's exactly what happens. So it doesn't come. And what happens is the ego takes over a little bit, and leaders start saying things like, is it me? Is it my vision? Do they not trust me? Do they not believe in me? And then what happens are these really interesting things, which is, leaders start pushing harder. They fall into these three categories. One is the authoritarian, where they're like, they'll change or I'll make them leave. They'll do it because we say so. The other one is like, hey, you know what? Get on board or get out. They either need to buy into the vision or they don't belong here. And then the third is like, this is so easy. You should want it. Like, you should be begging me for this. And they fall into one of those camps, and then it becomes a me versus my teams, me versus my people. When none of that's true, it has absolutely nothing to do with that leader. And so my hope with the book is that, one, it helps our leaders understand what happens when people go through change. Two, it hopefully gives them a little bit of relief in the fact that this has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with how people go through change. And that will help them to not put up those barriers and those walls and start and continue to push towards those bad behaviors. And then the third is that I really, truly believe that in understanding this, you not only build better changes, you build better teams, and you create better relationships with your team. So those are really kind of the core tenets of the book, and it lays it out in a barrier. Here's how we overcome that barrier and how we respond to that barrier. And it utilizes true case studies from, you know, frontline experiences. It talks about people and how they're experiencing it. I hope it's a little bit funny, too. Like, I hope it's a good read. So try to keep it light. But yeah. So I hope it's a really helpful book for leaders in the skill gap that we have today. Yeah, that sounds like a book we desperately need in the world. So I will definitely put that in the show notes. I'll be excited to get that out. And then, Travis, as we move toward the end of the podcast, there are two questions we ask every guest. The first is, we're recording this in 2026. Let's fast forward out five years, 2031. What's a big shift coming for B2B leaders? Change management that not a lot of people are talking about right now. Oh, that's a good one. I mean, the biggest differentiator is, is not which company will have the most AI. It's really everyone will have AI. The real differentiator for me, as I'm thinking that far ahead, is which companies know how to combine that AI enabled speed with human trust, human judgment, and human adoption. And I think right now a lot of leaders are focused on AI automation, and that's important. But the bigger question is going to be what I will change about how people work, how customers buy. That's going to be huge. How teams trust decisions, how humans stay relevant in the system. And the companies that win aren't just going to be the ones that go faster. It's going to be the ones that are more adaptive and the ones that are able to maintain that humanity. And so they'll understand that technology, but will they understand humanity as we evolve with this technology, I think it's going to be really amazing. So for B2B. B2B leaders, I mean, that's, you know, how do you become much better at these types of things through the way that you sell, the way that you go to market. And I think that'll be really telling in the next five years. I'm interested to see what happens. Yeah, me too. Okay, final question for you, Travis. Looking back on your own career, if you could go back five, 10 years into the past and give one piece of advice to your younger self, what would it be and why? I have made the joke that it took me almost two decades to understand this. And even once I understood, or not quite two decades to understand, it took me a decade to understand it, and then it took me another decade to actually lean into it. And so if I were to go back, I'd say, you know what, the things that make you feel differently, the thing that makes you feel like you're not maybe matching the mold, is actually the thing that might be the most effective and differentiator for you. It's about how you look at your world and it's not wrong. I think a lot of times we get sucked into the belief that, oh, there's one way to do something and there's nothing. And so when I think back on, like, my experiences in consulting, we have frameworks and playbooks and all these things, and I kind of bucked against them in moments where I was like, oh, I don't really believe that, because of my background tells me that this is different. And there were moments where I conformed to that versus kind of leaning into what I knew. And it was in the moments that I leaned in that I really saw the success. I really saw the differentiation and what made me special and what made my mind special. And so I would tell myself to just not be afraid to lean into that. I think it's excellent advice. Well, Travis, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us. If people want to learn more about you, more about your company, the upcoming book, where Should They Go? Yeah. So my website, travis hailer.com which will be in the show, notes LinkedIn. I'd love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. I do check it often and try to get back to every single person, but I love to hear feedback. I'd love to hear your thoughts. If something resonated with you today in this conversation, I'd love to go deeper. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I look forward to it. All right, sounds good. Well, thanks again. Thank you. You've been listening to the B2B revenue executive experience. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on itunes or your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next.