The Real Reason AI Projects Backfire in Organizations

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

Mykel Salomon (00:01.738)
AI doesn't remove the need for leadership. It actually exposes the lack of it. Welcome to the Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Michael Salomon. Today's conversation is about leadership. Because in the AI era, everyone is talking about tools, prompts, agents, automation, and efficiency. But the deeper question is this one.

Who is preparing the people? AI is moving fast, organizations are under pressure, teams are uncertain, leaders are being asked to guide people through transformation. Many of them are still trying to understand themselves. My guest today is Ryan. So, Ryan, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Ryan Drumheller (00:52.894)
thanks for having me, Michael. It's great to be here and I'm looking forward to it.

Mykel Salomon (00:57.396)
It's a pleasure. Looking forward to this conversation. I know that you're excited about this topic that is leadership and AI. So we're gonna be having a very interesting conversation on a topic that are very timely, especially for the times we're living. And and before we get down to business, Ryan, I would like to maybe you can give an introduction to our audience who who Ryan is.

and I will let you go as you know, as personal as you want to go.

Ryan Drumheller (01:29.329)
Sure. Yeah. I'm a 20 year veteran in the the IT space. I've been in leadership roles about 13 of those years or so for now. I've done about everything that you can think of under the cloud in terms of what problems we need to solve, what projects to work on, what teams that need to be led. I consider myself the extroverted IT leader. I'm very different when it comes to IT leadership and

what you see in the IT space. I'm a big in mentorship and leadership as you kind of mentioned there. And just in the last few months I've started Stellarhorn Group, which I'm sure the we we can talk about maybe at some point along the way. but I am now solo helping out businesses along the way with AI being one of the big hot topics.

Mykel Salomon (02:23.294)
Awesome. exciting times for sure. And I know that we're gonna have some time to talk about all the exciting things that you are working on. What c what are you seeing on the customer side? So all the insights that you can share with us, right? Because when we were talking about what is it that we're gonna talk about, we landed on, you know, this is about what leaders must do before, during, and really after AI adoption. And I think it's so important.

That people are having these conversations more and more because there is a lot to unpack on that. And Brian, I want to start with a belief that I have, which is AI is not making really leadership less important. It's actually making it more visible, right? In a way, the stronger the disruption is and has been, the more that leadership matters. So my first question to

to you today is why do you see leadership even matter even more in this new AI era?

Ryan Drumheller (03:32.029)
Yeah, I think it matters vastly more. and it's getting exposed you know, faster than we've ever seen as well with the speeds of AI. and especially with people feeling uneasy about AI or seeing the things that they've seen out there with, you know, potential job loss and you know, as being somebody who kind of went through that to a certain degree, I get it. but you need to

Mykel Salomon (03:47.47)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Drumheller (03:59.475)
really get a hold of this as a leader, you really need to be communicating and being mo a little bit more transparent than you've ever been. And that might be uncomfortable for some individuals who are not used to being that, especially with so many questions coming fast from AI and your employees at the same time.

Mykel Salomon (04:18.126)
Right. I think all it's everything it starts at the top, right? Especially if you get into leadership, it's it's like you are the captain of the ship in a way. People are looking up to you to kind of put and set the direction that you want your organization and the company to go. So it is really more important than ever that leaders understand the heavyweight which it is, understanding everything that is

going around with AI and what is the impact that may have in their people, in our people. Because based on that understanding, that's those are the type of strategies and decisions that will be made at that level. And and just as a follow-up on that, Ryan, what do you think leaders are really underestimating right now around AI, the technology, and how to implement it?

Ryan Drumheller (05:19.549)
Yeah, the the the biggest thing I see typically is AI will handle everything and it won't. It'll do it'll do yeah, like yeah, we can just we just turn it on, right? And it'll help take care of us and not really quite to that not anywhere close actually, yet. So I mean that first and foremost, and then you know, this belief maybe that they'll get such

Mykel Salomon (05:26.798)
It's magic, right?

Ryan Drumheller (05:48.437)
great cost savings that they don't need as many employees. And I mean that's a fine line because, you know, some some roles ac absolutely probably should be automated, right? a human pushing the same button over and over and over again or look at the same data sets. It's like we could probably find better you know, areas for those humans to bring more value than to do that. So let AI do that.

But it's not to the point where it can fully automate entire teams. It's not to the point where you can get rid of entire departments, like and companies are trying to do that and if the results are are not positive, you know, for that kind of thing. So those are the biggest things when I walk into a room and and then companies usually don't know how to even launch it in their own environment. And it's just, hey, we went out and got insert tool name here, use it.

like one of the worst things you could do at that point. And it gives you no confidence as an employee either when y you don't know you don't know how to use it. you're also being mandated to use it and and then the company doesn't know even what you do is your position to give you any kind of, you know, guidance or instructions or training around that for your role. It's like one of the worst possible ways to roll out AI.

Mykel Salomon (07:08.544)
It's a it's like a waste of time, energy and resources because its strategy should come out of a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. And back to your point, decisions are being made, just roll it out for the sake of roll it out. And then many companies or the projects are failing, or really the ROI is not getting there because they started the project in a way that they didn't even know what they were trying to achieve, right?

And the strategy, if there is no strategy, projects will fail because lack of a strategy. You need to understand what is it that you want to achieve and what it takes to get there. It's not only a technology implementation, this is a people's implementation. And that's I think also, Ryan, what I think for from what I've seen, I read about, and what I heard from people that I talked to. It's a unless you treat this type of project as a people's project, thinking about the people.

then you're setting up yourself for failure and probably your organization, 'cause this is not gonna implement by itself. It's people working with AI and the project.

Ryan Drumheller (08:20.341)
I don't disagree with that at all. almost every single one of those big named articles that we all see, that you know, doomsday, bad things happen, you can kind of trace it back to what happened from a human element. it wasn't really the AI, it was the human that did or didn't, or or wasn't watching it or didn't govern it, what whatever that might be that led to those disaster situations. So if you come at it from a human angle.

Mykel Salomon (08:36.471)
Mm.

Ryan Drumheller (08:47.123)
you treat it like a a typical project where you're assigning somebody responsibility. You you set up an actual, you know, governments committee that you guys can all get a handle on. You can all, you know, have a have an opinion on. You can have a gateway for your employees to speak to you, bring you those situations, bring you those ideas, and then funnel that out through a security model to make sure it's secure.

Mykel Salomon (09:03.438)
Mm.

Ryan Drumheller (09:11.855)
and then do the training that's gonna work for your company, for your employees in the way that they like adoption, you're gonna have much better success than yeah, like what we're talking about, what companies aren't doing.

Mykel Salomon (09:24.418)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's you know, it's it's like any other project. It's there's so many aspects of implementing a piece of technology like this one that we all need to have in take into consideration, really. And it shows, Ryan, right? When leaders when leadership is not clear about the direction of the company, the culture, the people feels it. Everyone sees it. Be and then AI doesn't become

something that they want to adopt, it's becomes something people fear adopting. And this is also part of the conversation that I think clarity at the leadership level, it helps everything else. But when there is no clarity at that level, then the AI adoption becomes more like a fear, which it should not be the case. It's all part of how you handle the strategy in the communication and you make your people embrace this

As well.

Ryan Drumheller (10:25.573)
so interesting the amount of times I've come into a situation and everything would either be well thought out, maybe it wasn't, you know, the things that you were just describing your great examples, where I would come in and go, Well, but what about the human part? how about, you know, the and it would be like, well, yeah, maybe. And then every time we would get, you know, the human on board, the employee on board, w the customer on board, whatever it was.

Mykel Salomon (10:40.237)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Drumheller (10:50.973)
it went a lot smoother. It would be adopted easier. You know, you took a lot of those fears and calmed them. We were able to answer and and only have it be ten percent fear because we didn't let it get to eighty and we calmed it down and i it's it all does boil back to to humanality at the end of the day.

Mykel Salomon (11:10.282)
It's you know, and w we are we have matured so much, Ryan, on on the project side of things, on managing project, on learning from our mistakes, right? There's so much history. t IT organizations are so much better at leveraging technology to fulfill business needs. The business is so much better at putting requirements in front of IT.

Project teams are so much better at managing projects in a way, but I still feel, especially in time in tin in in this era with AI, that leaders, some organizations are really treating this like an app that you download and install. It's a it you're talking right now, and this came to mind right now because this is not it. It's not an app that you go to the App Store, you download it and you install it. voila, this is done.

it is not. It's it's an implementation that requires and I hope people are treating this as implementation that want to achieve real transformation, right, in in organizations. And I think in in some cases, what you heard from people and companies doing this, what we see in the news, right? Sometimes articles talking about AI, why it fails and why it's not.

It's like for some organizations and leaders they're still treating these as just install it and keep moving.

Ryan Drumheller (12:41.789)
Yeah. I I mean almost all the cases that are starting out bad or heading down bad paths or or they're they already did the damage was exactly like that. Like set it and forget it. hey, we got you guys clawed or we turned on co pilot or or whatever it was. Yeah, we got you AI, you know, why aren't you using it? and it's like trying to get places that I speak with at that point, it's like I I don't mean to offend you, but it's one of the worst decisions that you can do.

it's just turn it on and be like, Why aren't we seeing the results?

Mykel Salomon (13:15.532)
Without any preparation. Right? Any guidance, anything, just install it and use it. That's not a strategy. That really not a strategy.

Ryan Drumheller (13:17.653)
Yep.

Ryan Drumheller (13:27.507)
not a strategy and the the places that have done that or worse where they've tied it to like their employees' KPIs the the employees still aren't doing it so I I think that they're going the wrong side of humanality thinking like well we'll force them to do it and it's like you're already on the wrong side of this because you're already now thinking that they're doing something negative and then you're forcing it and then they're still not doing it. At what point here do we stop and think like okay maybe we need to go about this a different way.

And if you do, you will absolutely have better results. Now, you should also be transparent. If you're going to do something bad, like you are gonna eliminate roles and positions, the employees are smart enough to fig to sense that out. And it doesn't matter what you do or say. It it's not it's not gonna land.

Mykel Salomon (14:13.71)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and it's it all goes back to what is that you want to achieve. And based on that, what is the strategy, not only to implement the project, but also to prepare your organization. Remember, these are human beings, right? And human beings need to understand what is the mission, what is the vision, and what is it that they're going towards. If you don't prepare your organization and you create confusion and chaos.

This is what's going to happen with the project as well. If I don't know why I'm installing or implementing a piece of technology and what is the end goal for the organization and for me, I'm not going to feel compelled or excited to embrace AI. No, I'm going to think that this is just another tool to replace what I do, to automate what I do. So all goes back to how leaders are approaching this in a way that

They communicate clearly what are the goals, what are the expectations, and what is the strategy and why they're doing and what they're doing, why they are implementing AI and the benefits that come along and having all the hard conversations, Ryan, that you know we need to have because she things are gonna change anyways. But sometimes I think leaders are avoiding those conversations.

Ryan Drumheller (15:39.113)
Yeah, I I mean change is inevitable. at the same time, what's the one thing that humans don't like? There'd also be changed so ha having to blend those two worlds together and you know, if you have the opportunity, and and I say right now we're in the the age of experimentation with with AI, we're figuring out what things it really is good at, what things it still needs to work at, what things to do, what things not to do. At least those that get it are are understanding that.

Mykel Salomon (15:47.179)
Mm.

Ryan Drumheller (16:08.831)
But along the way you can have those conversations. You can warm the change conversation. and you know, and people can see the same things that we can all see. You can't go anywhere without an AI something smacking you at this point. So they understand that this is here, it's here to stay, it's expanding, right? You know, all the data centers that are getting built are that big conversation in a lot of different, you know, states right now, especially in America. It's coming. They get that. But when you don't

Talk to them about what it means for your business, what it means for them, yeah. I mean, naturally we're gonna have doubt, we're gonna have fear, we're gonna have stress, we're gonna think the worst. That's just humanality.

Mykel Salomon (16:50.73)
It's just the way, you know, we are coded in a way as human beings, right? But we know that. This is not new, right? If it was something new that I would say, we are reacting this way and we didn't know that human beings were gonna react this way. So that's fine. It's you have a surprise. But we know how humans are, and still we're not doing the minimum the due diligence needed to try to, you know.

circumvent in a way or try to appease that part which is something natural na natural for us which is you know don't not wanting to change, not embracing changes by nature. That's my that's my problem with all this.

Ryan Drumheller (17:38.151)
Yeah, I and and I think from the top down point of view, they have to remember that they're not just a number on a sheet. And in a lot of ways decisions get made that way of just looking purely at numbers. you do have to look at this as you maybe you don't have to know the exact names and faces, but you do have to understand that that it is a a human change. AI is one of the

bigger techno you know, technologically advanced things that are coming out and and you know, disruptors and and all that. It's true. But it doesn't work without humans. And i if you don't factor that into your plan, your equation, you're just gonna have a lot of debt and a lot of wasted money, failed projects and part of that eighty percent and growing, you know, failure rate right now.

Mykel Salomon (18:27.756)
That's a big failure rate, isn't it?

Ryan Drumheller (18:31.899)
I mean in her article here every day, right? Like it's like I can't it's unavoidable. I just chuckle at the things I see too, because it's so obvious, like, at least from my perspective, of yeah, how how did you not see that that was gonna get there? Or how many times do you have to try the exact same thing? It's like definition of insanity.

Mykel Salomon (18:32.034)
Right.

Mykel Salomon (18:51.156)
I yeah, I don't get it to be honest with you, because we're living in times of the internet for a long time. Information is out there, news are, you know, every day in our fonts. So leaders have all the tools available and ways available to be on top of this type of news, trying to understand what's happening, what's working, what's not working, and we're still making kind of reckless

decisions on how to approach these projects in a way that no communication is clear. People don't understand what they're doing, what they're doing at people are fearing AI because they think they're gonna be actually replaced. That's what is on the news from other companies, right? So why we cannot communicate in a way, if you are a leader, that it feels like implementing AI it's coming from a

point that it will you know, it feels like growth, right? Not a threat to your job. That should not be too complicated.

Ryan Drumheller (19:58.705)
One would think, but I I think that some you know, higher level individuals at some companies are looking at it as a you know, slash the budget, slash the employees, like they're they're choosing to look at it a as a a tool to navigate to to to make their, you know, boards and stockholders and everything like that look look good. And the reality is it's not to that point. So they're even if that were true,

it's just not to the point of being able to, you know, get to that level. So they're costing themselves in the long run here. Well in the shorter run long run. We're already seeing places that have done that that are having to, you know, scrounge around, try to get the talent back. And I don't know about you, if you're an employee that that that happened to, maybe the only way I'm going back is if I'm really struggling finding somewhere else and I just need the paycheck, but I'm not happy about going back 'cause I know what you did.

So am I gonna trust you again to not do that? I I mean, you're damaging your reputations at this point. Just to try

Mykel Salomon (20:55.982)
Mm.

Mykel Salomon (21:02.356)
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, organizations are coming with this slogan, transformation. We are all about transformation. But what is a transformation for you? Tell me, it's transformation for you kind of implementing AI or installing and go live with it and forget about the rest. I think transformation really happened when people actually change behavior, embrace the mission.

and understand where they are going towards, even if that will require and will probably require changes on the job that they have done forever. That's how I see transformation. But for some organizations and leader transformation is just go with the eye, whatever it takes. I don't know where we're going, but go with it.

Ryan Drumheller (21:47.517)
Yeah, I I and I think that what's happening is we're gonna get a lot of these high level, you know, individuals and companies who don't quite know AI. they're not technical, they're they're they're just hearing the things and you have to you have to not listen to the big wig, you know, AI individuals because of course they're gonna sell everything that they can sell. And what you really should do is form your own AI committee internally to your to your company.

Mykel Salomon (21:56.844)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mykel Salomon (22:09.475)
Yeah.

Ryan Drumheller (22:15.497)
with your business leaders across the company and figure out what's the best cases, what are the best you know, implementations that we can do for real value, where can our incredible employees that we hired to begin with to give us that competitive edge against another company? What can we do for them to pair them with AI and let them get creative and separate us further? Like those are the things they really should be doing.

But when you get to board levels, when you get to stockholders and they're like, Hey, AI says it does all this stuff and makes a lot of money. Why are you guys not doing it? And then it's the pressure and we're we're rushing to make bad decisions and timely bad decisions on top of that. I think that's the trickle down effect.

Mykel Salomon (23:00.63)
And you know, that's a valid point. This is the nature of business, right? You're probably your board or the owners are putting pressure on you. Go with the eye. Give me more efficiency, more productivity, right? Tell me how you're gonna do this, blah, blah, blah. And that's fine. This is business and we all looking for more efficiencies. We all want that. And I don't think that's what we are debating here. What we're debating here is you the leader.

Once you receive the pressure from the board, what are you doing next? If that's really what matters next. Everyone is receiving pressure from your bosses, your board, Wall Street, you know, all companies are on this same boat. Install, implement AI, go efficiency, but they how to. It matters more than you think at that time.

Ryan Drumheller (23:54.099)
Yeah, and I mean if you think about it and if you're in that position and you are seeing, you know, what's happening in the tech market and you know it's a challenging time, that's a tough it's a tough thing to stand up there and go, Hey, I I know this isn't gonna work or, you know, if you have the data, you don't wanna be the next person on the unemployment line trying to fight amongst, you know, hundreds of thousands of individuals trying trying to get a job. so then you're kind of forced to

carry out something and and hope that maybe they see that, yeah, the numbers didn't work out and hopefully it's not you that was attached. It's it's it's a lot of it's a lot to process and think about. And I'm sure that's heavy, you know, to go home. It's heavy to lead a team that you're you're like, I just have to carry out a a bad a bad objective, a bad scenario, and your teams know that. All of my teams could sense and feel. Like whenever we had to do something that

they could kind of see wasn't gonna work. And I I you know, that's where as a leader you have to kind of like, yes, I have to we have to carry this out. We've been asked to do things. We all have bosses at the end of the day. you know, if we can come up with another scenario as we're doing this that might help later, maybe we pitch that. but you you know, we have to kind of lead lead what's asked at the end of the day. And and that's it's tough.

Mykel Salomon (25:14.754)
It's tough. I mean, for those watching, please don't think this is easy. It's not this is not easy. And the higher you go and the leadership level, the more pressure it's gonna be in you, right? especially if you're running a business as a business, at the end of the day, it's a business. However, there's always ways and ways to approach things and to implement the way AI in a way that you still can get the results.

that you are looking for. And there's also ways to bring your people in as part of this equation. And you know, Ryan, as you are a leader as well, usually leaders are not there and to have all the answers for all the questions. It's really the team that you put in place, that you surround yourself with to help you navigate this navigate these times and give you kind of the guidance on how things should be done.

So so this is what you know, what I think it's also important is the people, your team, the strategy should come by talking to your team. And even if you are not technical, probably someone on your team understand this team better.

Ryan Drumheller (26:28.639)
Most businesses that I work with are a bit surprised where after like the first conversation I'm asking who their SMEs, the right hands, whoever they trust the most that they would bring in for normal projects. And we bring them in. because early you're gonna you're gonna get that creativity, you're gonna get that here's what's actually happening here, here's where we see the the opportunities, you know, for AI to go in place. And then the business leaders get to hear all this at the same time.

Mykel Salomon (26:42.445)
Mm.

Ryan Drumheller (26:57.241)
And it's like you guys have half the equation already. You know your company. You know what's going on. That is half of it. The other half is now just putting it together in in a formalized plan that we can go ahead and adopt, adapt and roll out. and that's what I'm really here for. But I'm here to also show you the emp the employees that you hired for a reason. We need to bring them in and then the rest of the employees will will trust that even further to know that those individuals were a part of this plan.

And they can go to them also to speak, you know, about any questions and things that they have along

Mykel Salomon (27:33.336)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm I'm a firm believer that AI, you know, should expand our human capability, not really shrink our human value, right? And I think we continue this conversation because you and I we really believe that there are better ways to do things, especially in times of AI. And and I really want to challenge this replacement narrative, right? I think we are looking in the news.

You are looking every day, I'm looking every day. Our audience is looking at the news every day, companies replacing people because they're not saying because of AI, but a lot of it is coming because of automation, etc. But it's really how you frame it, right? If you frame it that AI is coming as a way to remove people, then you're gonna create fear in your organization. If you frame it as a way to expand people's own capabilities.

then you will probably have better adoption, right? And participation from your organization. so in in that same theme, Ryan, so how do you think how should organizations think about AI as an amplifier of human capability? how that should be communicated from your point of view?

Ryan Drumheller (28:58.803)
Yeah, I go back to, you know, the right hands, the the really, you know, people that those companies had to have, right? You went out to grab those individuals for reasons and you know, it's competitive advantage really. You you saw something in them that you saw, that would give us, you know, a leg up in our competition. Now, if you take that same individual, don't forget about Remember the the Bob, Sally's, Jim's, you know, Mary's, all of these people that that you're bringing in.

And give them this tool and let them be creative with it, talk about a huge competitive advantage. Cause now, like, we're all talking about AI and the things we can do with it. And yeah, you're right. Like I'm I'm I I love it for a lot of things. I experiment with it. I have a bunch of projects I'm doing with it on my own. Now imagine that kind of experimentation with the individuals that you have at your company on your products or or what you know, processes and procedures, and you're coming out with better.

Or or at least more creative ideas at at the end of the day. And that's probably going to lead you to even further competitive advantages or more efficiency or your return on value. So that's typically where I go with like you you you have the answer in house already, but you gotta just, you know, get involved, get it over here and and look don't look behind door number two. Door number one is what you wanna look at.

Mykel Salomon (30:22.346)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally. And you know, it's not that complicated. It's like it we also human beings, we love to be in service, we love to help others, we love we like that feeling that we feel when we found out something, when we discover something, when we'll help achieve something. And the way I see working with AI, it's every day your brain is working. Your brain is working because AI give you hints.

Ryan Drumheller (30:26.005)
Yeah.

Mykel Salomon (30:55.306)
And ideas and you keep creating, you keep finding ways to better work and find whatever you want to find. And and that activity, that brain activity is there. It doesn't stop, at least on my side. I use AI as my copilot to help me get to a point and give me ideas on how to, but I'm the one driving that conversation. It's not copilot driving it. And I'm sure the same thing happened with you. You are the one driving it where you want to land.

Right, Brian?

Ryan Drumheller (31:26.785)
Yeah, absolutely. The the the people that are the most creative are the ones that are getting the best results because they're they're able to e you know, challenge, funnel, you know, get AI to work in that kind of way. Like if you just ask it a generic question, you get a generic response. Like it's not i it's not

Mykel Salomon (31:45.12)
Like anything in life, your personal relationship is it's what you give, it's what you get.

Ryan Drumheller (31:52.413)
Yeah, where do you want to eat? I don't care. Like I guess I gotta give you options. Yeah, exactly.

Mykel Salomon (31:55.01)
Well your body cares right.

Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's like we're trying people to understand and they hear AI AI it's just a tool. It's like anything in life, exactly what you were saying. What you give is what you get. The more depending on the use is the actual benefit that you're gonna get from it. And there's so many benefits from using it. So many. So I think the conversation and the angles should be around how to bring people together.

So they embrace change in a way that they feel like this change is not imposed. This change is for them to get better, to expand their capability, hopefully to discover new things that they may like by working with AI. Who knows? Sometimes you're not doing something and because you didn't do it, you didn't discover that you you like that part of it.

Ryan Drumheller (32:59.241)
Yeah. I mean I can I can tell you all kinds of different things right now that I'm so excited about the use of AI. It it allows somebody who wants to be creative but maybe didn't have the way to have that outlet or I use the you know the term you know I could never draw, but now I feel like I can draw because I can make some of my creations come to life a little bit easier. it's it's great with that. But like you said, it's my mind that's creating it.

AI is helping me create it, but AI wouldn't have made that if I just said, Hey, make me a picture. It wouldn't have been the picture that I have in my mind. So it's a pretty good use case that businesses need to remember that you have the talent, you want them to be able to g you know, make the pictures happen for your business.

Mykel Salomon (33:35.849)
Mm-hmm.

Mykel Salomon (33:47.882)
At the end of the day, it's you know, back to what we are talking today, is depends on the use that you give anything and AI is not different on that.

Now, Ryan, there's another topic that I want to go over with you, which is how we can bridge the gap into what I think is this leadership gap that exists today. Right, especially in in these rapid transitions that we are seeing with AI, right? AI is very fast. Everything about AI today, it's really fast.

Ryan Drumheller (34:02.495)
No.

Mykel Salomon (34:32.954)
And and I think when I look at things, sometimes what I see the gap is not only on people being smart enough to keep up with it, but most on people adapting to it, to the change. Right? The communication, the ability to create something and meaning for people on when things are changing.

From your experience of what you're seeing on the ground, is there anything that you can share with us about that leadership gap? How do you see it? What have you seen?

Ryan Drumheller (35:13.619)
Yeah, I've been I've been pretty vocal about this in the in the past, you know, few weeks to a month or so, to the point where I've I I've actually built a bad leadership calculator on my website to show businesses what the monetary damage from bad leadership looks like. and I think it's I think it's tough because on one hand it it's gonna expose everything super fast more quickly. so then like you're gonna see the a big spotlight on on a bad leader.

The problem that that I see with faces not making that move and going, Okay, we need to get them out of the way is the trust, the change factor, right? Like you you need the you need the employees to embrace, you know, a leader to come in. And I see w what I would call excuses from that. you know, they don't wanna like they don't wanna take the risk and take the chance that they won't follow it. And and in the back of my head and sometimes vocally, I'm like

But were they following that leader anyways? If we all already knew that they weren't great, they weren't a good leader, were they already you know with them? Or would would they believe you more if you embraced bringing in a change, right? Like you you already know this is a negative monetary value on your business. What are you doing at at the end of the day? so I mean you need to you need to embrace change. The business needs to embrace change further than just AI. They need to embrace change further as in

AI is exposing the bad leadership. So why are you holding on to bad leadership when I can give you a number that I can pull wherever at this point of how many hundreds of thousands of IT individuals are looking for work right now? Take your pick and bring in, you know, somebody for change. And then maybe with that change, you get your human side of that to go along with your AI adoption side of that, and then you come out better out of this. So

You know, as much as AI is fast, businesses aren't.

Mykel Salomon (37:10.702)
I would like to get a hold of that calculator. if you can share the lead with me and make sure that we we share that with everyone. I'm interested to see what I get there myself.

Ryan Drumheller (37:25.461)
Absolutely. And I will tell you I I played around with it for a while 'cause I'm like, these numbers are big. And then I started to think about the domino effect of of what the cascade is. And yeah, so that's what I that's what I do when I get frustrated in anger these days. I that's a great example of AI. I helped AI help you or excuse me, I helped make it with AI and take my creativity out and and formulated something to

show individuals maybe they can't get technology, but they can get dollars and cents. So

Mykel Salomon (37:58.452)
Absolutely. It's you know, and many of these tools available today, these AI solutions are free. At least they start free. So this really should not be any excuse or any reason why you at least don't start trying and see how you can leverage that and and where it goes from there. So

Ryan Drumheller (38:19.413)
Yeah, I mean take an idea and give it a shot at at the end of the day. worst case what you lose is time. but I'm willing willing to bet you come out of it learning something.

Mykel Salomon (38:25.709)
Yeah.

Mykel Salomon (38:29.246)
Absolutely. And every time that you're learning something, you're not wasting time. Right? So it's how I see it. Every time that you're learning, that you feel passionate about learning and discovering things, trust me, is not time wasted. One way or the other, it will get back to you and add value to to your life somehow. and and you know, it's so when we talk about

AI but from the angles of efficiency, right? we you know and I know, but I really want to hear from from you. It's what is it that it's been looked at? It's only the dollar amount, how much money we can save. Is this is really what people and organizations make in these decisions?

to cut X amount of people are really looking at the short term gains from letting people go.

Ryan Drumheller (39:38.779)
I mean, that's what we're hearing. That's what pretty much what we're what we're seeing. I mean, I have a lot of takes and variables of AI is being used as an opportunity to cover up other past things as well. you know, COVID is a good example. even though we're like six, seven years, whatever it is now, removed from that, we never did, you know, correct back towards that. but

the end of the day, I do think that most businesses are looking at it from that angle. And, you know, rightfully so. You're running a business. You you want to make as much, you want to have as big of a profit margin as you possibly can. but I think that they also need to look at it as from a measurable reputation standpoint. You want to make sure you're doing it from a positive perspective and and people are going to understand some jobs are going to go away. Like we we we do understand that.

is it to the magnitude? I don't believe that. I I can I can tell you the the eighteen prompt thing that I did earlier that took nineteen times to make. So it's it's not to a point that you know it can do those things. So like we we need to we need to quit lying about that you know, out there in the media. and w we need to, you know, think about the reputations because that's just as valuable as the dollars and cents, because if you lose your reputation,

Those dollars and cents are gonna go to someone else. They're not gonna go to you.

Mykel Salomon (41:03.618)
That short term gain will be a permanent loss for your business. So, so what is it at the end of the day that we're playing with? And sometimes fire, as they say, right? A short term gain that you're very passionate and focused on may, for whatever reason, for a failed implementation or a wrong answer to a customer, may, you know, push customers outside of your door.

And when customers open the door and they're out, usually there is no return. So

Ryan Drumheller (41:39.797)
Yeah, you would know that very very much so. So I I mean that you're not thinking about the full three sixty perspective of this. You know, we're we're we're hurrying to make the rush decision, because we're worried. I mean, we're using those human we're using those human feelings on the negative side to make the rush judgments and decisions when if we take a deep breath

I'd think a little bit, think a little logic on this. I think you would see a little bit better decision making. You wouldn't see as many of these situations happen. I mean, some of them are still gonna happen, but some of the places would eventually be like, That's a great point. We you know, we can't take that risk because then our competitor is gonna come in and you know, be able to utilize that against us and you know, we don't have the ROI that's provable right here, you know, unless you have all of that lined up and you know it's a risk.

Mykel Salomon (42:34.422)
Absolutely. Anything that you can share with us today, Ryan? Anything that you're seeing out there? Anything that maybe use cases that you're helping business with, for example?

Ryan Drumheller (42:49.843)
Yeah, the the businesses that do well and that are getting it right are the ones you're not seeing in the news. They're they're the ones that are like the small Yeah, they're the small and mid-sized companies that are doing very well for themselves, but they're not making millions and billions of dollars of changes and you're you're not seeing those kinds of things. but they're the businesses that I kind of go back to w when we strategize here, they're the ones that have identified

Mykel Salomon (42:57.268)
Of course.

Ryan Drumheller (43:15.955)
the quick wins. Like, you know, what's the what's the data sets or what's the very manual task that we can go ahead and make automated, assign somebody then maybe a responsibility to oversee the process, but maybe we don't need an entire team to do that. so right there you get it some immediate cost savings and better proficiency at that point. and then we're sitting down and making that plan for the longer term. Where is it that you want to get to from your business? What are the things that we want to look at?

Maybe AI isn't capable of doing this today, but let's put it over here and check this here every quarter or whatever it might be and see how far it's advanced. Maybe we try it out in a later date. and and then those are the companies that understand eventually what what a governance committee is. And a lot of companies do get governance committees, but the the whole fastness of AI and the whole you know understanding of it.

it confuses pla it confuses companies. And I just rem like like to remind them that you guys are the business leaders of the organization at the end of the day. You bring the smart leaders together and you use AI for what you guys see a fit to use AI for and enable that that conversation with the employees. Allow them a space to be able to bring the ideas. And the more that you do that and the more that you enact on those ideas, you there's there's more return on your value right there.

Plus now your employee is bought in because they see that you're gonna act on it and maybe you institute some kind of reward system or or whatever you wanna do, but give your employees a safe space, plus the business leaders get a way to actually wrap their hands around how they wanna go ahead and you know attack this, which then takes you to the security portion so that like legalities and all of that are covered. We try to make sure, you know, that we're not doing anything horrific, we're not exposing our company data.

We're not giving our competitors our trade secrets, all all of those good pieces. And then yeah, you go right into your training. The the companies that understand that dropping a PowerPoint or just returning on AI, that's not good enough. The companies that actually sit down with me, we typically figure out all of this as an individualized plan for them. Like all of this in concept is, you know, the plan that we typically do, but it's all individualized for them. How are your employees

Mykel Salomon (45:24.782)
Mm.

Mykel Salomon (45:38.104)
Right.

Ryan Drumheller (45:39.517)
were you know accepting of adoption. What do they like to get? Do they like to get visual training? Do they like to get talked to? Do they need a comedian to come in and joke with them? Whatever it means to retain the knowledge and then also understand that you as business leaders get it. You understand them. You're trying to give them space to communicate along the way. And then the crazy thing about all of this, assign somebody to each of these as a responsible party.

So that way and post that somewhere where everybody can get that. So if they still don't get it or they want to ask a question in private, they can go, Hey Joe, I see you're over top of, you know, AI adoption over here. What does this mean? Blah, blah, blah. And then now they can get that exchange as well. And that seems like, well, that's like the opposite of AI, right? Like 'cause I'm talking about a lot of things that take time, and I am.

But those things are going to bring better returns and value because you're going to do it more correctly out of the gate. You're not going to pump bad data in, because that's a part of the the whole structure. We I mean part of the AI adoption is making sure that you're ready. Is your data clean? Nine times out of ten, that answer is no. so we need to it's never clean. As long as the word transformation been around for. As long as that's been around for, and probably before that, the data hasn't been clean. But

Mykel Salomon (46:51.948)
It's never clean. With data it's never clean, yeah.

Ryan Drumheller (47:02.931)
We we we take a look at that, right? We make sure that those pieces are in good order. You know what to expect when you're putting the data in because you're not gonna get any kind of return if it's not good. You're gonna get r bad stuff right back. So garbage, landfill, yeah. So I mean you do all of these things along with the process and and I have nothing but great results doing that.

Mykel Salomon (47:16.28)
Garbage in, garbage out, right?

Ryan Drumheller (47:28.561)
I I mean at worst case we're we're we're at results where we're waiting for results. I mean nothing is horrifically my name has not been in an article in the news for for any of those bad situations, you know, so put it that way. So all of those companies aren't doing these things. So that's that's one thing that companies should absolutely take out of this is take a step back, you know, walk or excuse me, crawl, walk, run.

Don't start out running, like you gotta do those other steps. And then when you get to running, yeah, you'll be amazing at that point. You'll be so far ahead of your competitors, it'll be like a slingshot effect. Even if they put AI in, I don't worry about what they're doing. I don't know how they did it. I I don't know what they're doing over there, but I trust that we're gonna do what's right for you over here. That's the important thing.

Mykel Salomon (47:59.512)
Don't escape it. Don't skip it.

Mykel Salomon (48:19.852)
And are you finding that the majority of the companies that you work with are kind of accepting the changes in processes or you know, the type of steps that they need to happen? Are they kind of accepting that or they're pushing back in some areas? What are you seeing in the ground?

Ryan Drumheller (48:31.029)
Well

Ryan Drumheller (48:47.957)
it almost always starts as you know not a hundred percent accepting 'cause it is a change, right? But along with the process they they understand it. I do a lot of translations, right? I use like the the mud combo, like when we're talking about data. I'm like, you wouldn't drink a glass of mud, right? They're like, Well well of course not. So if you put mud into your dishwasher, for example, how long and how many cycles does it take for that to turn back to clear again?

Mykel Salomon (48:53.037)
Mm.

Mykel Salomon (49:05.358)
Hmm. Right.

Ryan Drumheller (49:17.045)
They're like, that makes a lot of sense. So I try to do a lot of translations and go through some real world analogies with them so that it's not like it's not a personal opinion. at the end of the day, I'm trying to help you. but I'm trying to make sure you understand what it is that you're over here on versus what I'm trying to get you to see. and eventually pretty successful with getting, you know, companies, organizations, individuals on board, especially when you start getting the majority on board.

people start to go, Okay, may maybe I just need to, you know, further pay attention or maybe I need to change. I've been doing it this way for twenty years. maybe it's time for change and I just did it 'cause I walked in every day and did the same thing.

Mykel Salomon (49:55.682)
Mm-hmm.

Mykel Salomon (50:01.708)
Yeah, change change is not easy. and for a lot of people doing the same task or the same job for decades, it's even harder, more much harder for them. And I and I understand that. I I understand that for a lot of people, companies, organizations, regular human beings like you and I, this is a disruptive period.

AI is asking you to change how you do things. Your job may change. Processes need to adjust.

But there is still a way on doing things that will get you the results that you want and others that if you don't adapt, then you're probably gonna fail. It's just a matter of, you know, I don't think there is an option really that other than adapting and understanding how you can continue to be valuable by working and leveraging AI. So really.

Ryan Drumheller (51:05.875)
Yeah. And it it's, you know, adapt or die kind of in in a way at this point. And the companies that are getting their hands around that are are going to be better. they there is a lot of companies that are doing a good job. They're just not seeing a lot of info on it because the hot the hotter, the spicier, you know, marketing thing is the bad, you know, that's out there. but there is there is some good. There there's a companies that

always did digital transformation or whatever you want to call a certain transformation name here that did it well. there's companies that are doing AI well. There the there's always an article that I'll dig up among the trenches of like, that's a super cool way of going about it, right? The experimentation is rampant. It's amazing. And those are the companies, the same ones that that where I go, hey, I don't want the credit. I I just want you guys to see you know your business better than me coming in. You guys work here every day.

Mykel Salomon (51:40.675)
Mm-hmm.

Ryan Drumheller (52:03.559)
I want you guys to run wild with this. You guys get the credit for this. I'm just trying to get you creatively to think, you know, put the pieces together and show you kind of like on a map. I'm kind of helping you build the map and how to get there, but you guys are the ones executing every single, you know, one of these things. And it's your knowledge and it's a confidence factor too, because a lot of places don't know how to do AI. So they're already coming in kind of like

you know, fearful, they're also not confident and I mean you have to recognize that.

Mykel Salomon (52:34.222)
I'm glad you you you went there because it's I think it's an important point that for people to also understand once you implement the solution, what happens next is your people in charge of maintenance, improving, adjusting. So there is no way that you're gonna be successful at implementing an AI solution. Let's say they hire Ryan to help them navigate through it. You're gonna help them until they implement it.

Ryan Drumheller (52:47.071)
Don't think

Mykel Salomon (53:03.574)
And they go live most probably. After that, the organization is in charge of the government, the governance of it, the improvement. You know, this is like like a product in a way that your people will continue to manage. so totally on board with what you just said, because unless you have that adoption, what happens after you go live is your people will need to they really need to be ready to continue managing that.

Ryan Drumheller (53:33.215)
Yeah, absolutely. and that goes back to the whole humanality part of me recognizing that part of the the actual project plan that is not written anywhere is to get their confidence ready and get them to the point where they're ready and one wanting to to take this over and run with it. And that's the best case scenario. That's best for everybody and they come out of it so much better than they came into it with.

Mykel Salomon (54:00.598)
Yep. Good stuff, Ryan. So we are approaching the final segment of our conversation today, and I usually close these conversations with one final question for our guest, which is if you what would be your piece of advice to a younger version of yourself, let's say a younger Ryan, seeing him today, navigating through this new era with AI, what would you tell that guy?

Ryan Drumheller (54:30.258)
Mm.

It's good it's a great question. Navigating through AI is a younger me. that I didn't maybe need to be as frustrated or spicy as I was in my younger days because my creative outlet abilities was gonna change and it was gonna be more creative than I could have ever thought of. which is part of the reason why I got into IT anyways, is like believing I was in a

you know, IT space or world, like dreaming of it and thinking of it and touching a keyboard and a mouse, but I was actually gonna be able to create in the near future. that that probably would have calmed me down and maybe I would have had a better fifteen years in between.

Mykel Salomon (55:18.19)
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that with us. I think that's a great and a very timely piece of advice to everyone, right? The version of ourselves, it will change for sure. It will be great if we can see what's gonna happen next, but yeah, we don't have that ability. So so it's live. But Ryan, thank you very much for being with us today. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk about leadership and of course AI.

Ryan Drumheller (55:44.322)
Absolutely. It's a been a pleasure being here and speaking with you. And I can't I can't wait to do it again someday.

Mykel Salomon (55:51.742)
Absolutely. Thanks. I appreciate you taking the time. And if this episode made you think or rethink how your organization is approaching AI, share it with a leader, a business owner, or someone that is responsible for guiding people through change. Follow the human protocol and I talk to you all next week. Talk soon.