Highlights from ChangeTech Rising™ 2024 Conference

The day started off with a bang featuring Tim Creasey, Chief Innovation Officer, of Prosci laying out the landscape of change management and technology. Tim shared the concept of “time freedom” vs. saving time. The difference being that there is administrative time saved by leveraging change management technology to automate our work, however, there is time freedom to do more planning with the time saved. 

Additionally, Tim broke down three areas of change management activities for us to consider when thinking about artificial intelligence (AI) in our work: activities that are “Human Exclusive”, activities with “AI Collaboration Opportunities” and activities with “AI Automation Potential”. By bucketing out our work activities into these three categories, it becomes much easier to see how we will be able to work with AI to leverage its strengths, sure-up our weaknesses, and partner with it to be another entity for us to rely on.  Tim summarizes with the concept of an “AI Intern” – another resource for us to have at the table to enhance and complete the work that we do.

Next up was Declan Foster, CEO of Project Pay AI, speaking about the ethics of AI and how we’re all “citizen developers” as we teach the tool to get smarter and smarter about us. He raised the fact that there are three elements to consider when building AI tools: privacy, transparency, and bias. Much discussion occurred in the chat box about how these elements currently do or do not show up in current usage and development of AI today.

Robert Newland, CRO of Pandatron.ai shared how AI coaching is fully scalable and how it supports employee engagement at a level that has never been seen before. He spoke of how empathetic AI is because it is non-judgemental and positive. Robert shared research that people have a therapeutic connection with the AI in 3-5 days whereas the typical therapeutic connection with an in person therapist is 5-6 weeks! Imagine the impact of this technology on our society and organizational stakeholders!

Eddi Trevizo, CXO, of ChangeSync made some excellent points about how to future-proof your change management skills by becoming more comfortable leveraging data and its ability to impact decision-making for change sponsors.  

Gavin Wedell, CEO, of ChangePlan brought in the perspective that systems are more important than discipline. In other words, digital infrastructure is needed to help us manage and address the complexity of our work in today’s business world.

The session closed with expert behaviorist Edwina Pike, Founder of Pike Squared, bringing up the realities of how AI really does demonstrate empathy to us. She began by speaking about the techniques behaviorists use when designing behavior change – like removing the noise or obstacles in a desired behavior to make something easy to do that you want to have done and adding noise and obstacles to make something harder to do for behaviors that you don’t want done. It seems simple, right? But her point is well taken with the application of AI in our personal and professional relationships. It is empathetic, positive, and easy to use. You don’t need to book an appointment to see someone or have a meeting. You can just fit it in when you want and need it. Ed brought out the facts that people need to be valued, feel heard, and feel included. If AI can address those needs without judgment, why wouldn’t we want to build a relationship with it?

Last Tuesday was a powerhouse of a day – stimulating presentations, small group technology demonstrations, and even DROM breaks.  What is DROM you ask? It is the combination of drumming and yoga and we brought mindfulness and activity into our breaks for rejuvenation for the next exciting agenda item. I want to thank all who participated in bringing this event to the fore!  We will reconvene again next year on February 18, 2025. Meanwhile, check out our upcoming events, Coach Change™ 2024 in September and Lead Change™ 2024 in November. You can see more at www.changemanagementevents.com.