AI will test your leadership abilities: Travel Weekly

Arnie Weissmann

I wrote last week about technology consultant Shelly Palmer’s view of how AI agents may revolutionize travel planning. That column, based on a keynote he gave to the Association of National Advertisers and a discussion we had following his speech, was only part of what he had shared about coming technology that is likely to impact the lives of travel professionals.

The other points he made that I found most interesting had to do with the leadership challenges that arise from the quickening pace of technological innovation. 

Palmer said that some tasks that used to take him five hours can now be done in about five minutes, thanks to AI. “By the end of 2026, we’ll be doing five-month tasks in five minutes.”

Developments are coming so quickly that he was up until 4 a.m. the night before rewriting his presentation to account for technological leaps that had taken place the day before.

Much of the change occurred in “vibe coding,” which he defined as, “You just describe what you want and stuff gets made.”

The previous night, he said, new developments in vibe coding “stunned me in a way I have never been stunned. Your life changed yesterday, while you were sitting here in this conference. I can’t even imagine what a year from now is going to look like.”

He showed slides reflecting what he had done. “Five days ago, [the ability to do this] was science fiction,” he said. “Tech is coming faster than any of us can possibly fathom.”

While this would seem to be an unabashed blessing for most businesses, Palmer predicts “the middle management mafia” is not going to like it. Upcoming challenges will not be in technology, but in leadership.

The previous approach that was used to help employees adapt to new technology was dubbed “change management.” Its principles, Palmer believes, are now obsolete.

“We’re in a very interesting part of our AI journey as a society,” he said, “and the world is in a very interesting place. There is an enduring [AI development] arms race, and it will never be over. We’re past change management. We’re just going to have to continuously adapt to change as it comes and create cultures of continuous adaptation.”

It is going to be, he believes, “a leadership challenge beyond any leadership challenge you’ve ever had before.” In most previous business models, leaders were project-oriented, outlining a beginning, middle and end. But every day will increasingly bring new challenges and opportunities “because the tech is going to come so fast and so furious. It never ends. There will be a new way to do business.”

While it seems no one person can keep up with the rapid pace of change, a team can. “You can run your team in a way where, if something new comes up this morning, they’re ready to go,” Palmer said. What social media has done to media, vibe coding, vibe marketing and vibe meme-making will do in those areas. “If you have the ability to describe it, it will be made.”

And every day, the state of the art in these fields will be the worst it will ever be.

So the question, he said, is how do you turn people into the kind of controllers of artificial tools that they need to become? “If you’re great at your job, you’re going to get even more productive,” he said. “If you suck at your job, you’re still going to suck, but you’re going to suck huge and really visibly.”

The real challenge will be that one employee will want to get home at 5 o’clock to feed the kids and hang out with their spouse and have a normal life, and they’ll see AI tools as a way to increase their productivity to accomplish that personal goal. Another employee will be a corporate animal who wants to work until 2 in the morning and amplify their abilities three or five times.

“They’re on the same team, and you’re the leader,” he said. “This has nothing to do with technology. How can you incentivize and inspire? How can you compensate and remunerate? What new ways will you be able to bring your teams together and say, ‘Hey guys, we’re going to innovate the workflow process in a way that is good for all of us?’

“This just falls squarely on your leadership ability. The trial for all of us is, how can we inspire our teams and how can we create a culture where people come in and use these tools to just do a better job?”

The challenges Palmer described cannot be realistically addressed in detail today. As he said at one point in his talk, “You’re looking at the future through the lens of the present.”

Nonetheless, forewarned is forearmed. It’s not too early to begin thinking about how you might approach these issues with your team.