Leading Through Change: AI, Customers and Turning Strategy Into Results

"You can have the best strategy and the best technology in the world, but if your people don't understand it, don't trust it or don't know how to use it, you're just not going to get the results you're looking for." — Laura Hay

The questions leaders keep asking haven’t changed much on the surface. How do we get value from AI? How do we keep customers close? How do we plan when the headlines change every week? What has changed is how much rides on getting the answers right. During a recent Trax discussion, Laura Hay, Senior Director of Global Program Management at Trax, shared what leading through change looks like in practice for the global businesses she works with.

What Laura Covers in This Conversation

Laura draws on her work with global organizations to answer five questions. She explains why AI investments should start with the problem rather than the technology, and why experienced people become more valuable as AI takes on more work. She separates good customer service from true partnership, and argues that partnership sometimes means having difficult conversations. She covers how leaders can help teams through constant change without overwhelming them, how to plan when tariffs and rising costs make the future hard to predict, and what it takes to keep departments and regions aligned long enough to turn ambitious goals into results.

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Full Transcript

Host: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Trax channel. Today I am here with Laura Hay. Hi Laura, how are you?

Laura Hay: Hi, I'm great. Nice to see you. It's been a while.

Host: I know. I love chatting with you and hearing about all the amazing things that are happening in your world. You always have a good story.

Laura Hay: There's always something, isn't there? There's always something happening. It's a busy old industry.

Host: I know. Same in the PR world, honestly. Not going to lie. You've got to be 25 steps ahead at all times.

Laura Hay: Yeah, for sure. Or you will be left behind.

Host: It's going to happen. So today we're talking about leadership, AI and business growth, and what's changing in 2026. As we go through these questions, you can talk about 2027 too, and the trends you're seeing and how things are changing, because we're almost there.

Laura Hay: We are.

Host: I always say it's Halloween, and then you go through Thanksgiving and it's Christmas, and then it's already Valentine's Day.

Laura Hay: I can't believe it. I can't believe we're in Q4, but it's exciting. There's been loads of really cool stuff happening this year, including some of the things you're probably going to ask me about today. So yeah, it's all good.

Host: Good. All right, the first question is about AI and productivity. Companies are investing heavily in AI, as you know, but many are struggling to turn productivity gains into measurable business results. How can leaders make sure AI is actually improving performance?

Laura Hay: I think the biggest mistake that businesses can make with AI is getting caught up in the technology itself, rather than starting with the problem that they're trying to solve. We're seeing huge investment in AI, and there's a lot of excitement around what it can do, but adopting it and actually delivering business value are two very different things.

So for me, it starts with looking at where people are spending their time. Are they spending hours pulling reports together, manually analyzing data or chasing information across different systems, for example? And is that taking them away from the work that actually makes a difference to the business?

That's where I think AI has got enormous potential. It can help us identify patterns a lot faster. It can surface insights that might otherwise be missed. It will free people up to focus on decisions and problem solving rather than manual tasks.

But you do have to measure the impact. Are we making decisions faster? Are we reducing errors? Are we improving customer outcomes or reducing costs? If we're investing in AI, we need to be able to demonstrate what's actually getting better.

I just don't see AI as replacing the need for experienced people. I think experience becomes even more important, because you still need people who understand the business, can challenge what the tech is telling them and know what action to take. So for me, the real measure of AI isn't how much work it can do. It's how much more valuable it allows the people to become.

Host: Absolutely. And I love how you said it gets answers faster, but really the correct answers.

Laura Hay: Well, that's it. Yeah, exactly.

Host: Okay, so the next question is about customer expectations. Customers expect faster responses and more personalized service than ever. How can businesses keep up without losing the human connection, which is you?

Laura Hay: It is me. Yeah, it is me. I think customer expectations have changed enormously. Customers expect you to know their business, understand their challenges and respond quickly. They just don't want to explain the same issue to five different people or feel like they're starting from scratch every time they speak to you.

But I don't think the answer is simply to automate everything and respond faster. I think it's about understanding what the customer actually needs from you. In my role working with global organizations, that means understanding their priorities, their internal pressures and what success looks like for them. Every customer is different, even when they're using the same technology or service.

The technology can absolutely help us deliver a better experience. It can give teams access to information much more quickly, it can highlight potential issues earlier and it can help us anticipate what a customer might need. We can do a lot of tracking and training against peers in the industry. But it should enhance the relationship and not replace it.

I definitely think there's a big difference between providing good customer service and genuinely being a partner to your customer. Good service is responding when something goes wrong. Being a partner is understanding their business well enough to anticipate the problems, challenge their thinking when necessary and identify opportunities they might not have considered, which sometimes means having difficult conversations. You can't build a genuinely valuable relationship if you're just agreeing with everything that the customer says.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. The next question is about leading through change. AI and workplace changes are moving quickly. What can leaders do to help their teams adapt without feeling overwhelmed?

Laura Hay: I think we sometimes underestimate how exhausting constant change can be for people. Businesses are asking teams to adopt new technology, learn new skills, change processes and deliver better results, often while still doing everything they were doing before. And then we wonder why people are struggling to keep up.

You can't just announce a new strategy or introduce a new system and expect everyone to get on board. People need to understand why the change is happening, what's expected of them and how it's going to affect their day-to-day work.

So I think clarity is absolutely critical. As leaders, we need to be honest about what's changing, what we know, what we don't know yet and what the priorities are. You don't need to have every answer, but people do need direction.

You also have to listen. Sometimes what looks like resistance to change is someone highlighting a genuine problem that hasn't been considered. Or it's someone who's already stretched and doesn't feel they have the time or support to learn something new. As leaders, it's our responsibility to dig into that and understand whether it's something we can support, fix or move.

With AI particularly, we need to create an environment where people feel comfortable experimenting, asking questions and learning. We shouldn't expect everyone to be an expert overnight. As leaders, we have a responsibility to explain how technology will help people do their jobs better, rather than simply presenting it as another thing they have to learn.

You can have the best strategy and the best technology in the world, but if your people don't understand it, don't trust it or don't know how to use it, you're just not going to get the results that you're looking for.

Host: Absolutely. The next question is about global business uncertainty. Tariffs, rising costs and global uncertainty are making headlines. We see it every day on the news. How can leaders plan ahead when the business environment keeps changing?

Laura Hay: I think the first thing leaders need to accept is that you can't predict everything, and you certainly can't control everything that's happening around you. What you can control is how prepared you are to respond.

When you're working with global organizations, you're dealing with different markets, different regulations, cost pressures and priorities. Something that seems relatively small in one part of the business can have a much bigger impact somewhere else. So I think your planning needs to be flexible. You need to understand your biggest risks, challenge the assumptions your plans are based on and think about what you would do if your circumstances changed.

I think data is really important here. The earlier you identify a trend or a potential problem, the more options you have. But data on its own isn't enough. You need people who understand the commercial implications and have the authority to make those decisions.

I also think businesses need to be realistic about trade-offs. You can't always have the lowest costs, the fastest delivery, the greatest flexibility and the lowest risk all at the same time. Leaders need to understand what's most important and make deliberate decisions about where they're prepared to compromise and what their ultimate priority is.

That means getting the right people talking to each other. Procurement, finance, operations and leadership can't all make decisions in isolation and expect the overall business to perform well. We've got to have the right people in the room, making the alignment together on that go-forward plan.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. Our last question today is about turning strategy into results. Businesses often have ambitious goals, and I mentioned before how we're going into 2027, but execution is where things can get complicated. What helps teams across different departments and regions stay aligned and deliver results? You touched on this in the last answer.

Laura Hay: Yeah. This is probably the area I'm most passionate about, because it's at the heart of what I do. I think most organizations are pretty good at setting ambitious goals. Where things get complicated is translating those goals into what actually needs to happen, who owns each part and how everyone works together to deliver it.

When you're working across different departments, countries and time zones, that does become more challenging. You can have one team focused on reducing costs, one focused on improving service and another focused on implementing a new system by a deadline. Individually, these people might all be doing an excellent job, but if they're not aligned on the same outcome, the overall program can still fail.

So again, it goes back to clarity. Everybody needs to understand what we're trying to achieve and why it matters. Everybody needs to understand what success looks like and what they specifically are accountable for and own.

Then you need some structure and accountability. You need clear milestones, regular communication, visibility of risks and a process for making decisions, and not endless meetings for the sake of meetings. You need to have things in place to make sure the right conversations happen with the right people at the right time.

Going back to something I said earlier, I also think you need to create an environment where people feel comfortable raising problems early. Too often, issues are allowed to develop because nobody wants to be the person who says that something isn't working. By the time the problem reaches leadership, your options may be much more limited.

Finally, I don't think alignment means everyone has to agree on everything. I think it means everyone understands the objective, has the opportunity to challenge and contribute, and then commits to moving forward once the decision has been made.

Host: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I love talking to you. It's always a pleasure, if I can actually get you to go live, because you're so busy.

Laura Hay: I know, I know. I promise. Next time, give me some dates and I'll do it.

Host: Anytime. You pick the date and I will move things around.

Laura Hay: Okay, let's do it then. Let's get another one in before the year ends.

Host: I love it. I love it so much. Okay, it was great to talk to you today, and we will talk again soon.

Laura Hay: Awesome. Speak to you soon. Bye.

Host: Bye.

Keep the Conversation Going

To catch the next conversation live, subscribe to the Trax YouTube channel and follow Trax on LinkedIn. You can also connect with Laura on LinkedIn.