The New Rules of Trust, Work & Leadership | DisrupTV Episode 452

The New Rules of Trust, Work & Leadership | DisrupTV Episode 452

On DisrupTV Episode 452, chronobiology expert Camilla Kring and Conga CMO Celia Fleischaker explored two ways AI is changing work: by helping people work in sync with their lives, and by connecting the steps that shape a customer’s experience.

AI often gets framed as a way to make individual tasks faster. But the larger opportunity may be to rethink how work is organized: around people’s natural rhythms and the outcomes customers care about.

That was a common thread in this episode of DisrupTV. Kring discussed how biological rhythms affect well-being and performance. Fleischaker examined how AI is reshaping marketing and go-to-market operations—from how buyers discover brands to how companies build trust across the customer journey.

Kring’s concept of chrono leadership brings chronobiology—the study of biological rhythms—into leadership and workplace design. People differ in when they tend to feel most alert and creative. Yet many schools and workplaces still favor early schedules, a legacy of industrial-era routines.

That mismatch can carry a social cost. Later starters may be judged as less engaged or disciplined, even when they contribute just as much. Kring calls attention to the assumptions and comments that can make people feel they need to justify their schedules.

A more chrono-inclusive workplace doesn’t mean every person sets their own hours without regard for others. It means recognizing that small scheduling changes can help people do their best work. Teams might, where practical, offer different start times or schedule shared meetings during hours that work for more people.

The same idea applies beyond the office. Work schedules interact with family responsibilities, shift work, social lives, and health. Kring sees potential for AI to help coordinate those constraints—if organizations are willing to design schedules around people’s needs rather than treating identical hours as the only fair option.

Kring also connected the discussion to education. She has advocated for later school start times, particularly for teenagers, whose sleep patterns often shift later. Later starts, she said, can give students more sleep and help them arrive more ready to learn.

AI changes how buyers discover brands

ROn DisrupTV Episode 452, chronobiology expert Camilla Kring and Conga CMO Celia Fleischaker explored two ways AI is changing work: by helping people work in sync with their lives, and by connecting the steps that shape a customer’s experience.

AI often gets framed as a way to make individual tasks faster. But the larger opportunity may be to rethink how work is organized: around people’s natural rhythms and the outcomes customers care about.

That was a common thread in this episode of DisrupTV. Kring discussed how biological rhythms affect well-being and performance. Fleischaker examined how AI is reshaping marketing and go-to-market operations—from how buyers discover brands to how companies build trust across the customer journey.

Work with people’s biological rhythms

Kring’s concept of chrono leadership brings chronobiology—the study of biological rhythms—into leadership and workplace design. People differ in when they tend to feel most alert and creative. Yet many schools and workplaces still favor early schedules, a legacy of industrial-era routines.

That mismatch can carry a social cost. Later starters may be judged as less engaged or disciplined, even when they contribute just as much. Kring calls attention to the assumptions and comments that can make people feel they need to justify their schedules.

A more chrono-inclusive workplace doesn’t mean every person sets their own hours without regard for others. It means recognizing that small scheduling changes can help people do their best work. Teams might, where practical, offer different start times or schedule shared meetings during hours that work for more people.

The same idea applies beyond the office. Work schedules interact with family responsibilities, shift work, social lives, and health. Kring sees potential for AI to help coordinate those constraints—if organizations are willing to design schedules around people’s needs rather than treating identical hours as the only fair option.

Kring also connected the discussion to education. She has advocated for later school start times, particularly for teenagers, whose sleep patterns often shift later. Later starts, she said, can give students more sleep and help them arrive more ready to learn.

AI changes how buyers discover brands

Fleischaker described another major shift: buyers increasingly use AI tools to research companies and create vendor shortlists. A company’s website may no longer be the first place a prospective customer encounters its story. Instead, that first impression may come from an AI-generated answer drawing on many sources.

For marketers, that changes the goal. It’s not only about generating clicks; it’s also about whether a company’s expertise, customer feedback, and positioning are represented accurately across the sources AI systems use. Fleischaker described this as a growing focus on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) alongside traditional SEO.

That work calls for more than publishing on a company’s own site. Marketers need to pay attention to how their brands are discussed elsewhere, whether customer reviews support the story they want to tell, and how AI tools describe them. The question is not just whether a brand appears in an answer, but whether the answer reflects what the company stands for.

The value is in the handoffs

Fleischaker also cautioned against seeing AI only as a way to accelerate one person’s task—for example, helping a seller create a quote more quickly. Some of the greatest gains may come from improving the handoffs across a larger process.

When sales, pricing, finance, legal, and other teams work in silos, customers can experience the gaps between them. AI can help connect information and workflows across those functions, but realizing that value may require organizations to rethink how teams are structured and measured.

One direction discussed on the show was organizing around customer outcomes, with multidisciplinary teams working across traditional departmental boundaries. Integrating systems such as CRM, ERP, and CPQ can help connect the information needed to make the commerce process smoother.

Trust is built throughout the customer journey

A sale is not a single moment in which a company wins or loses trust. Trust is reinforced—or weakened—through execution: in pricing decisions, contract negotiations, customer handoffs, and the experience of working with a company over time.

Fleischaker pointed to pricing as one example. If a seller presents a price and then makes a steep discount, the customer may wonder why the original price was presented at all. Contracting can also be a brand touchpoint: the process customers experience affects how they view the company.

Understanding the full journey, including customer feedback and win-loss insights, can help organizations find where trust breaks down and address the underlying friction.

Final Thoughts

AI’s impact on work will depend not only on what it can automate, but on how thoughtfully organizations put it to use. The opportunity is to build workplaces that respect people’s rhythms, connect teams around customer outcomes, and make trust part of every interaction. Technology can help coordinate that change; leaders must make sure it creates a better experience for both employees and customers.

Related Episodes

If you found Episode 452 valuable, here are a few others that align in theme or extend similar conversations:

• From Automation to Reinvention: Inside the Infinite Company and the Borrowed Mind | DisrupTV Ep 449
• How AI and Super Teams Are Redefining Customer Experience and Work | DisrupTV Ep. 450
• Leading Through Turbulence: Empathy, AI Workflow Economics, and the New IT Playbook | DisrupTV Ep. 451