Early in my career, I couldn’t understand it.
We’d roll out a new tool, something I knew would make people better at their jobs—and the veterans would resist. Not loudly. Just quietly. They’d nod in training, complete the exercises, check all the boxes. Then they’d go back to their spreadsheets and phone calls and the way they’d always done it.
It frustrated me. Why wouldn’t they want to be better? The data was clear. The efficiency gains were obvious. The path forward was right there in front of them.
I was wrong. Not about the tools—but about what I thought I was seeing.
What I See Now That I Didn’t See Then
Now I’m on the other side of that equation. I’ve spent decades in this industry. I’ve watched technology waves come and go. I’ve seen the promises and the disappointments. And I finally understood what those veterans were protecting.
It wasn’t stubborn. It wasn’t an inability to learn. It wasn’t even nostalgia for the old ways.
It was fear. Fear of being pushed out before they’re ready. Fear that the thing they’ve spent decades building—their expertise, their relationships, their judgment—suddenly doesn’t matter anymore. Fear that someone with six months of experience and a new tool could do what took them 25 years to master.
That fear is real. And dismissing it as “resistance to change” misses the point entirely.
The Real Concern Behind Resistance
When a 25-year veteran looks at AI, they’re not seeing a productivity tool. They see a potential replacement for the very thing that makes them valuable. Every headline about AI automating jobs, every vendor pitch about “doing more with less,” every enthusiastic young executive (like I was) talking about transformation—it all points in one direction.
And let’s be honest: the industry hasn’t always rewarded experience the way it should. Veterans have watched colleagues get pushed out during “modernization” initiatives. They’ve seen expertise devalued in favor of whatever’s new. The skepticism isn’t irrational, it’s earned.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand, and what I wish I could go back and tell my younger self: that skepticism, while understandable, is based on a fundamental misreading of what AI actually does.
AI Has Information. Your Veterans Have Context.
AI can tell you what a customer ordered last quarter. It can surface patterns across thousands of accounts. It can draft a response in seconds. It can analyze data faster than any human ever could.
But it doesn’t know that this customer’s purchasing manager is going through a divorce and needs a little extra patience right now. It doesn’t know that a certain product spec sheet is technically accurate but misleading in practice. It doesn’t know the unwritten rules that keep your operation running. It doesn’t know which suppliers will deliver when they say they will versus which ones pad their lead times. It doesn’t know the history between your company and that account from 15 years ago that still shapes how they see you.
That context is irreplaceable. And it’s exactly what makes AI powerful—not as a replacement for experience, but as an amplifier of it.
Think about it this way: AI can process a million data points about customer behavior. But your veteran account manager knows why certain behaviors matter and others don’t. AI can generate a dozen options for solving a problem. But your experienced operations manager knows which options will work in your specific environment with your specific constraints.
Information without context is noise. Context without information is limited. Put them together, and you have something neither could achieve alone.
The Conversation Leaders Need to Have
The distributors who get AI right won’t be the ones who force adoption on reluctant teams. They won’t be the ones who frame AI as the future that everyone needs to get on board with or get left behind.
They’ll be the ones who help their veterans see that their 25 years of context is exactly what AI needs to be useful. That their pattern recognition, their relationship knowledge, their operational intuition—all of it becomes more valuable when paired with AI’s ability to process information at scale.
That’s the conversation leaders need to have. Not “here’s a new tool, figure it out.” Not “this is the future and you need to adapt.” But: “Your knowledge is the most valuable part of this equation. AI is just a way to apply it more broadly.”
Making This Real in Your Organization
If you’re a leader trying to bring AI into an organization with experienced, skeptical team members, here’s what I’d suggest:
Start by listening, not pitching. Before you introduce any AI initiative, have honest conversations with your veterans. What are they worried about? What have they seen go wrong with technology implementations before? What do they think gets lost when new systems replace old ways? Their answers will tell you more about how to succeed than any vendor presentation.
Position veterans as the essential ingredient. When you talk about AI, make it clear that the tool is incomplete without their knowledge. “This system can find patterns in our customer data, but we need people who understand what those patterns actually mean” is a hugely different message than “This system will help us be more efficient.”
Let them validate the output. One of the most effective ways to build trust is to let experienced team members be the ones who evaluate whether AI recommendations make sense. “The system flagged these 50 accounts as at-risk—you tell us which ones actually are” puts their expertise at the center rather than the periphery.
Show them how AI learns from them. When veterans see that their corrections and feedback make AI better, the dynamic shifts. They’re not being replaced—they’re teaching. Their knowledge is being captured and amplified, not discarded.
Address the fear directly. Don’t pretend the concern about job security doesn’t exist. Acknowledge it. Explain what you actually envision for their role. Be honest about how you see their experience fitting into an AI-augmented operation. Vague reassurances won’t work—specific conversations will.
The Veterans You Need Most
Here’s the irony: the employees you most need to embrace AI are often the ones most resistant to it. Not because they can’t learn—but because they have the most to lose if it goes wrong, and the most context to contribute if it goes right.
The 25-year veteran who won’t use AI isn’t wrong. They’re protecting something valuable. Your job as a leader isn’t to overcome their resistance—it’s to help them see that what they’re protecting is exactly what makes AI work.
AI has all the information. Your veterans have all the context. The companies that figure out how to combine both will have a serious advantage over those that choose one or the other.
I wish I’d understood that 20 years ago. But it was better late than never.
As Chief Operations Officer of a Distribution Strategy Group, I'm in the unique position of having helped transform distribution companies and am now collaborating with AI vendors to understand their solutions. My background in industrial distribution operations, sales process management, and continuous improvement provides a different perspective on how distributors can leverage AI to transform margin and productivity challenges into competitive advantages.