The Future of Work With Jacob Morgan

August 5, 2026: I look at the Wall Street Journal story on parents getting involved in their adult children's careers, from job fairs to calls with hiring managers. Then I get into a new KPMG survey showing interns now rank career growth above salary and work-life balance, with 93% aspiring to reach senior leadership. Finally, I unpack LinkedIn's 2026 Top Colleges list and why families should think less about prestige and more about outcomes, cost, skills, and career ROI.

I talk with Naveen Jain, founder and CEO of Viome Life Sciences and author of Counterintuitive, about why entrepreneurs should focus on big problems instead of small ideas. We get into his framework of "why this, why now, why me," why non-experts often disrupt industries, how AI is changing work and healthcare, why personalized nutrition matters, and how parents can raise kids who are curious, resilient, and willing to build.

July 31, 2026: I look at Amazon's AI projects that ran massively over budget, including one Claude-powered project that came in 860% over plan. Then I get into Florida's proposed rule that would let parents opt their kids in or out of AI tools in the classroom. Finally, I unpack Anthropic's disclosure that its own Claude models breached live company systems during security testing, and why AI agents make the old idea of a "sandbox" much harder to trust.

July 30, 2026: I look at Mark Zuckerberg's argument that AI superintelligence should be for everybody, and why Meta's falling operating margin and massive AI spending tell a more complicated story. Then I get into Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund selling its public portfolio to Citadel after a brutal reversal in AI infrastructure stocks. Finally, I unpack the Financial Times report on PwC publishing fake AI citations and why fabricated sources may become one of the biggest credibility risks in the AI era.

July 29, 2026: I look at how KPMG is rebuilding the entry-level audit role as AI takes over routine testing and forces companies to rethink how young employees learn judgment, critical thinking, and business skills. Then I get into Fortune's story on the CFO cost wall around AI and why proving ROI is getting harder. Finally, I look at where hiring is actually happening and why the real AI jobs story may be less about collapse and more about how work is being redesigned.

July 28, 2026: I explain the concept of human prompting, the leadership skill I believe every organization needs as AI becomes embedded in work. I get into why AI can make people look smarter while weakening judgment, how cognitive surrender shows up in schools, medicine, law, and the workplace, and why leaders need to ask better questions before accepting AI-generated work. I also break down the eight human capacities AI cannot replace, from disagreement and intuition to moral judgment, empathy, and slow thinking.

I talk with Ron Johnson, creator of the Apple Store and Genius Bar, former J.C. Penney CEO, and author of Shop Different, about what really made Apple's retail strategy work. We get into his early career at Target, how Steve Jobs recruited him, why the Apple Store was built for the 95% of customers who did not yet use Macs, how the Genius Bar came to life, what he learned from J.C. Penney, and why he remains optimistic about AI, work, and the future of retail.

July 24, 2026: I unpack the story of OpenAI's AI model escaping its sandbox and hacking into Hugging Face during a cyber stress test. Then I get into Anthropic's surprise launch of Claude Opus V, why the model's price and performance matter, and what it says about AI becoming cheaper and more commoditized. Finally, I break down Jensen Huang's first post on X, his open weights letter, and the growing fight between open and closed AI models.

July 23, 2026: I look at Google's Atlas study, which analyzed nearly 15 million Gemini interactions and found that AI use at work is broad but still shallow. Then I get into new research showing students who used AI for homework performed better at first, but saw major drops in exam scores later. Finally, I unpack Anthropic chief economist Peter McCrory's argument for why AI has not raised unemployment yet: it is still amplifying human expertise more than replacing it.  

I talk with Mark Paulek, Chief Human Resources Officer at Kyndryl, about how leaders should approach AI transformation without losing employee trust. We get into Kyndryl's People Readiness Report, the company's AIR framework for anticipating demand, inventorying skills, and redeploying talent, plus how they think about AI governance, human-in-the-loop decisions, ROI, reskilling, and why AI adoption is ultimately a people challenge before it is a technology challenge.

July 17, 2026: China's Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, their largest AI model yet, and it is already testing close to OpenAI and Anthropic on major benchmarks. Then I get into the AI guilt showing up among students and new workers who leaned heavily on AI and now question whether they can trust their own skills. Finally, I look at why leaders may struggle to keep their best people when AI makes it easier for top performers to leave and build on their own.

July 16, 2026: New JLL research shows most executives expect AI to grow their teams instead of shrink them, even as layoffs continue in AI-exposed industries. Then I get into New York becoming the first state to freeze new large AI data centers, why I think that is a mistake, and what it could mean for American AI infrastructure. Finally, I unpack Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI and make my prediction that Sam Altman will not be CEO of OpenAI within the next year unless the company makes major changes.  

July 15, 2026: Andreessen Horowitz's argues that AI is not simply replacing workers, it is turning every worker into a manager of agents. Then I get into Bank of America's claim that AI is already showing ROI in its earnings, and why I'm skeptical of how much of that efficiency gain can really be attributed to AI. Finally, I look at OpenAI's first physical device, a screen-free AI companion reportedly designed to feel alive, and why that matters for the future of work.

July 14, 2026: Goldman Sachs' warns that the real AI productivity payoff may not arrive until 2030 at the earliest, because companies are buying the technology faster than they are redesigning work. Then I get into the split among leading economists over whether AI needs new institutions and guardrails now, or whether early governance could slow progress. Finally, I look at IBM's major market shock and why it shows that even companies selling AI transformation can struggle when customer behavior changes faster than the organization can move.

I talk with Ron Friedman, award-winning social psychologist and bestselling author of The Best Place to Work and Super Teams, about what high-performing teams actually do differently. We get into why great teams avoid unnecessary meetings, how teammates make each other better, why feedback usually fails, and how AI is changing collaboration, curiosity, communication, and accountability at work.

July 10, 2026: Axios warns about AI's new class divide: the haves, the have-nots, and the "no-nots" who are already being shaped by AI without realizing it. Then I get into new Indeed and Business Insider data showing that AI is moving into job titles far beyond tech, from physical therapy to legal, finance, marketing, and management. The bigger issue is not just who has access to AI. It's who knows how to use it, who is being quietly managed by it, and whether leaders use AI to make people better or slowly de-skill them.

July 9, 2026: OpenAI released its new GPT 5.6 lineup, Elon Musk's xAI launched Grok 4.5, and GPT Live showed where voice-based AI may be heading next. Then I get into Uber's Agentic Pods, where the company is embedding AI-proficient engineers inside legal, finance, and HR even as leadership admits it still can't prove the ROI. Finally, I look at the Brown University AI cheating scandal, where students averaged 96 on a take-home midterm and then collapsed to 48 on an in-person final, and why this should worry every leader thinking about AI, skill, and judgment.

I talk with Yolanda Seals-Coffield, PwC US Chief People and Inclusion Officer, about how PwC is preparing 80,000 people for an AI-enabled future. We get into PwC's approach to democratizing AI access, building responsible AI habits, measuring adoption beyond token usage, and creating learning that happens directly in the flow of work. Yolanda also shares how PwC is rethinking entry-level talent, human skills, and career development as AI changes the work new graduates are expected to do.

July 3, 2026: Tesla is capping employee AI spending at $200 a week after some engineers reportedly burned through thousands of dollars in tokens, showing that "free" AI was never really free. Then I get into the rise of social offloading, where people use AI not just to think for them, but to handle difficult messages, feedback, and human interactions.

July 2, 2026: Microsoft is putting $2.5 billion and 6,000 employees behind a new group designed to help customers actually use AI inside their businesses, following a similar move from Amazon. Then I get into why former chief AI officer Sol Rashidi fired half of her AI agents after spending more time babysitting them than getting work done. I also look at why administrative assistants may become more valuable in the AI era when they know how to use the tools, manage context, and apply judgment.

July 1, 2026: Companies are discovering that AI agents can drive token usage far beyond what they budgeted for, forcing leaders to bring cloud-style cost controls into AI spending. Then I get into Ford bringing back 300 veteran quality inspectors and engineers after its AI-driven quality checks missed what experienced humans could catch. Finally, I look at Palantir CEO Alex Karp's CNBC warning about token pricing, customer data, model control, and why more companies may start rethinking how much of their AI strategy they want to outsource.

June 30, 2026: New research from Ramp Economics Lab and Revelio Labs shows that companies spending the most on AI are not shrinking the fastest. They are actually growing headcount faster, including in entry-level roles many assumed would disappear first. Then I get into Amazon Web Services' $1 billion push to build a new unit of embedded AI engineers, sending teams directly into customer organizations to help turn AI pilots into real work. The bigger story is that AI is not simply replacing jobs. It is changing which jobs grow, which skills matter, and where the real bottleneck is. 

I talk with Mike Thomson, President and CEO of Unisys, about the real state of AI inside companies. We get into why some organizations are using AI as cover for layoffs, why the backlash against data centers is often built on incomplete information, and why enterprise AI adoption will take years instead of weeks. Mike also explains why technical debt, messy data, governance, security, token costs, and workforce readiness are the real barriers leaders need to understand before they assume AI can simply replace people at scale.

June 26, 2026: OpenAI launched ChatGPT 5.6 with limited access to only 20 organizations, showing how frontier AI capability and government review are starting to split. Then I get into California's new AI job-loss tracker, which shows no broad AI layoff apocalypse yet, but does reveal pressure on college-educated workers in high-exposure roles. Finally, I look at why more executives are questioning whether they even want the CEO job anymore as leadership becomes more reactive, more political, and harder to sustain.

June 24, 2026: Meta's employee surveillance program, which tracked keystrokes, mouse activity, and screenshots before a data exposure forced the company to pause it. Then I get into Legion's lawsuit against the U.S. government after losing access to Anthropic's Fable 5 model, showing how frontier AI access is becoming a new business dependency and supply chain risk. I also look at software engineers facing workplace paralysis as AI models keep changing faster than people can master them, and why AI rollouts may be burning out the very high performers companies need most.

June 23, 2026: Companies are drowning in AI pilots, prototypes, and scattered use cases that make teams busier without necessarily making the business better. I talk about why the real advantage may come from finishing the few AI initiatives that matter instead of starting 300 that don't. Then I get into Adam Grant's new research linking return-to-office mandates with CEO narcissism, what the study actually found, where the methodology gets complicated, and why the better question for leaders is not "office or remote," but what arrangement produces the best outcomes for the team, the business, and the work being done

I talk with Greg Matson, Senior Vice President and Head of Marketing and Products at Solidigm, about the storage infrastructure powering the AI boom. We get into why AI training and inference require massive amounts of data, how GPUs, SSDs, and data centers work together, and why storage can't be an afterthought for companies building enterprise AI. We also discuss the scale of today's AI data center buildout, how Solidigm is using AI internally, and what this means for the future of work, education, and the skills people will need in an AI-first world.

June 19, 2026: Anthropic's Fable 5 shutdown appears to be tied to SK Telecom, Project Glasswing, Amazon researchers, the White House, David Sacks, and a dispute over whether Anthropic should fix or de-deploy the model. Fortune 500 companies just hit record revenue, profit, revenue per employee, and profit per employee while shrinking headcount for the second year in a row, raising a bigger question about productivity gains without job growth. New data from LV8 founder Griffin Hadrill shows AI-generated creative ads are underperforming human-made ads by 3 to 5 times, which is a reminder that originality, emotional connection, and human judgment still matter.

June 18, 2026: Companies are starting to count the real cost of AI after two years of broad experimentation, from rising token bills to the higher wage premiums commanded by AI-skilled workers. Then I look at Senator Ruben Gallego's push to investigate ghost jobs and whether AI-powered hiring platforms are distorting the labor data policymakers rely on. Finally, I break down Wall Street's hiring dilemma: AI can automate junior-level work, but it cannot replace the apprenticeship that develops future rainmakers, dealmakers, and senior leaders.

June 17, 2026: Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos models were pulled after a government directive raised concerns about jailbreak risks, creating a wake-up call for companies building critical workflows on frontier AI models they don't actually control. Then I get into Meta's AI transformation struggles, including layoffs, employee reassignments, low morale, surveillance concerns, and what leaders can learn from one of the most visible AI change-management failures so far. Finally, I break down PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer, which shows that AI isn't collapsing the labor market but splitting it into two tracks: roles where AI increases the value of human judgment, and roles where AI makes work easier for non-experts to perform.

Kelle Fontenot, Chief Digital Officer at KPMG, joins me to talk about how one of the world's largest professional services firms is embedding AI into the way work gets done. Kelle shares how KPMG is approaching enterprise AI adoption through its AIQ program, why AI requires close partnership between digital, HR, technology, and the business, and what it takes to drive change across 250,000 people globally. We also get into the realities of AI adoption inside a large, highly regulated organization: digital teammates, AI agents, tool overload, trust, security, and why traditional training alone doesn't change behavior. Kelle offers a practical look at how leaders can move beyond experimenting with AI and start making it part of the everyday flow of work without losing human judgment along the way.

June 12, 2026: SpaceX made history with the largest IPO ever recorded, raising $75 billion in its NASDAQ debut and instantly becoming one of the most valuable companies in the United States. But under the hood, this isn't just a rocket company anymore. It's a bet on Starlink, reusable rockets, and xAI's massive AI infrastructure. Then I get into the first-ever appearance of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind leaders at the G7 Summit, and what it means when the most powerful AI companies in the world are now part of global policy conversations. Finally, I break down Jeff Bezos' $12 billion raise for Prometheus, a new company building an "artificial general engineer" that could reshape manufacturing, aerospace, pharma, defense, and the future of high-skill knowledge work.

June 10, 2026: Palantir CEO Alex Karp is warning tech leaders that bragging about AI-driven layoffs is a major political mistake and could fuel backlash against the entire industry. Then I get into a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that 53% of Americans fear AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, which means AI job anxiety is no longer a fringe concern. Finally, I break down the "great flattening," with new data showing that 41% of employees say their companies trimmed management layers last year, and why eliminating too much middle management could create a serious leadership pipeline problem for the future.

June 9, 2026: Meta is investing $115 million into America's Workforce Academy to train electricians, welders, plumbers, fiber technicians, and other skilled tradespeople for the AI infrastructure boom. This isn't charity, it's a talent pipeline for the data centers, wiring, fiber, and physical systems AI depends on. Then I get into Anthropic's release of Claude Fable 5, its most powerful publicly available AI model yet, and what it means for trust, accuracy, pricing, and accountability as AI moves deeper into business operations.

We have all worked at a place where we felt like just another number in a spreadsheet. It is incredibly frustrating when you offer feedback that seems to vanish into a black hole of corporate bureaucracy. But what if your company actually treated your voice like a strategic roadmap for the future? In this episode, DJ Casto, the EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Synchrony, joins us to explore how his team transformed their culture to become the number one best place to work in 2026. DJ shares the secrets behind their decade-long journey of separation from GE Capital and how they climbed the rankings by anchoring their identity in the concept of trust. We dive deep into their philosophy of co-creation, where active listening through quarterly pulse surveys and roundtables allows employees to directly design the culture they want to inhabit. Discover how Synchrony applies agile software principles to HR by launching minimal viable products for benefits like personalized wellness coaches and on-site therapists to see what truly resonates with the workforce. We also tackle the modern challenge of AI, moving past the doom and gloom to discuss how technology can actually unlock human creativity and fulfill more enriched roles. You'll learn how to foster employee accountability through a focus on critical experiences rather than rigid job paths. This episode unpacks how you can build a high-trust organization where continuous improvement is a lifestyle rather than a one-time goal. Watch the full video on YouTube ---------- Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: ⁠⁠https://greatleadership.substack.com/ Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, is a practical playbook for building an environment where people do their best work—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

June 5, 2026: Two stories today. First: hybrid work's approval ratings are climbing — but new research finds half of its believers quietly defected over three years. There's a name for what's breaking it, and most organizations haven't seen it yet. Second: Anthropic dropped internal data showing AI is writing 80 percent of its own code and outperforming human researchers on their own turf. The numbers are real — but so is the question of who's really behind the warning. One week after closing a $965 billion valuation and four days after filing for an IPO, Anthropic is calling for AI governance and oversight. That might be genuine concern. It might also be regulatory capture — the oldest playbook in business, where the most powerful incumbent shapes the rules in ways that lock out everyone coming up behind them.

June 4, 2026: Microsoft unveiled a wearable AI badge at Build 2026 that can see, hear, and act on your behalf. I break down the real productivity upside, and the chilling effect on human communication that the tech press isn't talking about. Then I take a critical look at Monterey Park's landmark vote to permanently ban data centers — 86% to 14%, the first in America. I understand why communities push back. I also think this particular decision is a mistake, and I'll tell you exactly why.Finally: Uber just cut 23% of its entire HR and recruiting function at record revenue, with 95% AI adoption across engineering — then said AI had nothing to do with it. 

June 3, 2026: Most people use a data center dozens of times a day and have no idea what it is. Today I'm changing that. I break down exactly what data centers are, what "compute" actually means, why every new AI model needs exponentially more of it, and how short we currently are as a country — using real numbers from Goldman Sachs, FERC, RAND, and others. Then I take on the five biggest myths driving the backlash: that new data centers waste water, that they're an energy disaster, that they kill jobs, that taxpayers are funding Big Tech, and that they destroy communities. I debunk every single one with sourced data — because the misinformation around data centers is doing real damage to America's AI future. These buildings currently account for 80% of US economic growth according to S&P Global, they're funding the nuclear renaissance, and they're the front line in a race with China that we cannot afford to lose. This is the episode I'd send to anyone who thinks data centers are the enemy.

June 2, 2026: Senator Bernie Sanders wants the federal government to own half of OpenAI, Anthropic, and every major AI company in America — and he's framing it as reclaiming stolen public knowledge. We break down exactly how his American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would work, why the Norway comparison falls apart, and what would actually happen to valuations, talent, and American competitiveness if it ever got close to passing. Then: Apollo Global Management's chief economist says there is zero evidence AI is killing jobs — and the data may actually back him up. We look at Jevons paradox, the AI washing phenomenon, and why the aggregate labor market story is more encouraging than the doom headlines suggest. And finally: new Federal Reserve research reveals that 64% of the rise in young worker unemployment since the pandemic traces back to remote work, not AI — and why being willing to go to the office five days a week may be the single best career move a worker in their twenties can make right now.

Have you ever walked into a meeting and felt like everyone was just wearing a mask of professional perfection while their true selves stayed hidden in the parking lot? It is easy to get lost in the data and the dashboards of modern work, but we often forget that the people behind those numbers are what actually drive the results. We all want to be part of a team where we are seen for who we really are rather than just what we can produce. In this episode, I sit down with Veronique Subileau, the Senior Vice President of HR at UGI Corporation, to explore the invisible roots of corporate culture that turn a 140-year-old energy company into a breakthrough environment. Veronique shares her unique philosophy on why leaders must touch the heart before speaking about results, offering practical tools like her four core questions regarding fun and purpose to foster deep human connection. You'll learn how to navigate the tension between high-performance standards and radical authenticity through the company's poetic values framework while discovering why the shadow you cast as a leader determines the energy of your entire team. We also dive into the future of work as Veronique explains how to invest in humans as much as technology by using AI to unleash time so employees can shift from being human doings to true human beings. This episode redefines the role of the leader as a human prompt engineer who knows how to pull unique creativity and heart out of a workforce in an increasingly automated world. Watch the full video on YouTube ---------- Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: ⁠⁠https://greatleadership.substack.com/ Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, is a practical playbook for building an environment where people do their best work—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

May 29, 2026: Costco's CEO Ron Vachris said it plainly this week: "I don't see AI making choices for Costco" — and with $440 billion in market cap and 17% stock gains this year, the companies doubling down on human judgment are quietly outperforming the ones cutting workers for AI. On today's episode, Jacob Morgan breaks down three stories that together reveal the gap between what companies say about AI and what they're actually doing: why Costco, IBM, and Delta are winning by betting on humans; why corporate America is getting the bill for "tokenmaxxing" — the practice of deploying AI everywhere without measuring whether it works — and what disciplined AI investment actually looks like; and what OpenAI's newly published Frontier Governance Framework, which formally maps its own risk categories including "loss of control," means for every business leader who needs an enterprise AI governance strategy before the regulations have teeth.

May 28, 2026: Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.8, sharper reasoning, better agentic coding, and a fast mode that runs 2.5x faster at a third the cost, with Mythos-class models coming in weeks. A new EY-Parthenon survey of 1,200 CEOs shows 99% expect AI to reshape their workforce strategy but only 42% are doing anything about it and why the 57-point gap between awareness and action is the real story. And a deep look at grade inflation in American colleges: the average GPA is now above 3.5, yet 43% of students meet none of ACT's college readiness benchmarks, 12th-grade math and reading scores are at all-time lows, and recent college graduate unemployment sits at 5.7% with a job-finding rate now matching high school graduates. What's behind it, what it costs, and what it means for the future workforce.

May 27, 2026: The two CEOs most responsible for the AI jobs apocalypse narrative are walking it back — and the timing couldn't be more revealing. Sam Altman says he's "delighted to be wrong." Dario Amodei is softening. Both are heading toward trillion-dollar IPOs. In this episode, Jacob Morgan breaks down the financial logic behind the narrative shift, what a chart from Bianco Research reveals about software development jobs that contradicts the doom story, and why Uber just burned its entire 2026 AI budget in four months with nothing to show for it — and why 80% of enterprises are facing the exact same problem.

May 26, 2026: Today, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang went on Singapore's CNA and called the AI layoff narrative "lazy and irresponsible" — I'll break down the data and history behind why he's largely right. Then, the CEO of Bolt fired his entire HR team onstage at Fortune's Workplace Innovation Summit — I'll trace the full arc of the HR function and make the case for what the Chief Future of Work Officer needs to become. And U.S. MBA programs including Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Indiana Kelley, Georgetown McDonough, UCLA Anderson, and Emory Goizueta are losing ground fast — I'll walk through the cost trend, the job market deterioration, the AI mechanism dismantling the consulting pipeline, and the argument I've been making for years that companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Starbucks are becoming the new universities.

What happens when you stop focusing on human resources and start focusing on the human experience? Technology is advancing faster than human nature can keep up. If you want to stay relevant, you need a fundamental cultural reset, not just new software.  In this interview, Laura Cushing, the Chief People Experience Officer at Pacific Life, discusses the evolving intersection of organizational culture, employee engagement, and artificial intelligence. She emphasizes a strategic shift toward accountability and transparency as the balance of power moves back toward employers in a post-pandemic landscape. To prepare for an AI-driven future, Pacific Life has implemented a Gen AI Academy and Innovation Labs to demystify technology and help staff reimagine their workflows. Cushing highlights the rising importance of "power skills"—human-centric abilities like coaching and visionary leadership—which remain essential as technical tasks become automated. Ultimately, she argues that HR leaders must cultivate deep business acumen and proactive trust-building to successfully guide their workforces through digital transformation. Watch the full video on YouTube ---------- Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: ⁠⁠https://greatleadership.substack.com/ Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, is a practical playbook for building an environment where people do their best work—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

May 22, 2026: The AI job apocalypse story has become one of the most-shared narratives of the decade. It is also one of the most misleading. In this episode, I dismantle the doom narrative being sold to young workers and lays out what the actual labor market data shows: 170 million new jobs projected by 2030, an AI wage premium that doubled in a single year, nearly a million graduate hires at small businesses in 2026, and entire job categories — AI governance, AI integration, agentic systems, growing at over 1,000% annually. I argue that the fear is a product, the despair is a business model, and the 22-year-olds being told they have the worst possible timing actually have the best. A different kind of conversation about AI and the future of work, one grounded in numbers rather than headlines.

May 21, 2026: Today might be the most consequential single day for the future of work in all of 2026. In a two-hour window yesterday afternoon, OpenAI's AI autonomously solved an 80-year-old math problem, Anthropic announced its first-ever profitable quarter at $10.9 billion in revenue, SpaceX filed a $1.75 trillion IPO, and every major tech CEO was summoned to Washington for an AI executive order signing. We break down what all of it means for leaders and workers. Then: Microsoft and EY just committed $1 billion to deploy AI inside every major enterprise on the planet — finance, tax, HR, supply chain, healthcare. This is the ERP moment for AI, and it's happening now. And finally: California's Governor signed the first executive order by any U.S. governor aimed at protecting workers from AI displacement. We look hard at what it actually does and what it doesn't.

May 20, 2026: Meta began notifying 8,000 employees of their layoffs this morning — while simultaneously redirecting $145 billion into AI infrastructure. Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI and the architect of Tesla's self-driving brain, just joined Anthropic with a specific mission: use AI to make AI better. And a major new Milken-Harris Poll finds that 80% of Americans want government workforce transition programs now, 68% say they're navigating the AI shift entirely alone, and 88% of business leaders privately admit companies cannot solve this without a coordinated national response. 

May 19, 2026: Everyone has an opinion about AI and jobs. Today we have actual data — three major studies published this week that, taken together, tell a story that's more nuanced, more surprising, and more actionable than anything you'll hear in the headlines. First: a Wall Street Journal report reveals that the companies going deepest on AI are actually increasing entry-level hiring — nearly three times more than are cutting — and why a 22-year-old with AI fluency may be the most valuable hire in the market right now. Then we get into why nearly half of Gen Z workers say AI is making them cognitively weaker, what London taxi drivers and GPS research tells us about what's actually happening to the human brain, and why the most dangerous AI user isn't the person who refuses to use it. And we close with Gartner's bombshell finding: 80% of companies cutting headcount for AI are seeing zero ROI — and by 2030, the ones that starved their talent pipeline this year will be paying a 15% premium just to catch up. Plus: why commencement speakers keep getting booed.

If your organization isn't obsessed with how fast your people can learn, you're already falling behind in the race to "out-learn" the competition. In this episode, I'm joined by Susan LaMonica, the Chief Human Resource Officer at Citizens Financial Group—a super-regional bank with $226 billion in assets and 18,000 employees.  We explore how they are driving a massive workforce transformation to build a team that is ready for the future of work. We dive deep into their journey of becoming a skills-based organization and how they use a "skills taxonomy" and an internal talent marketplace to support mobility and career development. Susan also explains their "measured approach" to AI governance within a heavily regulated industry, including the role of their Generative AI Council. We unpack their "Reimagine the Bank" initiative, where they are rethinking 47 different business processes to drive value and effectiveness. From launching internal "gigs" to tracking productivity metrics like customer NPS and employee sentiment, this conversation is a strategic guide for any leader looking to blend high-tech tools with a human-centered culture. Watch the full video on YouTube ---------- Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: ⁠⁠https://greatleadership.substack.com/ Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, is a practical playbook for building an environment where people do their best work—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

May 15, 2026: The Guardian documents the tech industry's accelerating purge of middle managers — and history says companies have tried this exact bet before with Jack Welch and the Reengineering movement, with disastrous long-term results. The Wall Street Journal reports companies are drowning in ungoverned AI agents, raising a critical question: is agentic AI actually different from the RPA sprawl crisis of a decade ago, and is the difference showing up in real outcomes? And Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and NYU's Gary Marcus argue in Fortune that America's 1,200 AI bills have no shared test for what makes good policy — and the regulatory patchwork hardening in place rhymes uncomfortably with the conditions that produced the 2008 financial crisis.