The Future Of Work With Jacob Morgan

The old playbooks for leadership no longer apply when your top performers might never step foot in a traditional office. It's time to move past the superficial logistics of where people sit and uncover the specific cultural habits that maintain high standards and relentless speed as your organization evolves. In this episode, LJ Brock, Chief People Officer at Coinbase , joins me to explore the hig...

Feb 6, 2026: Artificial intelligence is hitting a tipping point — and it's showing up everywhere at once. In today's episode of Future-Ready Today , I break down a wave of stories that all landed at the same time: Big Tech's plan to spend roughly $650 billion on AI infrastructure, a trillion-dollar selloff in software stocks, healthcare workers protesting the use of AI on the front lines, and a ne...

Feb 5, 2026: Are software vendors in trouble? Why are employees suddenly complying with return-to-office mandates? And what happens when leaders are afraid to ask their own teams for feedback? In today's episode of Future-Ready Today , we unpack five stories that together reveal a major reset happening inside organizations: Why Workday is cutting jobs — and what falling enterprise software stocks...

Feb 4, 2026: In this episode of  Future-Ready Today , I explore a fundamental shift in the workplace: the transition from a task economy to a trust economy. As artificial intelligence moves from "future tech" to "daily tool," the basic mechanics of how we hire, manage, and let go of people are under intense pressure. We aren't just dealing with new software; we're dealing with a breakdown in ident...

Feb 3, 2026: We start with the rise of "résumé Botox," where experienced professionals are removing years of experience just to get past hiring filters. Then we look at new data showing how Americans are rethinking what "safe jobs" look like in an AI-driven economy, with growing confidence in hands-on and blue-collar work. From there, we explore the next phase of automation as AI moves beyond scre...

What happens when activist investors call your multi-billion dollar acquisition the "single worst deal of the decade"? Most leadership teams would panic, but NRG Energy did the opposite: they doubled down on their people. While most large-scale acquisitions look great on a spreadsheet, they often fail because leadership loses sight of the human energy behind the numbers. In this episode, Peter Joh...

January 30, 2026: The future of work is accelerating—and for many leaders, it feels overwhelming. Political shifts, new laws, rapid advances in AI, rising ethical expectations, and changing employee demands are all converging at once. The volume of change can make it feel like you're stuck on a treadmill that keeps getting faster. But here's the reality: not every trend deserves your attention. In...

January 29, 2026: Today a series of stories made it impossible to ignore how fast work is changing. Meta says AI now allows one employee to do the work of entire teams. Engineers at Anthropic and OpenAI say AI writes nearly 100% of their code. Amazon and Dow announced thousands of job cuts as they restructure for efficiency. And at the same time, companies are hiring storytellers to help cut throu...

January 28, 2026: In today's episode, I zoom out to help you see what's really shaping the future of work. Before we talk about AI, leadership, or organizational strategy, we need to understand the forces happening outside our companies. Because work doesn't evolve in isolation—it's shaped by powerful external trends in technology, society, economics, and more. That's why I walk through the STEEPL...

January 27, 2026: Executives say AI is making work more efficient. Employees say it's barely saving time. Gartner warns that overreliance on AI will actually lead to worse decisions. And one of the world's leading AI CEOs says the real risks are arriving faster than society is prepared for. In today's episode of Future Ready Today , I break down four stories that, together, reveal what's really ha...

AI can handle entry-level tasks today, but at what cost to your future leadership? Many companies are accidentally "hollowing out" their talent pipeline by cutting junior roles, creating a massive gap that will haunt them in five years. Efficiency today shouldn't come at the expense of your leaders tomorrow. How do we thoughtfully architect the future workforce to prioritize the health and depth o...

January 23, 2026: In this episode of Future Ready Today , I unpack why Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser's blunt "results over effort" message is such an important signal—and why it marks the end of comfortable work far beyond Wall Street. Citi's job cuts and cultural reset aren't about short-term cost savings; they reflect a broader shift toward harder performance standards, fewer layers, and much less t...

January 22, 2026: For years, we've talked about jobs, titles, careers, and skills as if they were stable foundations of work. They're not. In today's episode of Future Ready Today , I break down five stories that reveal a deeper truth most leaders are avoiding: the job itself is starting to fail as the core unit of work. From Meta's pullback on long-horizon roles, to Deloitte scrapping traditional...

January 21, 2026: Most conversations about the future of work in 2026 focus on the obvious things: AI tools, hybrid policies, skills, and perks. That's not where the real change is happening. In this episode, I break down the top future of work trends for 2026 that actually matter—the ones quietly reshaping how work is structured, how value is created, and how organizations really operate. This is...

January 20, 2026: Oxford Economics data suggests AI-driven layoffs are still a small slice of overall job cuts, raising questions about whether AI is being used as a convenient explanation for traditional cost cutting. At the same time, Goldman Sachs warns that up to 25% of work hours could be automated—not as a job apocalypse, but as a task-level shock that exposes poorly designed roles. I also u...

Imagine an eighty-year-old grandmother discussing Russian literature with ChatGPT in her native tongue; it is a powerful reminder that AI is no longer a futuristic concept but a present reality that bridges generations. For CHROs, the challenge is not simply the technology itself, but rather shifting the human behaviour that interacts with these tools. In this episode, Joanne Rodgers, the CHRO of...

January 16, 2026: Everyone keeps asking whether AI is going to destroy jobs. That question is already outdated. In this episode of Future-Ready Today , I walk through five stories that reveal what's really happening in the labor market—and why the biggest risk isn't job loss, but broken pipelines. I explore why Boomers are staying in the workforce longer while Gen Z struggles to break in, how AI i...

January 15, 2026: AI job data says work is stable. Productivity reports promise trillions in gains. Job seekers tell me finding work is getting harder. These stories can't all be true at the same time. In this episode of Future Ready Today , I break down new research from Anthropic on how AI is quietly reshaping jobs task by task, why supposed productivity gains are leaking away through rework and...

January 14, 2026: Change takes far longer than leaders expect—and that gap is where frustration, failure, and missed opportunity live. In this episode, I break down why organizations struggle to move at the pace of the world around them, even when the need for change is obvious. We explore the real blockers slowing transformation: legacy technology, bad data, bureaucracy, internal politics, and cu...

January 13, 2026: In today's episode, five stories reveal why work is starting to crack under pressure. New data shows employee financial stress is no longer a personal issue but a measurable drag on productivity, just as healthcare costs surge and job mobility slows. At the same time, a major study finds AI is already doing 20–40% of the work in many organizations, yet produces inconsistent and l...

Scaling a massive workforce culture often fails because the big-picture strategy never reaches the people on the front line. What is the real secret to consistent growth future-ready leaders should know to scale culture within a massive organization of 130,000 employees? In this episode, I sat down with Chipotle COO Jason Kidd to explore how culture actually scales through systems, standards, and...

Most organizations aren't shaping the future of work, they're chasing it. In this episode, I share what CHROs admit privately but rarely say out loud: HR has become reactive, stuck in firefighting mode, and focused on looking good instead of doing what actually drives results. Traditional HR metrics are backward-looking, accountability has eroded, and the pendulum has swung dangerously toward enti...

January 8, 2026:  In today's episode of Future Ready Today , I break down the most important future-of-work stories shaping how work is actually changing right now. I look at new research showing workers rank AI as one of the top forces shaping their workplace — even as pay and work-life balance remain their biggest concerns. I examine why Amazon is tightening its performance review process and as...

January 7, 2026: Nearly a decade ago, I wrote  The Employee Experience Advantage to challenge organizations to move beyond perks, surveys, and surface-level engagement. Since then, employee experience has become a top priority—but in many cases, we've lost sight of what it actually means. In this episode, I share why post-pandemic workplace strategies focused on "giving everything to everyone" wer...

January 6, 2026: Is AI actually increasing productivity — or just shifting responsibility without reward? In this episode of Future Ready Today , I unpack seven of the most important future-of-work stories shaping leadership decisions right now. From why Gen Z is entering the workforce anxious about AI, to new evidence that AI can slow work down instead of speeding it up, to the rise of empowered...