Your Work Friends | Fresh Insights on the Now and Next of Work

Send us Fan Mail AI isn't just changing jobs. It's changing the rules of work. Every week brings another headline about layoffs, automation, and the future of work—but what's actually happening beneath the hype? This week, we sit down with Gary Bolles , global fellow at Singularity University, author of The Next Rules of Work , and one of the world's leading thinkers on the fut...

Send us Fan Mail Work friends can feel like a bonus, something nice if it happens and irrelevant if it doesn’t. We don’t buy that, and the research doesn’t either. Today we dig into what workplace friendships actually do to performance and culture, using three years of data from KPMG that points to a clear conclusion: connection at work is not incidental, it’s central. We’re joined by Sandy Torchi...

Send us Fan Mail California's Warning Sign on AI Layoffs, Long-Term Unemployment & The Rise of Emotional Surveillance The headlines say the labor market is healthy. So why are so many people spending months—or even years—trying to find work? This week, we unpack the growing disconnect between what the numbers say and what people are actually experiencing. We start with the rise of long-te...

Send us Fan Mail What the hell is happening at work right now? After a spring packed with HR, AI, leadership, and future-of-work conferences, we sat down with Adam DeRose (HR Brew) and David Rice (People Managing People) for an honest conversation about what they’re actually seeing inside organizations right now. And honestly? The vibes are weird. In this episode, we dig into: why work feels incre...

Send us Fan Mail From cigarettes… to smoke-free. What does real organizational transformation actually take? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Kaleen Love, U.S. Chief People and Culture Officer at Philip Morris International, to explore what it looks like to lead change inside one of the most complex business transformations happening in real time. As PMI works toward a smoke-free future by 20...

Send us Fan Mail AI: Magic or Miss AI has officially become the corporate answer to everything. Need more productivity? AI. Need fewer people? AI. Need to sound innovative on an earnings call? Definitely AI. But underneath all the hype, a real question is starting to creep in: Is this actually making work better — or are we just making bigger decisions on shakier logic? In this episode, we get int...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the thing that defined you ends? In this episode, we sit down with former NFL first-round draft pick Alex Molden to talk about reinvention, identity, and what it actually takes to build the next version of yourself. After spending eight years in the NFL, Alex had to face a question a lot of people are asking right now: who are you when the role, career, or identi...

Send us Fan Mail We just got back from UNLEASH America with one big conclusion: The tech decision is over. The people decision is still up for grabs. In this episode, we break down what we heard from some of the biggest voices in AI, HR, leadership, and the future of work and where the conversation is getting very real, very fast. Because right now, companies are saying humans are the competitive...

Send us Fan Mail Productive. Profitable. People Not Included? Companies are getting more productive and profitable — while quietly employing fewer people. This week we unpack the growing gap between AI productivity, disappearing jobs, and the uncomfortable question: if the work changes, what replaces the paycheck? Companies are getting more productive. Profits are rising. So why does it feel like...

Send us Fan Mail HR’s Biggest Moment Is Right Now. Who’s Going to Take It? AI isn’t just another HR tech tool. It’s becoming infrastructure . In this episode of Your Work Friends , Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri sit down with Enrique Rubio , Founder & CEO of Hacking HR (a 2M+ global HR community), to unpack the biggest signals reshaping HR, People Operations, and leadership right now. The sta...

Send us Fan Mail Women aren’t dialing back ambition. They’re redesigning it. New research with the Harris Poll shows 86% of women say they’re more ambitious now than they were five years ago. The difference? They’re building careers that don’t look like the traditional ladder. This week, Trey Boynton from Chief joins us to unpack the rise of the multihyphenate leader — and what it means for indivi...

Send us Fan Mail Personal branding isn’t about LinkedIn clout—it’s about career clarity, visibility, and opportunity. In this episode of Your Work Friends , we’re joined by Gina Clementi, founder of Goodstory , to break down what a personal brand actually is—and why it’s becoming one of the most critical career assets in today’s job market. As layoffs rise, AI reshapes work, and careers become mor...

Send us Fan Mail People are not okay. And if people aren’t okay—neither is your business. This week on Your Work Friends , we slow down and say the quiet part out loud. In just the last two weeks, we’ve watched: AI leaders at Davos predict massive workforce disruption—without clarity on what comes next Careers become less predictable, five-year plans feel pointless, and the safety net quietly disa...

Send us Fan Mail Most strategies don’t fail because leaders don’t know what to do—they fail because organizations can’t behave their way into it. Pressure doesn’t break culture. It exposes it. Most organizations don’t fail because leaders lack strategy or intelligence. They fail because, under pressure, the behaviors required to execute quietly collapse —long before the numbers move. In this episo...

Send us Fan Mail From AI-reshaping careers to widening talent gaps, 2026 is shaping up to be a year of labor “stuckness.” We analyze the fastest-growing jobs, high-pay trade shortages, teen gap-year programs, and the quiet end of happy hour. Here’s the deal—2026 isn’t a boom year. It’s not a crash either. It’s a labor lockdown . In this episode of Your Work Friends , we break down the biggest sign...

Send us Fan Mail Smart people don’t automatically make a smart team. In this episode of Your Work Friends , we talk with Dr. Anita Woolley , professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the world’s leading researchers on collective intelligence , about what actually drives team performance —and what most leaders get wrong. Anita breaks down why high-performing teams aren’t about talent densi...

Send us Fan Mail Why are we still treating wealth-building at work like a VIP perk? Senior executives have long enjoyed equity as part of their compensation.  But what happens when everyone gets a piece of the upside? This week, we sit down with Anna-Lisa Miller , Executive Director of Ownership Works , a nonprofit partnering with companies and investors to expand broad-based employee ownership -...

Send us Fan Mail “With AI you can delegate a bunch of the work, but you cannot delegate the accountability.” This week on Your Work Friends , we sit down with Zapier’s Chief People & AI Transformation Officer Brandon Sammut to break down how Zapier hit 97% AI adoption without traditional L&D, why they declared an internal “ Code Red ,” and how culture—not tools—is the real engine of AI tra...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s the deal—AI promises a lot. Efficiency, productivity, transformation. Every week, something new. But work also runs on things like trust, connection, and human relationships. So the real question isn’t just how fast we adopt AI—it’s how we balance ambition with reality, timelines, people, and humanity. In this episode, we sit down with Wendy Miller , Chief HR Officer for No...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s the deal—fear isn’t the villain.  Left alone, it just drives.  In this episode, we sit down with Harvard Business School professor and Thinkers50 honoree Ranjay Gulati, author of How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage  to talk about acting through fear—at work, in leadership, and in a world that feels permanently uncertain. We get into why uncertainty hi...

Send us Fan Mail First: AI is now sliding into your performance reviews. Forbes says it’s here to “remove bias” and “automate feedback.” We say… careful what you outsource. Because when algorithms start coaching humans, you risk losing the part that actually makes feedback work — connection, trust, and care. Then: OpenAI’s Sam Altman claimed that if AI wipes out your job, maybe it wasn’t real work...

Send us Fan Mail Ever felt like you’re on your own at work—even in a “great culture”? That’s because culture isn’t the same as community. One happens whether you shape it or not. The other takes intention, safety, and a shared purpose. In this episode of Your Work Friends , we sit down with DeMario Bell —community strategist, speaker, and founder of Gatherful , who’s spent over a decade building c...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Your Work Friends , we break down three headlines every professional should know: Career Catfishing: Monster’s 2025 report found 4 in 5 U.S. employees say they were misled about their job. We unpack what’s driving the trust crisis between workers and employers—and what good hiring should look like now. Open Enrollment 2026: Get ready for the biggest jump in healthcare...

Send us Fan Mail Ever felt like your hard work wasn’t enough? That’s because the biggest career breaks don’t always come from effort alone—they come from the people who open doors for you. In this episode of Your Work Friends , we sit down with, Carnegie Mellon Professor,  organizational psychologist and author Rosalind Chow to unpack the power of sponsorship. Not mentorship (that’s important too)...

Send us Fan Mail New Week, New Headlines: your fast-track through the now + next of work. This week we’re covering three stories shaping how you work, earn, and lead: 42,000 US manufacturing jobs lost. Since April, durable goods have shed tens of thousands of jobs—what tariffs, automation, and uncertainty really mean for the economy. 72-hour work weeks exploding. Silicon Valley is doubling down on...