Most leaders know meetings are broken. What’s harder to admit is that we keep reinforcing the system that makes them that way.

Calendars are full. Teams are exhausted. And yet, meetings continue to multiply. Not because they work, but because they signal work.

In this episode, Rebecca Hinds challenges the idea that meetings are just a scheduling problem. She reframes them as a deeper organizational issue rooted in visibility, status, and outdated ways of measuring value.

You’ll hear why meetings often aren’t the root problem, but the most visible symptom. Why hybrid work and AI haven’t fixed collaboration, and in many cases have made it worse. And what it actually looks like to design meetings and workflows with intention, not habit.

For HR leaders, this conversation is a wake-up call. Not just to reduce meetings, but to rethink how work itself is defined, measured, and experienced.

Because if we don’t change it deliberately, AI will simply help us do more of what isn’t working.

About our guest
Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert in organizational behavior who works with companies navigating the challenges of modern work. She founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean, where she bridges the gap between academic research and real organizational practice. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more. She is also an instructor for CNBC's Make It Masterclass: How to Use AI to Be More Productive and Successful at Work, and the author of Your Best Meeting Ever.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[~12:50] Check-In: Rebecca's best meeting ever 

[~19:40] Why meetings got worse after the pandemic

[~22:10] Visibility bias: why we equate busyness with value

[~24:45] The WWII sabotage manual 

[~27:00] The $1.4 trillion problem 

[~30:10] Meetings as your most expensive, overlooked product 

[~35:45] "Process is a proxy" 

[~36:00] Where AI helps and where it hurts meetings

[~38:30] The brainstorming debate: to AI or not to AI? 

[~43:40] One tip for HR leaders: where to start

[~45:05] It's okay to cancel 

Resources & Links

• 📘 Book: Your Best Meeting Ever by Rebecca Hinds
• 🌐 Website: rebeccahinds.com
• 🔬 Work AI Institute: workai.institute
• 💼 LinkedIn: Rebecca Hinds
• 📺 CNBC Make It Masterclass: How to Use AI to Be More Productive and Successful at Work

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• Sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight
• Follow us on LinkedIn:
  • Mark Edgar
  • Naomi Titleman Colla
  • future foHRward
• Follow us on Instagram

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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What happens when smart, capable teams keep having meetings, but nothing really moves?

In this episode, Gustavo Razzetti joins Naomi Titleman to unpack the hidden cost of the conversations teams avoid. He argues that many workplace breakdowns are not caused by weak strategy or lack of talent, but by “conversational debt” that builds when people stay silent, rush alignment, blame each other, or perform agreement they do not actually feel. 

For HR leaders, this tension is especially familiar. You can invest in engagement, communication, and psychological safety, but still find teams stuck in circular meetings, unresolved friction, and unspoken resentment. This conversation helps name what is really happening underneath those patterns and offers a more useful lens for moving teams forward. 

Gustavo shares why groupthink is often the hardest dysfunction to spot, why silence is not the same as alignment, and why many employees stop speaking up not only because they are afraid, but because they no longer believe it will make a difference. He also introduces the idea of “forward talk” — conversations that address the real issue and focus on the future — and explains what HR leaders can do to build teams that disagree well, commit clearly, and stop carrying avoidable relational and operational drag. 

About our guest
Gustavo Razzetti is a culture design consultant, speaker, and the CEO of Fearless Culture. He has facilitated more than 1,500 workshops with teams at companies including Microsoft, Mars, Merck, Globant, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and his work focuses on helping organizations build healthier, more honest team cultures. 

Connect with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:

• Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
• Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/
• future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/
• Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

Connect with Gustavo

• Website: GustavoRazzetti.com
• LinkedIn: Search Gustavo Razzetti (with double Z, double T)

About Gustavo's Book
📗 Forward Talk by Gustavo Razzetti Available for pre-order now | Publishing May 5th https://www.amazon.com/Forward-Talk-Method-Getting-Unstuck/dp/1646872479

The book includes a Conversational Debt Quiz to help teams identify where alignment, belonging, or collaboration gaps are hitting hardest — plus tools and exercises to start shifting team behavior.

Win a Copy!
Post about this episode and tag Naomi Titleman, Gustavo Razzetti, and/or future foHRward to be eligible to win a copy of Forward Talk.

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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Something feels off.

A leader who used to be effective is becoming controlling. A team that used to work well together is suddenly tense. Conversations are getting sharper, more personal, more certain.

And yet, the numbers still look fine.

For many HR leaders, this is a familiar and frustrating position. You can feel the shift early, but by the time it’s acknowledged, the conversation has already turned into a performance issue. The system pressure has already been translated into a judgment about the person.

In this episode, Ned Eustace introduces a different way to understand what’s happening underneath those moments. He explains how leadership strain builds under pressure, how organizations unconsciously convert that pressure into capability judgments, and why that shift makes it harder to intervene effectively.

More importantly, this conversation offers a practical way forward. It helps HR leaders slow down that conversion, ask better questions, and create space for a more accurate diagnosis before action is taken.

If you’ve ever had the sense that something was coming before anyone else could see it, this episode will help you trust that signal and know what to do with it.

About our guest
Ned Eustace works with senior leaders navigating sustained pressure in environments of growth, transformation, and integration. His work focuses on how leadership strain shows up early, often before traditional performance signals, and how organizations can respond without defaulting to individual blame. He partners closely with HR and executive teams to help them interpret system signals and intervene with clarity.

To go deeper on this topic: https://hbleaders.com/pressure-gap-leadership-strain

Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:

•  Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
•  Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/
•  future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

 Follow us on Instagram:

•  www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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Caregiving rarely shows up neatly at work.

It shows up as distraction. Exhaustion. Missed capacity. A high performer who suddenly cannot take on one more thing. A manager who is present in the meeting, but mentally somewhere else. And for many organizations, it remains largely invisible until someone burns out, steps back, or leaves.

In this episode, Raymond Levine brings attention to a reality more employers need to take seriously: caregiving is not a niche issue, and it is not only about later life. It affects employees across stages of life, often quietly, and with real consequences for focus, wellbeing, and retention.

For HR leaders, this conversation is a useful reminder that support does not start with having every answer. It starts with recognizing caregiving as part of the human reality employees are already navigating and asking whether your workplace is designed with that in mind.

About Our Guest

Raymond Levine is an extended care benefits advisor and longtime advocate for greater awareness around caregiving and long-term care. His perspective matters here because he focuses closely on a gap many employers still overlook: the practical, emotional, and financial strain caregiving places on working people and their organizations.

Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:

•  Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
• Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/
• future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram:

•  www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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Work is changing faster than many organizations know how to lead through.

Between AI, constant transformation, and growing complexity, many leaders are still relying on outdated habits: top-down decision-making, poor communication, and the assumption that leadership means having all the answers. The result is often slower execution, lower engagement, and teams that resist change instead of moving through it.

In this episode, Marianne Bachynski shares what it really takes to lead in uncertainty. Drawing on her experience leading large-scale transformation in high-pressure financial and technology environments, she explains why adaptability, clear communication, curiosity, and trust are now essential leadership muscles.

For HR leaders, this conversation is a timely reminder that the biggest barrier to change is rarely the technology itself. It is whether leaders know how to create the kind of culture where people can think, contribute, experiment, and evolve together.

About our guest
Marianne Bachynski is an author, advisor, and former technology executive who combines deep technology expertise with a people-first approach to leadership. Her perspective matters in this conversation because she has spent her career leading transformation in high-pressure environments, giving her a practical and deeply informed view of what leaders need to navigate uncertainty, complexity, and continuous change.

Stay connected with foHRsight
Sign up for our monthly newsletter foHRsight HERE. 

Follow us on LinkedIn:

•  Mark Edgar - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/
• Naomi Titleman Colla - www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/ 
• future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram:

• future foHRward - www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

Support the show

Work doesn’t feel sustainable right now.

Employees are overwhelmed, leaders are exhausted, and organizations are trying to solve burnout by reducing workload - but what if that’s not the real problem?

In this episode, organizational psychologist Liane Davey introduces the concept of thought load - the cognitive demands, emotional strain, and depleted energy that come from navigating modern work. From endless matrix structures and constant organizational change to meetings that add noise instead of clarity, today’s workplace is quietly draining the mental bandwidth people need to actually perform.

Liane shares practical ideas for leaders trying to restore focus and effectiveness inside their teams: how to stop chasing productivity, eliminate dead work, redesign meetings, and create space for insight in a world full of noise.

For HR leaders especially, this conversation reframes burnout as a systemic design problem, not a personal failing.

About our guest

Liane Davey is an organizational psychologist, keynote speaker, and bestselling author focused on helping teams achieve extraordinary results together. Known as “The Teamwork Doctor,” she works with executive teams and organizations around the world to tackle the messy people challenges that get in the way of performance. Her latest book, Thoughtload, explores why modern work is overwhelming people and what leaders can do about it.

CHANCE TO WIN! We’re giving away a few copies of Liane's book. To enter, all you have to do is post about this episode and tag Naomi Titleman and future foHRward, and we will put you in a draw to win!

Stay connected with foHRsight

To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn: Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/

Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/

future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

Support the show

Most HR leaders are chasing engagement scores.
Very few are diagnosing loneliness.

If performance feels flatter… if initiative is fading… if teams feel more transactional than connected, this episode explains why.

In this conversation, Dr. Tracy Brower joins Naomi Titleman to unpack a truth many leaders feel but struggle to articulate: connection is not a “nice-to-have.” It is a structural driver of performance, initiative, retention, and fulfillment.

They explore:

• The early warning signs of workplace disconnection
• Why proximity still matters in a hybrid world
• How AI may unintentionally weaken team reliance
• Social contagion and why energy spreads faster than strategy
• The difference between dirt roads and superhighways inside your culture
• What a real “connection infrastructure” looks like

This isn’t about forcing friendships or dragging people back to the office.
 It’s about being deliberate about the human system inside your organization.

Because when people don’t feel seen or needed, they disengage.

And disengagement is expensive.

About our guest

Dr. Tracy Brower is a PhD sociologist and VP of Workplace Insights at Steelcase. She studies connection, community, fulfillment, and the future of work, and is the author of Critical Connections. Her work bridges research and real-world application, helping organizations understand how human dynamics directly influence performance.

Stay connected with foHRsight

To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:
Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/

Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/

future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

Support the show

HR leaders are being asked to modernize faster than their organizations are ready for. New AI tools appear weekly, vendors promise transformation, and the pressure to “do something” keeps mounting. At the same time, most HR teams are still running complex, multi-step processes built for a very different era.

In this episode, Josh Bersin helps cut through the noise by reframing what AI transformation actually looks like inside HR. Rather than chasing dozens of tools or fearing job displacement, he argues that the real work ahead is architectural. Deciding what to build versus buy. Determining which processes matter most. And putting human ownership around data, judgment, and governance so AI can scale responsibly.

You’ll hear why onboarding, learning, feedback, and career development are not isolated workflows, but interconnected systems that AI can finally stitch together if HR leads the design. Josh also explains why organizations that get this right will not reduce HR’s importance, but elevate it.

This conversation is for HR leaders who feel both excited and overwhelmed, and who want a clearer mental model for where to start, what to prioritize, and how to partner with IT without losing their seat at the table.

About our guest
Josh Bersin is a global HR industry analyst, researcher, and founder of The Josh Bersin Company. He has spent decades advising CHROs and executive teams on talent, leadership, and workforce transformation, and is a leading voice on how AI is reshaping the HR function in practice, not theory.

Stay connected with foHRsight

To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe 

Follow us on LinkedIn:
Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/

Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/

future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

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If you’re leading HR right now, it can feel like the ground is moving under your feet. You’re still expected to deliver flawless service, keep costs down, and manage risk, while your CEO quietly expects you to redesign the workforce for an AI era that’s arriving faster than most operating models can handle.

In part one of this conversation with Josh Bersin, we explore a reframe that changes everything: AI isn’t just personal productivity. The real disruption is enterprise-level “super agents” that automate whole sequences of work, and force HR to rethink hiring, talent strategy, and even the idea of “a job” itself.

We also dig into why CHRO tenure may be shrinking, what that signals about expectations on HR leaders, and why “talent density” is becoming a more useful lens than traditional talent management as companies try to scale without simply adding headcount.

About our guest
Josh Bersin is a leading HR and workplace industry analyst and the founder of Bersin by Deloitte (now The Josh Bersin Company). He advises senior executives on HR, talent, and organizational transformation, with a sharp focus on what’s actually changing inside companies as AI moves from experimentation to enterprise reality.

Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn:
Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/

Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/

future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

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You can be brilliant, hardworking, and respected — and still feel like you’re running full-speed into an invisible wall. For many senior leaders (especially high-achieving women), the instinct is to push harder: take on more, prove more, hold more. But the higher you go, the more that strategy quietly limits influence, sponsorship, and sustainability.

In this episode, we explore the tension HR leaders see every day: individuals are trying to thrive inside systems that weren’t designed for them — and organizations keep investing in “fixes” that don’t address the real blockers. Carolyn Lawrence and Jennifer Laidlaw unpack why burnout is often a signal your mind is in survival mode, how “resisting the system” can unintentionally keep inequity in place, and what it looks like when inner leadership shifts meet system-level redesign.

About our guests
Carolyn Lawrence partners with organizations to redesign systems so they stop reinforcing outdated patterns — removing invisible barriers so talent can thrive without overperforming for legitimacy. 

Jennifer Laidlaw is an executive coach focused on the inner transformation required of modern leaders, helping them achieve breakthrough results sustainably with strong teams and thriving culture.

Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, visit http://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe

Follow us on LinkedIn: Mark Edgar – www.linkedin.com/in/markedgarhr/

Naomi Titleman Colla – www.linkedin.com/in/naomititlemancolla/

future foHRward – www.linkedin.com/company/future-fohrward/

Follow us on Instagram: www.instagram.com/futurefohrward/

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

Support the show