Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

November 6, 2025: Five major stories reveal how the rules of work are being rewritten worldwide. Australia's landmark ruling makes remote work a legal right, signaling the next phase of the flexibility debate. CEOs from Palantir to AT&T are reasserting control over DEI, AI, and culture after years of hybrid drift. In the U.S., Gen Z and wealthy professionals are returning to cities like New York for career security as urban networks regain power. Tokyo launches a four-day workweek to address burnout and a collapsing birthrate, while IBM's latest layoffs show how automation is reshaping the entry-level job market. Together, these stories mark a global recalibration of power, purpose, and productivity.

Future-ready organizations are built, not hoped for. My latest book, -The 8 Laws of Employee Experience shows how. Preorder here: https://8exlaws.com/

November 5, 2025: In today's episode of Future Ready Today, I explore five major shifts reshaping the modern workplace. Walmart is redefining loyalty and culture by paying top managers up to $620,000 and giving them a real sense of ownership. At the same time, a wave of corporate layoffs continues to ripple across major companies like Amazon and Oracle as businesses trade people for productivity in the age of AI. Gen Z workers are facing an unprecedented career crisis as automation wipes out traditional entry-level roles, leaving an entire generation without a clear path to start their careers. Across organizations, transformation fatigue is spreading as employees grow weary of endless change, while new research from Mercer reveals how a leadership vacuum is fueling widespread technology anxiety. Together, these stories reveal a powerful truth: technology may be transforming how we work, but leadership still determines how it feels.

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If you lead people, you design experiences—do it on purpose with The 8 Laws of Employee Experience Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

November 4, 2025:

The traditional systems of education, work, and performance are being upended. Across industries, new signals are emerging that point to a radically different future of work:

• Palantir's "Meritocracy Fellowship" gives high school graduates a paid, fast-track alternative to college.
• Microsoft's latest Work Trend Index reveals that the 9-to-5 is dead as the "infinite workday" expands.
• KPMG is replacing entry-level consulting work with teams of AI agents, redefining what early careers look like.
• Michael Burry is betting against Palantir and Nvidia, calling out an overheated AI market.
• The Wall Street Journal traces the century-long evolution of performance reviews—and why AI won't fix them without trust.

These stories illustrate how technology, talent pipelines, and performance systems are converging to reshape how people learn, work, and grow.

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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—preorder a copy here: 8EXLaws.com

As companies race to adapt to the rapid AI takeover, many are discovering that their biggest challenge isn't technological change, but knowing what their people can actually do. For CHROs, this means gaining real visibility into workforce skills, so they can move beyond job titles and legacy systems to make faster, smarter talent decisions. In this episode, Mikael Wornoo, Co-Founder and President of TechWolf, joins us to explore how AI and data are reshaping the future of HR through the rise of the skill-based organization—a model that looks beyond job titles to map, measure, and mobilize employee skills at scale. We unpack how organizations can build clean, standardized data layers to power smarter workforce decisions, enable internal mobility through AI-driven talent marketplaces, and forecast future skill needs amid accelerating automation. The conversation also dives into the limits of AI in capturing "invisible skills" like empathy and collaboration, the leadership mindset needed to balance human judgment with machine intelligence, and what the future of work and education might look like in an age of human–AI collaboration.

A must-listen for CHROs who want to evolve from HR management to strategic workforce design and lead their organizations confidently into the AI era.

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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/

Future-ready organizations are built, not hoped for. My latest book, -The 8 Laws of Employee Experience shows how. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

October 31, 2025: In today's Future Ready Today, PwC quietly abandons its global hiring target as AI begins replacing entry-level consultants and reshaping professional services. Gen Z enters management valuing purpose and wellbeing but faces a growing need for accountability. Danone redeploys 90 percent of employees affected by restructuring, showing how workforce agility and empathy can coexist. Amazon cuts 14,000 corporate jobs in an AI-driven push to run leaner and faster, while Big Tech pours $400 billion into AI infrastructure—and still can't meet surging demand. Meanwhile, CEOs at JPMorgan, Airbnb, and others ban phones in meetings to reclaim focus and respect.

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Looking for what actually moves the needle on performance and retention? It's in The 8 Laws of Employee Experience. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

October 30, 2025: Today's episode explores the shifting dynamics shaping business and leadership. Across industries, experience itself is being questioned as companies reject overqualified candidates, revealing how age bias and short-term thinking are reshaping hiring. Business leaders are entering 2026 with growing pessimism as geopolitical instability overtakes inflation as their top concern, and 84% now cite political and legal volatility as a major business risk. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase is using its in-house AI system to help employees write performance reviews, offering a glimpse into how artificial intelligence is changing not just operations but management itself. And in retail, Walmart's CEO warns that AI is no longer an emerging tool but a leadership necessity. Together, these stories show a world where adaptability, technological fluency, and cultural stability have become the defining traits of future-ready organizations.

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If you lead people, you design experiences—do it on purpose with The 8 Laws of Employee Experience. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

AI is tearing through corporate America — and this time, it's coming for white-collar jobs. Tens of thousands of office workers are being laid off as automation and efficiency pressures reshape how companies operate. Amazon's latest restructuring shows that the era of middle management may be ending, while new data reveals why strong employee experience is the single biggest factor keeping talent from walking out the door.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon doubles down on the return to office, arguing that mentorship and innovation depend on proximity. Yet, as companies slash management layers to cut costs, research from HR Dive warns productivity and culture are taking a hit. And in the background, a new hiring trend is emerging — one where skills matter more than age, giving older workers a second act in the modern workplace.

Across these stories, a clear signal emerges: the future of work is being rebuilt in real time — flatter, faster, and more human than before.

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Stop patching problems and start designing an intentional workplace. The 8 Laws of Employee Experience gives you the how. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

October 28, 2025: Companies are re-establishing discipline after years of expansion, excess, and employee-first drift. This episode explores five major shifts reshaping the future of work: Amazon's "lean in on AI" directive following 14,000 layoffs, UPS cutting 48,000 jobs as automation accelerates, the limits of Gen Z's workplace expectations, CEOs pushing to restore a performance culture, and the rise of ultralean organizations focused on output over headcount. Each story reveals how technology, accountability, and efficiency are redefining what it means to be future ready.

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Looking for what actually moves the needle on performance and retention? It's in The 8 Laws of Employee Experience. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

The real challenge for today's HR leaders isn't adopting AI, but ensuring people still feel seen, heard, and valued in a world shaped by it. Today's CHROs face a powerful question: how can we design organizations that are as human as they are high-performing? At Novartis, this challenge sparked a bold rethink of what it means to lead, grow, and belong. In this episode, Rob Kowalski, Chief People and Organization Officer at Novartis, shares how the company is reimagining HR through human-centered experiences that transform culture into a living system. He unpacks Novartis' Inspired, Curious, and Unbossed culture framework, the "behaviors in action" that make culture discussable, and programs like Future Me that redefine career growth through lattices instead of ladders. Rob also explores how storytelling connects every employee—scientists to HR teams—to patient impact, why leaders must balance empowerment with accountability, and how "unbossed" leadership is reshaping management itself. From AI coaching tools to redefining what growth and retention really mean, this conversation gives CHROs a fresh blueprint for building organizations that are truly human by design.

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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/

Future-ready organizations are built, not hoped for. My latest book, -The 8 Laws of Employee Experience shows how. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

October 22, 2025: In this episode of Future Ready Today, Jacob Morgan unpacks five powerful stories defining the next era of leadership and work:

1️⃣ Amazon's 600,000 Robots – A leaked roadmap shows how automation will replace or reconfigure hundreds of thousands of jobs, raising urgent questions about reskilling and purpose. 2️⃣ OpenAI's New Browser "Atlas" – The company behind ChatGPT is reimagining web navigation with built-in reasoning. For HR, it signals how internal AI layers could soon connect every system and agent inside organizations. 3️⃣ Global Petition to Ban AI Superintelligence – Over 3,000 global figures, from Richard Branson to Steve Bannon, call for limits on AI's cognitive reach. 4️⃣ Gartner's Report on HR Resilience – The top priorities for CHROs in 2025 include embedding adaptability into culture and responsibly operationalizing AI. 5️⃣ The AI Rebellion Inside Electronic Arts – Employees are pushing back on AI mandates they don't trust, revealing the widening gap between leadership enthusiasm and workforce skepticism.

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Future-ready organizations are built, not hoped for. My latest book, -The 8 Laws of Employee Experience shows how. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com