"What if something goes right?" — OBTs (One Big Thing), Emerging AI Tech, and what it all means for the future of education, work, and everyday life.

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Jess Von Bank and Jason Averbook take a look at the new Cluely AI solution: an invisible AI-powered desktop assistant that discreetly enhances your performance during virtual meetings, sales calls, interviews, and more. What all does this mean for the future of education, work, and everyday life?

As always they share their One Big Thing (OBT) to reflect on impactful moment through the week. It can be anything. Zach Husted pays a surprise visit to share his OBT about launching Pillars of Valor.

Rosemary A. Bova joined us for an insightful session to delve into her new program, Legendary Managerial Leadership. In this episode, discover how the powerful combination of behavioral coaching and structural analysis can transform your leadership team, fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. Learn how this approach not only empowers managers at all levels but also drives significant cost savings and enhances overall profitability.

9.3.2023 📲 
"Starting a group text for Ragnar Wisconsin Trail. This started as a full team that fell apart, and we rebuilt it with THIS team...so thank you for throwing your hat in with people you don't know to have an incredible adventure together. 
We're running as a team of 7. There are options for racing one runner short, I'll share later, but we're all good.
Trail racing is different, and Nine Mile Forest is a %@#! hairball. The trails are full of rocks and roots and hairpin turns. If you have trail shoes, use them. If you don't, your usual running shoes will do just fine. Just make sure you have some grip left...." 📲 
My group text a year and a half ago when I recruited Barbara to get a full-enough team to race the Wisconsin Trail Ragnar Relay. 
My race team fell apart, I took over captainship, and I wasn't about to waste perfectly good training and let my 10th Ragnar go to the wind. She wasn't just a worthy recruit; she's the epitome of endurance racing. If you know the Leadville 100, you now understand Barbara. (She wrote a book about running Leadville, we'll ask her about it.)
We had time to chitty chat at our campsite between legs during that race: when I learned she coaches Life Time Inc. executives on mind, body, and spirit, I was pretty much sold for life on Barbara.
She's a soul you want to meet. This episode isn't about high performance on and off a race course from a world-class ultrarunner, it's about you.

Chuck Gose, founder of ICology, is a long-time listener and now a first time guest on today's Meetup! "As someone who’s admired the conversations and efforts from the sidelines, it’s an honor to step into the guest seat and talk all things internal communications and employee experience." Together, Jess and Chuck get right into the critical intersection of AI, HR, marketing, and internal communications, emphasizing the importance of understanding employee needs and experiences. The conversation also highlights the role of technology in personalizing employee experiences and the need for organizations to listen actively to their workforce to drive meaningful change.

Doug Berg and Elaine Orler joined us to talk about the amazing world of talent acquisition and how they, as two pioneers, are taking it to the next level with Match2. Serial founders like Doug don't come along every day. With the insanely brilliant Elaine Orler by his side, the industry oughta sit up and pay attention.

In this episode, we shine a light on how to get more value out of your existing recruiting tech stack and how to solve some of the good & bad that AI is introducing to the recruiting industry.

Do you "design" your culture? Meaning: are you thoughtful and intentional about how people receive information, contact and connect with each other, find inspiration, express values? People who build and nurture COMMUNITIES think about this first and foremost, and they have a lot to teach people who build and nurture WORKFORCES.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory founded the PeopleForward Network to inspire workplaces where people thrive, and she joins the meetup today to share ideas around internal podcasting for clarity at work, what work-life integration really means, and how to do asynchronous meetings well.

March 14th is a very important day to us. Jess Von Bank and Jason Averbook launched the Now of Work community 5 years ago that day. The world was crazy. Humans were confused. People needed connection. Life needed some sort of meaning. We were thrust into a world where uncertainty was the word of the moment and it was driven by two pandemics. A social justice pandemic and a global health pandemic, COVID.
5 years later, we celebrated the anniversary of this amazing community that has 5 amazing traits that we want to celebrate.
* Over 5000 people in the community
* Has had over 250 events both live and digitally
* Have had over 1,500,000 downloads and views of our events
* Has changed the lives of Jess and myself
* Hopefully impacted the lives of some others
Here are come clips from our community and the people that make it special. Thank you for all of your continued support and we are just getting started. Most of all, thank you for all of the support of Leah Tanner Kristin Lynn Penney Jaycee Grider Josh Drean H. Richard Brummett Allison Wallace and many others for helping bring a dream to live.
Stay with us. We have a lot more to come and hope you can join us today for our LIVE meetup and each Friday going forward. Much love!

Madeline Laurano joins us for our 250th episode of the Now of Work Digital Meetup. 

What a celebratory milestone, just one week before the 5-year anniversary of our community meetup. And who better to spend it with! Madeline is the widely respected founder of Aptitude Research, producing A Practical Guide to Unlocking AI Potential in HR, Global Trends in HR Technology & HR Transformation, Reducing Bias in HR Using Artificial Intelligence, and other incredible reports the market relies on to understand the world of work today and tomorrow.

She just returned from Amsterdam, where she emceed the HR Technology Europe conference. (We hear our own Mercer team were shining stars in 6 standing-room-only AI sessions!) We couldn't wait to hear her road report, raise a glass to 250, and celebrate with all of you.

AI is all the buzz, but it's particularly interesting to think about its impact on software development and coding. As a coder, AI is about about 70% accurate. Not bad, will only get better—but can it do its own regression testing? And if humans aren't doing the actual coding, isn't it harder to do code review? No one better than HackerRank to help us understand how software development changes with AI, how coders and engineers become orchestrators of AI agents, and how we reconsider necessary skills like prompt engineering.

This decade will be about the evolution of enterprise HR Tech. Would have evolved quite organically on its own; AI will deliver it like a revolution and in Big Bang fashion. ☄️ 
Like,
🔹 Suite vs. Niche – Do you play it safe with an all-in-one suite, or do you go deep with specialized solutions? What’s the right strategy in a world where disruption is the new normal?
🔹 The AI Illusion – AI in HR isn’t just about GenAI, using data to call something "intelligent," or even unleashing an army of agents. What’s actually changing in the foundation of our systems, and how do we separate real transformation from marketing fluff?
🔹 What’s Next? – Core systems are shifting under our feet. What will “core” even mean in five years? And what’s the smartest move for enterprises today?
This isn’t just another AI conversation. This is forward-thinking discussion you need to shape your HR Tech strategy and roadmap before the future leaves you behind.
🔥 Don’t miss Thomas Otter. 🔥