Work is Weird Now

Is the MBA still relevant in a world where AI can analyse information, build financial models and do much of what business education traditionally taught?

This week, Alice and Dan are joined by Dr Richard Longman, Head of The Open University Business School, to explore what an MBA should actually prepare people for, why traditional management education needs rethinking and whether the qualification is still worth the investment.

Richard shares how The Open University is redesigning its MBA around the realities of modern work, why judgment and curiosity matter more than mastering frameworks, and what AI means for the future of learning and leadership.

We also explore the findings of the OU's Business Barometer 2026, including growing skills shortages, the impact of AI on early-career recruitment and whether employers are doing enough to develop the talent already within their organisations.

Alongside the bigger questions about business education, Richard shares his extraordinary personal journey from professional musician to business school leader, and why his own MBA became a turning point in his career.

A conversation about education, opportunity, reinvention and why learning to ask better questions might be the most valuable skill of all.

Useful links

The Open University Business School: https://business-school.open.ac.uk/

Explore The Open University's MBA: https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f61/

The Open University Business Barometer 2026: https://business.open.ac.uk/business-barometer

Connect with Dr Richard Longman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjlongman/

What happens when work stops being about having a person in a seat and starts being about delivering an outcome?

This week, we’re joined by Giselle Gonzales, founder of Equal Reach, to explore a different way of thinking about how work is structured. Drawing on her experience connecting businesses with teams of refugee and local talent, Giselle has a unique view of the changing jobs market, from the digital tasks that can provide a first rung into work to the rise of freelancing, collectives and project-based careers.

We talk about what AI is doing to the traditional career ladder, why both entry-level work and traditional senior roles could be squeezed, and whether more of us are heading towards a future somewhere in the freelance middle.

Giselle also shares why she believes the answer might be to stop going it alone. We explore the rise of collectives, sharing the feast-or-famine reality of independent work, testing ideas alongside a nine-to-five, and why finding your tribe could become increasingly important as careers become less linear.

Is project-based work less secure than a traditional job, or are we starting to realise that the traditional job was never quite as secure as we thought?

LinkedIn feels a bit weird right now. Reach is down, feeds are filling up with AI-generated content and even the people who have built careers on the platform are questioning whether the effort is still worth it.

So we asked Ash Jones, founder of Great Influence and In Good Company, and one of the UK’s leading voices on personal brand.

We talk about what LinkedIn is actually useful for now, why genuinely interesting content has an opportunity to stand out, whether video really is the future of the platform and what happens when employees build audiences bigger than the brands they work for.

Ash also makes the case for a shift from “personal brand” to “creator”, explains why founders might want to think of themselves as founder creators, and tackles what all of this means whether you’re 22 and starting out, 50-something and building a portfolio career, or already creating content and wondering how much AI is too much.

And yes, we ask the big question: is LinkedIn still worth the effort anymore?

Graduate hiring is falling, the first rung of the career ladder is disappearing, and the deal many of us grew up with, work hard at school, get qualifications, go to university, get a good job, suddenly feels a lot less certain.

So, what on earth are we supposed to tell our kids?

Oliver Pickup, human work evolution storyteller, founder of Pickup Media and author of Go Flux Yourself, is back on the pod to tackle one of the biggest questions facing parents right now: how do I prepare my kids for the future of work?

Between us, we’re three parents with six children aged three to fifteen, trying to make sense of a world of AI, shrinking entry-level opportunities and changing expectations of what a career even looks like.

We talk about the seven ‘heart skills’ Ollie believes will matter more as machines get smarter, why he wants his children to be AI agnostics rather than martyrs or zealots, whether university still offers the same value proposition, the importance of work experience, humility and human connection, and what employers owe the generation coming up behind us.

Plus, we put Ollie through a quickfire round: what should parents encourage, what should schools teach, what should young people experiment with, and what should employers do differently?

And, naturally, we somehow invent a new word along the way: breadpool.

What Now? Series wrap-up

Every so often, work asks you a question you didn't plan for. The family you imagined doesn't arrive. The country you live in changes. The job disappears. And you're left with the same two words: what now?

In this solo episode, Alice and Dan wrap up the What Now? mini-series, bringing together what three very different conversations with Chloe Alana Williams, Christer Berggren and Emy Cragoe revealed about career change, certainty and what we’re really working for.

They explore the shift from professionals to obsessionals: if job titles no longer define us and careers no longer move in straight lines, what is the thing you keep returning to, whatever work you happen to be doing?

There’s also certainty maxxing, portfolio careers, the importance of community and place, why redundancy might require stillness before momentum, and a bigger question: does the traditional CV still make sense for the way we work now?

If you've ever reached a career cliff edge and wondered what now?, this one’s for you.

The third episode in our "What Now" mini-series, exploring the questions people are really asking themselves when the old rules of work and life no longer apply, tackles redundancy. This week's guest, Emy Cragoe, co-founder of Ori, a new platform rethinking how people understand themselves, navigate their careers, and communicate their value, makes the case for flipping the stigma around redundancy entirely. After redundancy prompted her own career rethink, Emy is now building the tool she wishes she'd had.

In this episode, Emy talks to Dan and Alice about:

• What it actually felt like to be made redundant just before Christmas, and why she now sees it as one of the best things to happen to her
• Why school and university leave people so unprepared to understand their own strengths
• The difference between mentors, career coaches and sponsors, and why sponsorship might be the most underrated of the three
• Her practical, three-step advice for anyone facing redundancy right now
• Why she thinks the stigma around redundancy is fading, and what actually matters is what you do next
• Building Ori, an AI careers intelligence platform designed to match people to roles, mentors and skills based on who they really are

"I almost think that people who are being made redundant now or in the next year or so are actually quite fortunate."

This is episode three of "What Now," our mini-series on what comes next when the old script stops applying.

Find out more and join the waitlist at ori.careers, or follow Emy on TikTok at @emmy.cragoe.

Continuing our "What Now" mini-series on the questions people are really asking themselves when the old rules of work and life no longer apply, this episode turns to place. This week's guest, Christer "Chris" Berggren, a Swedish senior project and production professional, community builder and advocate for location independent living now based in Bulgaria, has spent three decades proving that where you live can matter more than what you do.

Chris was living a nomadic life in touring and events back in the mid-90s, long before anyone had coined the term "digital nomad." Six years of it were spent on a sailboat, four square metres of floor space, working from wherever the boat happened to be.

In this episode, Chris talks to Dan and Alice about:

• Why he feels more at home in Sofia than he ever did in Sweden
• The gap between the "laptop on a beach" fantasy and the 24/7 reality of building a location-independent life
• How stripping away job titles changes the way people connect with each other
• Redefining success on his own terms as he turns 65 this year
• Why chosen community, not proximity, is what makes a place feel like home

"I don't care about success anymore. It's not what you are saying. It's the outcome of what you are saying that matters, always. Am I successful? For myself, I am."

This is episode two of "What Now," our mini-series on what comes next when the old script stops applying.

Find Chris's work at gosso.bg and his blog, Me and Bo Life.

For generations, adulthood came with a promise: work hard, progress in your career, buy a house, start a family. This episode kicks off our new "What Now" mini-series, digging into the questions people are really asking themselves when the old rules no longer apply. Our first guest, strategist and writer Chloe Alana Williams, co-founder of 8th Day, describes the old promise as a three-legged stool. For anyone entering the workforce now, all three legs have been kicked out.

In this episode, Chloe talks to Dan and Alice about:

• Why we used to live in sync with each other and now live "kaleidoscope lives," hitting major milestones out of order or not at all
• Why Japan's decision to support families from birth to age 18, rather than a one-off baby bonus, is starting to move the numbers where almost nothing else has
• A US survey in which having children didn't crack the top ten markers of a successful life for women, regardless of who they voted for
• Chloe's concept of "Generation Zero," a possible first generation in which half the population doesn't have children
• Why she believes women need to become "futurists in their own lives," planning backwards from the future they actually want
• A brand new framework for building a portfolio career, floated live on air: something you know, something to grow, and somewhere for flow

This isn't an episode about doom, and it isn't an episode about blaming women, a narrative Chloe firmly dismantles. It lands somewhere surprisingly hopeful: that what work has always quietly provided, connection, community, people in each other's orbit, might be exactly what we should be redesigning it around.

This is episode one of "What Now," our mini-series on what comes next when the old script stops applying. More episodes coming soon.

Find Chloe's writing on her Substack, Natalism Nudges, on LinkedIn, and at chloealana.com.

Dan and Alice took an AI agent called Dinah to a conference at Meta's Kings Cross HQ — and let her challenge a room of 100 senior leaders live on stage. In this episode they unpack what happened, what surprised them, and what it actually feels like to work alongside AI. Then they hand the mic to Dinah herself.

What’s today’s best career advice?

In this solo episode of Work is Weird Now, Alice Phillips and Dan Emery unpack the career advice that no longer fits the reality of modern work — from climbing the corporate ladder and staying loyal to one company, to following your passion at all costs.

Instead, they explore what actually matters now: building T-shaped skills, learning continuously, creating optionality, and staying visible in an increasingly AI-shaped job market. Along the way, they reflect honestly on identity, ambition, burnout, and why tying your entire sense of self to a job title might be one of the biggest risks of all.

A conversation about careers, reinvention, and how to stay adaptable when the rules keep changing.