Workquake Weekly

This week on Workquake Weekly, Steve unpacks new research from Harvard Business Review that brings real data to one of the biggest debates in the future of work… are jobs being replaced by AI, or reshaped by it?

The answer is becoming clearer.

Roles built around human and AI collaboration are growing fast, while purely automated roles are shrinking. But the real story isn’t job loss or job growth. It’s how the work itself is changing.

Steve walks through what this shift looks like in practice, from financial analysts spending less time gathering data and more time making decisions, to organizations redefining what productivity and value actually mean.

But there’s a tension emerging.

As companies lean into augmentation, entry-level opportunities are quietly declining, especially in AI-exposed fields. Steve challenges this instinct and asks a bigger question. If AI is unlocking capacity across organizations, why are we using it to do less instead of more?

This episode explores:

• Why augmentation is winning over automation, and what that really means for leaders

• How AI is reshaping the day-to-day reality of knowledge work

• The unintended consequences for early-career talent

• Why shrinking roles may be the wrong response to increased capacity

• A powerful example of how one company bridged the gap between experienced and junior workers

Steve offers a grounded but optimistic perspective on what leaders can do next, and why this moment is less about efficiency and more about imagination.

Because the real opportunity isn’t just improving what already exists. It’s building what comes next.

Harvard Business School — "Displacement or Complementarity? The Labor Market Impact of Generative AI" — Suraj Srinivasan, Wilbur Xinyuan Chen, Saleh Zakerinia. Covered in Harvard Business Review, March 2026. https://hbr.org/2026/03/research-how-ai-is-changing-the-labor-marketFederal Reserve Bank of Dallas — "AI is simultaneously aiding and replacing workers, wage data suggest" — J. Scott Davis, February 2026. https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0224McKinsey & Company — "The State of AI in 2025: How Organizations Are Rewiring to Capture Value" — Alex Singla, Alexander Sukharevsky, Bryce Hall, Lareina Yee, Michael Chui, November 2025. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai

Is AI destroying jobs, enriching them, or doing a bit of both?

In this episode of Workquake Weekly, Steve Cadigan explores a new research tool released by AI company Anthropic designed to detect when AI is displacing workers across occupations. On the surface, it sounds like responsible foresight. But Steve asks a deeper question: if we’re building sophisticated systems to track job loss, why aren’t we building equally powerful tools to track job enrichment?

Drawing on new surveys from Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, and others, Steve looks at the growing anxiety among Gen Z and Millennial workers who are trying to adapt quickly to AI while hearing mixed signals from the companies building it. At the same time, he highlights the massive investments companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google are making in reskilling millions of workers around the world.

This episode explores the real challenge leaders face today: not just managing disruption, but shaping a more balanced and hopeful narrative about how AI can expand human potential at work.

Because the future of work isn’t something that just happens to us. It’s something we shape.

This week, Steve Cadigan tackles the emotional rollercoaster around AI, flipping the script from fear and FOMO to understanding and real confidence. You’ll learn:

• Why panic isn’t the answer—and what questions leaders should be asking instead

• How “talent velocity” (a concept highlighted in a recent LinkedIn report) puts learning security ahead of job security

• Why AI adoption isn’t a sprint but a human-centered learning cycle

• Practical examples from AT&T, Unilever, and Guild on building internal learning pathways and talent marketplaces

• Four focus areas for leaders: speeding up learning, safe experimentation, rewarding curiosity, and redesigning roles for ongoing development

Tune in to replace anxiety with real confidence, and discover how to build organizations that move at the pace of human capability—not just the technology curve.

https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/talent-velocity-report

This week, Steve digs into a startling The Wall Street Journal report revealing that, for many Americans, healthcare expenses are now outpacing mortgage payments. Drawing on his own experience as an independent business owner, he explores how soaring premiums and shrinking coverage have turned “healthcare plans” into little more than catastrophic safety nets, and what that means for families and employers alike.

Steve breaks down why today’s healthcare system has become so entrenched—and so maddeningly hard to fix—touching on politics, economics, insurance, technology, and fear. He then connects the dots to the workplace, showing how healthcare costs distort career mobility, fuel job-lock, and even clash with the adaptability we tout in the age of AI.

Tune in for practical steps leaders can take right now to acknowledge this pressure, rethink benefits conversations, and share risk more thoughtfully within their organizations.

Key Takeaway:

It’s time to stop treating healthcare as an afterthought. By facing these costs head-on, leaders can help unleash the very innovation and agility they expect from their teams.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the podcast, and leave a review so you don’t miss future insights. And if you’ve read my book Workquake, I’d really appreciate you taking a minute to leave a review on Amazon—your support helps keep the conversation going. See you next Friday.

https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/aca-health-insurance-cost-subsidies-expire-37a595a9?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqcQ7hAaSlDjbCAqfsAQMOwm1hC6_7vzfnGefpGP4BIzLzcna72YedGU9kXGyCw%3D&gaa_ts=697a76f5&gaa_sig=wcby4hKof7dCDgOEZnZEaEP0NX8WO6sJ_c0ALGjs9IBt4--ExX_qSz1hGW4jjzh-AjFGTxjcNNA8GAjfDLTNOA%3D%3D

A landmark trial in Los Angeles is testing a hard question: did social media product design cause real harm, especially for younger users? This isn’t a hearing. It’s a courtroom, with jurors and evidence, focused less on content moderation and more on product architecture… infinite scroll, autoplay, notification loops, and the incentives behind them. Steve connects this “tobacco trial moment” to the future of work and AI, arguing that design choices are never neutral and that leadership, not just technology, must carry responsibility. If social media is our seatbelt moment, AI might be the self-driving car. What guardrails will we choose, and how fast will we put them in place?

What You Will Learn

• Why this case centers on design decisions, not just user behavior

• How business models shape engagement and risk

• The seatbelt analogy and what it teaches about cultural change

• Practical questions leaders should ask before shipping new tech

• Why thoughtful beats fastest in the long run

Feeling 2026 fatigue? You are not alone. In this episode, Steve digs into the prediction trap so many leaders are stuck in right now, chasing benchmarks and waiting for a safe best practice to appear. In a supersonic world, there are no benchmarks. The only real advantage is your ability to take your best shot, learn fast, and move.

Steve reframes the AI conversation as a cultural challenge, not a technical one. If AI is only a cost play, your team will feel it. If AI is an enabler of more meaningful work, they will feel that too. You will hear how to set a clear belief about AI, how to fuel your pioneers rather than convince your skeptics, and how to stop outsourcing strategy to headlines.

You will learn:

• Why waiting for best practices keeps you behind.

• How to state your personal belief about AI and lead from it.

• How to use AI to elevate people, not squeeze them.

• How to anchor decisions in what is truest for your team, not what is newest in the newsfeed.

Try this week:

• The Meaning Audit: does your AI plan create more time for meaningful work, or just more work?

• Map Your Pioneers: find three early adopters using AI already, interview them, and channel their energy into your broader culture.

If this episode helps clear the fog, follow, share, and leave a review. And if you want to compare notes or talk about your own AI beliefs, connect with Steve on LinkedIn.

Email promised speed and delivered FOMO. In this episode, Steve reacts to Google’s deeper AI features in Gmail, calls out the irony of tech solving a problem it helped create, and reframes the real win of AI: buying back quiet time. We dig into how summaries, prioritization, and automated triage can free up hours, why creativity lives in the margins, and how leaders can shift from frantic processing to thoughtful insight. Inspired by reporting from The Verge on Gmail’s new AI.

Rethinking New Year’s Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions rarely stick because they start with wishes, not reality. In this episode, Steve Cadigan shares a simple, honest alternative he learned from Tim Ferriss, the Past Year Review. Instead of guessing what to change, you look back at what actually happened, who and what gave you energy, and what quietly drained you. From there, you make small, meaningful adjustments that fit real life, at work and at home.

In this episode

• A 4 step Past Year Review you can do in under an hour

• Why energy, not time, is the real constraint

• How to spot patterns in your calendar and protect what matters

• Practical ways to set boundaries, say yes with intention, and build in joy on purpose

Perfect for leaders, parents, and anyone ready to design a year that feels aligned, not performative.

If you enjoy the show, follow Workquake Weekly and leave a quick review. It helps more people find these conversations.

What can the NBA teach us about modern leadership? In this fast, practical episode, Steve riffs on a Wall Street Journal piece about Chris Paul’s retirement and the fading era of the classic “floor general.” On the court and at work, running everything through one person no longer fits the speed and complexity of today. Steve breaks down how the Warriors reinvented offense with shared playmaking, then connects it to how teams can share decision making, move faster, and become more resilient.

You’ll hear why centralized control collapses under modern complexity, how leadership can be a behavior instead of a title, and exactly where to start if you’ve built your career on being the hub for every decision. Expect concrete moves you can try this week, like rotating who leads meetings, pushing decisions to the edges, removing one bottleneck, and running short retros to learn quickly.

If the NBA can evolve, so can your team. This is the Workquake in action, and the future belongs to leaders who design for speed, autonomy, and trust.

Most AI headlines still shout about job loss. This week, I unpack McKinsey’s new State of AI report and the story is very different. Yes, many companies are experimenting, piloting, and playing. Only a small fraction are seeing real profit lift today. The ones that are winning share a pattern: they redesign how work gets done, they pursue growth and innovation, and they keep people at the center. We dig into what high performers do differently across manufacturing, consumer, finance, and life sciences, why workflow redesign beats tool buying, and how intent and trust shape adoption. If you lead people, this episode gives you a simple, practical lens to spot value, reduce fear, and build skills that elevate your teams.

You’ll learn:

• Why growth goals outperform cost cutting in AI initiatives

• How workflow redesign becomes the strongest predictor of impact

• What high performers prioritize across industries, from personalization to agentic systems

• The people moves that matter most, including reskilling and leader literacy

• How to shift the narrative so employees feel enhanced, not reduced

Takeaway:

The best AI strategies are talent strategies. Start with value creation, redesign the work, invest in hybrid human–AI skills, and measure outcomes, not pilot activity.

McKinsey AI Report 2025 : https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai