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Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan — Business
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

The future of work isn’t coming. It’s already here — and it’s moving fast. Future Ready is the podcast for leaders who want to stay ahead of AI, workplace transformation, and the forces reshaping how organizations operate and compete. Hosted by Jacob Morgan, futurist and bestselling author, this is where strategy meets reality.

Every week, two formats in one feed: honest, unfiltered conversations with the CEOs, CHROs, and senior executives actually building the future of work — and sharp, no-fluff daily briefings that take the most important developments in artificial intelligence, AI agents, leadership, hybrid work, and organizational strategy and tell you exactly what they mean for your business.
No hype. No filler. Just the insights, frameworks, and real-world playbooks that help you lead smarter, build resilient teams, and make better decisions in a world that won’t slow down.

If you’re serious about leading what’s next — this is your podcast. Subscribe to Future Ready wherever you listen.

Latest Episodes:

The Companies Doubling Down on Junior Hiring, Why AI Is Eroding Gen Z's Brain, and Gartner's Shocking Jobs Forecast for 2028 May 19, 2026

Show notes

May 19, 2026: Everyone has an opinion about AI and jobs. Today we have actual data — three major studies published this week that, taken together, tell a story that's more nuanced, more surprising, and more actionable than anything you'll hear in the headlines. First: a Wall Street Journal report reveals that the companies going deepest on AI are actually increasing entry-level hiring — nearly three times more than are cutting — and why a 22-year-old with AI fluency may be the most valuable hire in the market right now. Then we get into why nearly half of Gen Z workers say AI is making them cognitively weaker, what London taxi drivers and GPS research tells us about what's actually happening to the human brain, and why the most dangerous AI user isn't the person who refuses to use it. And we close with Gartner's bombshell finding: 80% of companies cutting headcount for AI are seeing zero ROI — and by 2030, the ones that starved their talent pipeline this year will be paying a 15% premium just to catch up. Plus: why commencement speakers keep getting booed.

Out-learning the Competition by Building a Skills-Based Talent Ecosystem | Susan LaMonica, CHRO of Citizens Financial Group May 18, 2026

Show notes

If your organization isn't obsessed with how fast your people can learn, you're already falling behind in the race to "out-learn" the competition. In this episode, I'm joined by Susan LaMonica, the Chief Human Resource Officer at Citizens Financial Group—a super-regional bank with $226 billion in assets and 18,000 employees.

We explore how they are driving a massive workforce transformation to build a team that is ready for the future of work. We dive deep into their journey of becoming a skills-based organization and how they use a "skills taxonomy" and an internal talent marketplace to support mobility and career development.

Susan also explains their "measured approach" to AI governance within a heavily regulated industry, including the role of their Generative AI Council. We unpack their "Reimagine the Bank" initiative, where they are rethinking 47 different business processes to drive value and effectiveness. From launching internal "gigs" to tracking productivity metrics like customer NPS and employee sentiment, this conversation is a strategic guide for any leader looking to blend high-tech tools with a human-centered culture. Watch the full video on YouTube

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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/

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—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

The Manager Purge, the Agent Sprawl Crisis, and America's 1,200 AI Laws With No Rulebook May 15, 2026

Show notes

May 15, 2026: The Guardian documents the tech industry's accelerating purge of middle managers — and history says companies have tried this exact bet before with Jack Welch and the Reengineering movement, with disastrous long-term results. The Wall Street Journal reports companies are drowning in ungoverned AI agents, raising a critical question: is agentic AI actually different from the RPA sprawl crisis of a decade ago, and is the difference showing up in real outcomes? And Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and NYU's Gary Marcus argue in Fortune that America's 1,200 AI bills have no shared test for what makes good policy — and the regulatory patchwork hardening in place rhymes uncomfortably with the conditions that produced the 2008 financial crisis.

Kevin O'Leary Got It Wrong, Meta's Trust Crisis, and the Talent Problem Nobody Wants to Fix May 14, 2026

Show notes

May 14, 2026: Tucker Carlson and Kevin O'Leary debated AI, energy, and jobs yesterday — and O'Leary had the right argument but made the wrong one. Today we break down what he should have said, including the real jobs data, what Jensen Huang is saying about hiring, and why the self-driving truck doesn't eliminate the driver — it transforms the job. Then we look inside Meta, where 8,000 layoffs are coming next week during the most profitable quarter in company history, employees are being surveilled to train their replacements, and some workers are openly hoping to get cut. And we close with a Fast Company piece that reframes the entire talent shortage conversation — the problem doesn't start in HR, it starts in kindergarten, and corporate America is pouring billions into the wrong end of the pipeline.

Goldman's Robot Workforce, Amazon's Fake AI Scores, and Princeton's 133-Year Trust Collapse May 13, 2026

Show notes

May 13, 2026: Goldman Sachs President and COO John Waldron went on CNBC and publicly described his entire workforce as a "human assembly line," announcing that digital AI agents will be the firm's robots. Amazon employees are gaming internal AI usage leaderboards by burning meaningless tokens through a tool called MeshClaw — because the pressure to show AI adoption has become greater than the pressure to do actual work. And Princeton University voted to end 133 years of unproctored exams, because AI has made cheating behaviorally invisible and the peer accountability system that underpinned one of the most respected honor codes in American higher education has structurally collapsed.

Rise of the Chief AI Officer, Five AI Bets Every Company Is Making, & Gartner Says AI Layoffs Have No ROI May 12, 2026

Show notes

Most companies think they have an AI strategy. New data from Gartner says they're wrong — and it's costing them. In today's episode, Jacob Morgan breaks down three stories that cut through the hype and tell the real story of where AI and business stand right now.

May 12, 2026: First, a landmark Gartner study of 350 global executives reveals that 80% of companies that cut headcount in the name of AI are seeing little to no return — and the ones getting real results are doing the opposite of what most CEOs are doing. Second: a provocative new framework from Fortune identifies the five AI postures most organizations have already drifted into without realizing it — and explains why the most dangerous one is the one that feels the most comfortable. Third: CNBC reports on how AI is creating a new C-suite power struggle, with the Chief AI Officer emerging just as every other executive function is being told it's their moment to lead.

Why the Corporate Ladder Is Dead and What Replaces It | Denise Kulikowsky, Tapestry CPO May 11, 2026

Show notes

The traditional corporate ladder is a relic of the past. While we once viewed career growth as a predictable, linear climb, today's AI-driven landscape has replaced that fixed path with a much more fluid reality.

In this episode, Denise Kulikowsky, CPO of Tapestry, joins me to explore the rise of the non-linear career path and how forward-thinking companies are formalizing professional fluidity to drive innovation.

Tapestry, the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade, utilizes a "walk, run, fly" AI strategy where tools are treated as enablers for employees to proactively direct their own development. Denise reframes the concern that using AI is "cheating" by emphasizing that it is an efficiency tool, provided employees remain accountable for the final output.

Denise highlights key strategies like the Talent Communities program, which facilitates six-month global job swaps for senior managers and directors to drive cultural immersion. The company also uses a "magic and logic" approach to build success profiles that define future-ready behaviors like leading with courage and activating the vision.

Additionally, she shares insights on bridging the gap between frontline and corporate roles through rotational programs that bring store leaders into the home office. Get the strategic blueprint you need for building a resilient workforce that is adaptable to technological advancement.

Watch the full video on YouTube

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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/

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—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

AI Models Have Feelings? Pure Managers Are Being Eliminated and a16z Says the Job Apocalypse Is a Fantasy May 07, 2026

Show notes

May 7, 2026: A landmark study from the Center for AI Safety spanning 56 AI models finds that smarter models appear to be sadder, that you can give an AI the equivalent of a digital drug, and that when you make an AI miserable it tells you the future is "grim." Second, Andreessen Horowitz publishes the most detailed optimist case yet that the AI job apocalypse is bad economics and worse history — rooted in the lump-of-labor fallacy — while Fortune raises the one question the optimists still haven't answered. And third, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong coins the term "pure managers" to describe the layer of corporate hierarchy that AI is eliminating first — and the player-coach model he's building in its place may be the clearest picture yet of what organizations actually look like in the AI era.

CEOs Are Splitting on AI Layoffs, Managers Are Now Enforcing Adoption, and the Real Problem Nobody's Solving May 06, 2026

Show notes

May 6, 2026: The Wall Street Journal reports a genuine split emerging among CEOs — Coinbase and PayPal cutting aggressively while Spotify, IBM, and Axon hold headcount and bet on growth instead. Business Insider goes inside Disney and JPMorgan to show how AI adoption pressure has shifted from C-suite memos to manager dashboards and performance reviews — and why measuring token usage instead of outcomes may be building a very expensive illusion. And author David Epstein, writing for Fast Company, makes the case that AI's real danger isn't replacing workers — it's making it almost free to imagine new work while doing nothing to help you decide what should never have been started. The bottleneck isn't ideas anymore. It's execution.

Strengthening the Talent Pipeline for the Future of Work with the CHRO of FM | Robin Benoit May 04, 2026

Show notes

A massive wave of retirements known as "Peak 65" is creating a serious crisis for organizations as decades of institutional knowledge begin to walk out the door. This shift in workforce demographics means we must act now to secure our talent pipeline before these experts leave for good.

In this episode, CHRO Robin Benoit shares how she and her team at FM are tackling this challenge at its core. We explore their unique mentorship program called AKA (Accelerating Knowledge Advancement), which pulls experts away from their day jobs to help newer employees reach senior-level career growth years ahead of schedule.

Robin explains the balance between AI optimization and human interaction, highlighting the danger of using technology to automate entry-level work in a way that "kills off" the learning process for future leaders. We discuss building a "career lattice" for internal mobility and why we need transparent retirement conversations to ensure experienced workers don't block promotion paths while we still benefit from their wisdom through reverse mentorship.

This episode is essential for CHROs who want to use succession planning and employee engagement to thrive in the future of work.

Watch the full video on YouTube

----------

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/

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—order a copy here: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

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