Kyndryl CHRO Mark Paulek on on AI at Work, Employee Trust, and the Skills Leaders Need Now
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
Release Date: 07/20/2026
From Cashier to Home Depot C-Suite, Middle Manager Backlash, Claude Hacks OpenAI, & AI Panic Returns
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 18, 2026: I look at the viral LinkedIn profile of Home Depot executive Anne Marie Campbell and why her rise from cashier to senior executive says something important about effort, loyalty, and firm-specific knowledge. Then I get into the Wall Street Journal’s warning that the purge of middle managers could backfire as companies underestimate coaching, sponsorship, and tacit knowledge. I also unpack how researchers used Anthropic’s Claude to break into OpenAI through a bug bounty program. Finally, I break down OpenAI’s recent “misalignment” example involving compaction...
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Who Watches Anthropic’s AI Watchdog? Why Authenticity Fails at Work, & Zuckerberg Says the Market Can Keep AI Safe
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 16, 2026: I look at Anthropic’s push for independent AI evaluators and why its preferred watchdog, METR, raises questions about conflicts, trust, and regulatory capture. Then I get into why “be your authentic self” may be terrible career advice and why the better advice is to be your best professional self. Finally, I unpack Mark Zuckerberg’s argument that lawsuits, customers, competition, and trust may do more to keep AI companies careful than a forced industry slowdown.
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Time to Kill AI? Anthropic Wants AI Slowed, Oracle Cuts Jobs, & Leaders Face a Civics Crisis
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 14, 2026: I look at Dario Amodei’s essay arguing that frontier AI needs to slow down and why competitors publicly agreeing with him raises bigger questions about safety, regulation, IPO timing, and regulatory capture. Then I get into reports of more Oracle layoffs and why this may be less about AI replacing people and more about companies funding massive AI infrastructure. Finally, I unpack why civic education is becoming a workforce readiness issue, especially when so many leaders say entry-level hires are not prepared for work.
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AI Created 1M Jobs, Student Scores Hit Record Lows, and Anthropic’s AI Panic Grows
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 11, 2026: I look at The Economist’s analysis showing AI has created roughly 1 million American jobs so far, while the predicted jobs apocalypse still has not arrived. Then I get into the latest PISA results showing record-low math, reading, and science scores, and why attention, critical thinking, and family involvement matter for the future workforce. Finally, I unpack the latest backlash around Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s viral resignation, the AI extinction narrative, regulatory capture, and why leaders need evidence before buying into panic.
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Anthropic Researcher Quits Over AI Extinction Fears, OpenAI Agents Claim a Math Breakthrough, & the Panic Behind the Headlines
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 9, 2026: I unpack the viral resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who warned that AI labs are racing toward self-improving superintelligence and gambling with human lives. Then I look at OpenAI’s claim that thousands of AI agents produced a proof for the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the Millennium Prize problems. Finally, I dig into the bigger question behind the headlines: how much of the AI extinction narrative is about real technical risk, and how much is about incentives, regulatory capture, effective altruism, IPO timing, and control over the future of AI?
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How To Lead A Multi-Year AI Transformation and the Critical Middle of Change
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
I talk with Adam Kautzner, President of Evernorth Care Management and Express Scripts and EVP of Customer Personalization for The Cigna Group, about what it takes to lead a major multi-year transformation in healthcare. We get into how Evernorth and Express Scripts are redesigning pharmacy benefits around patients, why prescription pricing has become so complex, how AI could improve healthcare navigation and personalization, and why leaders cannot ignore the “critical middle” of transformation where the hard work actually happens.
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OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra, the Surprising Jobs Boom, and the Question of Whether AGI Has Arrived
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 4, 2026: I look at OpenAI’s new GPT-6 Astra model and why even powerful AI agents still may not be ready to take over full jobs. Then I get into the August jobs report, which came in far stronger than expected and complicates the “AI is killing jobs” narrative. Finally, I unpack the Wall Street Journal’s argument that AGI may already be here and why the real question is not whether AI can do tasks, but whether organizations can actually change fast enough to use it.
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Uber’s 10% Workforce Cut, Employers Fight AI Interview Fraud, & iFood Builds a CEO Digital Twin
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
September 2, 2026: I share key lessons from my CHRO session with iFood CEO Diego Barreto, including why he is investing in AI even with negative ROI, how he built a digital twin, and how iFood is rethinking reviews, meetings, and change management. Then I get into the Wall Street Journal’s report on employers using new interview rituals to fight AI-enabled candidate fraud. Finally, I unpack Uber cutting 10% of its workforce and why the real story may be work redesign, bureaucracy, and coordination, not AI replacing jobs.
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Why Enterprise AI Adoption Is Failing: AI Sprawl, Low Trust, and the ROI Problem
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
I talk with Ofir Bloch, SVP of Corporate Marketing at WalkMe, about why enterprise AI adoption is harder than buying tools and handing out licenses. We get into WalkMe’s State of Digital Adoption research, the gap between executive confidence and employee trust, AI sprawl, shadow AI, Gen Z’s overconfidence with AI, and why real ROI comes from changing workflows instead of just tracking usage.
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How to Redesign Work With AI, Jensen Huang vs Bill Gates on Robot Taxes, & the Jobs AI Won’t Replace
Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan
August 28, 2026: I break down what redesigning work with AI actually means and share a practical framework for removing human glue, handoffs, waits, and routine work while creating new value. Then I get into Jensen Huang and Bill Gates disagreeing over whether robots and AI tokens should be taxed. Finally, I unpack the government’s new 10-year jobs forecast and why the fastest-growing jobs in America still require something AI does not have: a human body in the room.
info_outlineI talk with Mark Paulek, Chief Human Resources Officer at Kyndryl, about how leaders should approach AI transformation without losing employee trust. We get into Kyndryl’s People Readiness Report, the company’s AIR framework for anticipating demand, inventorying skills, and redeploying talent, plus how they think about AI governance, human-in-the-loop decisions, ROI, reskilling, and why AI adoption is ultimately a people challenge before it is a technology challenge.