Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

January 16, 2026: Everyone keeps asking whether AI is going to destroy jobs. That question is already outdated. In this episode of Future-Ready Today, I walk through five stories that reveal what's really happening in the labor market—and why the biggest risk isn't job loss, but broken pipelines. I explore why Boomers are staying in the workforce longer while Gen Z struggles to break in, how AI is driving a surge in construction and infrastructure jobs, and why the real bottleneck in the AI economy isn't software talent but electricians, plumbers, and skilled trades. I also unpack new data showing that AI has already created more than a million jobs globally—and why those jobs aren't evenly accessible. And finally, I look at what it means when firms like McKinsey deploy tens of thousands of AI agents and fundamentally change the leverage equation in knowledge work. Taken together, these stories point to a hard truth: AI isn't replacing humans—it's exposing weak systems. Systems that stopped training, stopped investing in skills, and assumed talent pipelines would take care of themselves.  

January 15, 2026: AI job data says work is stable. Productivity reports promise trillions in gains. Job seekers tell me finding work is getting harder. These stories can't all be true at the same time. In this episode of Future Ready Today, I break down new research from Anthropic on how AI is quietly reshaping jobs task by task, why supposed productivity gains are leaking away through rework and quality issues, how bold $4.5 trillion productivity projections depend on leadership decisions most companies still aren't making, and why job seekers are sensing a tightening labor market before it shows up in official data. This isn't an episode about AI hype or fear. It's about the growing disconnect between what the data says, what companies promise, and what workers are actually experiencing — and what leaders need to understand if they want to be future ready.

January 14, 2026: Change takes far longer than leaders expect—and that gap is where frustration, failure, and missed opportunity live. In this episode, I break down why organizations struggle to move at the pace of the world around them, even when the need for change is obvious. We explore the real blockers slowing transformation: legacy technology, bad data, bureaucracy, internal politics, and cultures built for a different era. AI promises speed and intelligence, but without clean data, modern systems, and the courage to rethink how decisions get made, it only amplifies existing problems. I also unpack how the CHRO role has fundamentally changed. Today's CHRO is the CEO of people—responsible not just for HR, but for aligning talent, culture, technology, and foresight with business outcomes. Finally, we challenge the idea that employee experience is an "HR thing." It's not. It's a shared system co-created by leaders and employees alike. Building a future-ready organization isn't about quick wins—it's a long game that requires persistence, discipline, and the willingness to do the hard work of real transformation.

January 13, 2026: In today's episode, five stories reveal why work is starting to crack under pressure. New data shows employee financial stress is no longer a personal issue but a measurable drag on productivity, just as healthcare costs surge and job mobility slows. At the same time, a major study finds AI is already doing 20–40% of the work in many organizations, yet produces inconsistent and low-quality results when left without human oversight. Research also shows that always-on expectations and over-availability are quietly draining loyalty, even in places where right-to-disconnect laws exist. While employees remain physically present, many are mentally hedging, disengaging, or preparing exit options. On the hiring front, reporting confirms that cold applying still leads to jobs, but hiring systems are buckling under massive application volume and collapsing signal quality. Finally, a viral backlash calling to "fire 90% of HR" exposes a deeper trust and legitimacy crisis, raising hard questions about whether HR functions are delivering outcomes that match today's pace of change.

Scaling a massive workforce culture often fails because the big-picture strategy never reaches the people on the front line. What is the real secret to consistent growth future-ready leaders should know to scale culture within a massive organization of 130,000 employees? In this episode, I sat down with Chipotle COO Jason Kidd to explore how culture actually scales through systems, standards, and leadership discipline. Jason breaks down the discipline of "mastering the mundane," a strategy that ensures every department—from the CHRO to marketing and finance—is perfectly aligned to support the front line. We discussed how Chipotle achieves an incredible 80–90% internal promotion rate for General Managers by identifying "happy people" with a competitive drive and utilising "Avacado," more often called "Ava," their AI-driven recruitment assistant, to remove friction from the hiring process. For executive leaders, Jason provides a masterclass in granular succession planning, revealing how they forecast leadership needs up to four years in advance to sustain rapid growth. This episode highlights that while technology like AI serves as a powerful "assist," the human touch and leadership intuition remain the essential ingredients for scaling a high-performance culture.   ---------- 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/ Future-ready organizations are built, not hoped for. My latest book, -The 8 Laws of Employee Experience shows how. Preorder here: 8EXlaws.com