Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan

April 17, 2026: Employer power has officially returned and workers are accepting things they never would have a year ago — but is that actually a bad thing? Then, teen boys are dating their AI chatbots and experts are warning about what that means for the future workforce. And finally, Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report reveals that global employee engagement has hit a five-year low — and what employees say they actually want from their leaders might surprise you.
Watch the full episode on YouTube.
 
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April 16, 2026: Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.7 this morning — a significant upgrade focused on complex coding and self-verification that changes what human oversight of AI actually needs to look like. Bank of America posted near-record earnings and credited AI, spotlighting a new tool for its 18,000 financial advisors that raises important questions about what happens when information advantage disappears from knowledge work. A major new global survey from WalkMe finds 80 percent of enterprise workers are actively avoiding AI tools, and new Gallup data shows Gen Z's enthusiasm for AI is collapsing fastest among daily users — pointing to a crisis of institutional trust that no training program can fix. And the CEO of Indeed argues the entire AI-and-jobs debate is focused on the wrong threat: demographic contraction, not AI displacement, will define the next 50 years of work — and almost nobody is preparing for it.

April 15, 2027: A failed sneaker brand rebrands as an AI compute company and its stock jumps 600% in a day — and that tells us something important about the race for AI infrastructure. Then, OpenAI releases GPT-5.4-Cyber, a specialized cybersecurity model, and quietly rewrites the rules for how dangerous AI gets deployed. The shift from restricting what models can do to verifying who can access them has direct implications for every business leader thinking about AI governance.

April 14, 2026: The Stanford AI Index shows generative AI has hit 53% global adoption — faster than any technology in history — but also reveals a 50-point gap between expert optimism and public fear about jobs. An AI agent in San Francisco opened a store, hired staff, negotiated with vendors, and forgot to schedule anyone on opening day. Meta is building a photorealistic clone of Mark Zuckerberg to interact with employees — raising hard questions about leadership presence at scale. And a new Bloomberg Businessweek investigation finds college students are skipping the broken entry-level job market entirely and founding AI companies instead. Jacob unpacks what each story actually signals for leaders, organizations, and the future of work.

Companies today are rushing to build an AI strategy, but they often forget to create a human strategy to match it. As technology takes over daily tasks, keeping the human element alive at work is a huge challenge for business leaders.
In this episode, Kathie Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer at Ally, joins us to explore how to balance new AI tools with human emotional intelligence. We uncover how to roll out AI to employees for better efficiency while making sure a human is always in the loop for the moments that truly matter.
Kathie explains why leaders need strong EQ and training in crucial conversations to handle conflicts, since frustrating moments like getting stuck in dead-end phone trees prove that people still crave real human connection during stressful times. We also explore balancing workplace empathy with business accountability, offering real support like mental health and fertility benefits without treating adult employees like children.
Finally, we look at how to adapt to generational shifts, like Gen Z entering the workplace, and the risks of using AI for HR tasks like hiring and promotions. CHROs will find this episode essential for building a future-ready culture that embraces both high-tech tools and deep human connection.
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: 8EXlaws.com