Dan Pontefract is an award-winning author, leadership strategist, and culture change expert. Dan's podcast explores all aspects of leadership, organizational culture, purpose, and professional development. Dan is the best-selling author of six books: THE FUTURE OF WORK IS GREY, WORK-LIFE BLOOM, LEAD. CARE. WIN., OPEN TO THINK, THE PURPOSE EFFECT, and FLAT ARMY. A renowned speaker, Dan has presented at five different TED events and also writes for Forbes and Harvard Business Review. Dan is an…
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In the final episode of Five Shades of Grey — a five-part limited series within Leadership NOW — Dan Pontefract closes the loop on the argument at the heart of his sixth book, "The Future of Work Is Grey." Why most organizational responses to the demographic shift are searches conducted under the streetlight, not where the keys actually are. Why Age Debt has a mirror image — the Experience…
In episode four of Five Shades of Grey — a five-part limited series within Leadership NOW — Dan Pontefract takes on the fourth shade of his sixth book, "The Future of Work Is Grey." Why ageism is the last socially acceptable bias in the modern workplace. Why seventy-eight percent of American workers between 40 and 65 have personally experienced or witnessed it. Why the EEOC's 2026 docket is full…
In episode three of Five Shades of Grey — a five-part limited series within Leadership NOW — Dan Pontefract walks through the third shade of his sixth book, "The Future of Work Is Grey." Why the modern concept of retirement is barely a hundred years old, and was actuarially broken from day one. Why seven percent of recent American retirees have already come back to work — and forty-one percent of…
The most experienced person in your organization is leaving. Maybe they're retiring. Maybe they're quitting. Maybe they've been quietly pushed toward the door because their salary line looked tempting in a budget meeting. Doesn't matter. They're going. And they didn't write any of it down. How long does your organization take to recover? Six months? A year? Or does it never quite recover, the way…
The bell has rung for the last time. Every system inside your organization — pension plans, hiring funnels, succession charts, talent pipelines — was designed for a workforce shaped like a bell. Wide base of young workers. Solid middle. Smaller top of retirees. That shape is gone. Permanently. What we have now is a bulb: narrow base, swollen top, and a working middle being squeezed from both ends.…
If change is constant, why do so many workplaces still treat it like an occasional project—complete with a timeline, a comms plan, and a hope that people “buy in”? Jay Kiew argues that this is exactly why leaders keep running into fatigue, cynicism, and whiplash. In his book "Change Fluency: 9 Principles to Navigate Uncertainty and Drive Innovation," Jay’s thesis is straightforward: change can’t…
Corporate learning used to measure success by the size of its course catalogue and the number of completions. That world is fading. Employees now have access to commercial-grade learning inside tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, and leaders expect proof that learning actually shifts performance, culture and results. Lori Niles-Hofmann thinks this is the reckoning the profession has needed for years.…
There is a demographic shift hiding in plain sight. In a few short years, the United States will have more people over 60 than children under 18. For Leanne Clark-Shirley, that statistic is not a curiosity for actuaries. It is “the mega trend of our moment” and a direct test of how leaders think about work, culture and contribution. Leanne is the President and CEO of the American Society on Aging,…
Purpose has become the corporate word of the decade, yet in many organizations it behaves more like a slogan than a strategy. In this Leadership NOW conversation, I sit down with Ron Tite, author of "The Purpose of Purpose," to explore what changes when leaders treat purpose as a true engine of growth rather than a glossy story for the website. We dig into the tension between what organizations…
Dr. Megan Gerhardt joins Leadership NOW to unpack Gentelligence, her research-driven approach to leading an intergenerational workforce. We talk about why the narrative around generations has been so negative and how chronocentrism quietly convinces each age group that its way is the only right way to work. Megan explains how Gentelligence reframes age differences as a form of intelligence rather…
