Start here: What to read first

Every few months a headline announces that AI is about to take everyone’s job, that flexible work is finished, or that the answer to team performance is just a bit more hustle. Your LinkedIn feed is full of this b.s.

Reality is more complicated, but also comes back to some fundamental truths.

I’ve published about 100 pieces on how work is changing. They look like separate subjects: return to office, AI adoption, burnout, performance reviews, managers, inequality. They’re one subject, really: human-centered leadership.

The belief underneath all of it is that people’s own motivation is more powerful than carrots and sticks, and that the job of leadership is to build trust, drive alignment and unlock potential. I’ve seen what works in the research, and in the teams that I led.

The companies that already know this are the ones measuring outcomes, letting teams decide how they work, and spending real money on capability. The ones who are struggling reach for mandates, monitoring, and control—whatever the topic.

I want us to build a future we want to live in, where people thrive at work.

If you read only one thing: Culture Eats AI for Breakfast. No founder ever declared they owed their massive success to ruthless efficiency and treating workers like widgets. If you want to transform work, start by looking at your culture.

Most of what ends up here starts in a room like this, listening to someone who knows more than I do.

The AI displacement story has a narrator problem Four thousand leaders in a room agreeing about the “human plus AI equation,” and the things nobody said out loud. I pulled punches at that conference and wrote this because of it.

“The biggest warning signal I’ve ever seen” Your heaviest AI users report 88% higher burnout and are twice as likely to quit. The people getting the most out of the tools are your biggest flight risk.

AI Brain Fry 14% of US workers have it. It drives a 39% jump in major errors and in people planning their exit. One manager behavior cuts it by 15%.

Hybrid is Dead Work from home has stabilized near 25% of days, roughly four times pre-pandemic. Meanwhile the term itself is dying, and Nick Bloom took it out of his own book title. The useful questions were never about where.

The Great Office Divide Some companies are reimagining how work happens. Others are waiting for a 2019 that isn’t coming back. You can tell which is which by what they measure.

Microsoft Gets it Right The headlines called it the end of remote work. What Microsoft actually did was run five years of data on when in-person time helps, then act on it. The number of days is the least interesting part.

Tech’s Leadership Crisis Burnout in tech: AI pressure, or bad managers? The answer is both, and only one of them is fixable this quarter.

Your player-coach is drowning She has 15 direct reports across two dozen projects, inherited someone else’s worst performer, and just got called a player-coach. Cutting layers without fixing fundamentals builds a different kind of broken.

Four leadership skills for 2026 The piece that started the most arguments in my comments. Not the four you’d guess.

When Academics Ignore Research (and Reality) A line-by-line teardown of one hostile study. If you only have time to arm yourself for a single argument, take this one.

Five Years Later... What actually happened between the office emptying and now, and what the people predicting a full return keep getting wrong.

Free the Data, Free the Ideas Why I stopped charging for any of this. Short, and the closest thing to a mission statement here.

“It doesn’t feel like our country is heading in the right direction” The most-discussed thing I’ve published. A lot of leaders turn out to be holding the same thought quietly.

The winners lose their nerve Sometimes what’s discussed offstage is way more interesting. Today’s “masters of the universe” are worried it’s all coming apart.

Gratitude and generosity The most-read thing I’ve published, and the most personal. Recognition beats goal clarity, balance, purpose, and technology as an engagement driver, and it isn’t close.

Names for things you’re already living. Steal them, use them in your next leadership meeting, and watch who nods.

Doom loop vs. boom loop. Monitoring produces anxiety and performative work, which produces more monitoring. Trust produces engagement and results, which produces more trust. Every RTO argument is a fight over which loop you’re in.

Intentional gatherings. In-person time designed around the moments that actually need a room, rather than an attendance quota. One well-designed day a month beats three mandated ones, and there’s a randomized trial behind that.

AI brain fry. The cognitive tax of running three or more AI tools at once, on top of the job you already had.

Growth not rest. Burnout doesn’t yield to wellness apps. It yields to rebalancing time in perform mode against time in grow mode. The formula that made you successful at 28 is the thing burning you down at 45.

AI transformation is a team sport. The team is the unit of change, not the individual and not the company. One embedded champion on a team beats ten top-down mandates.

I’m CEO of Work Forward. I write a column at Charter where I’m an exec-in-residence, publish regularly at MIT Sloan Management Review, advise at BCG, and wrote How the Future Works. Sometimes you’ll find me arguing about this on LinkedIn, which I largely regret, or Bluesky, which I don’t.

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