Three weeks after the coaching engagement ended, Sarah was back where she started. Not because the coaching was bad. The coaching was good. Six months of careful conversation, real insight, the kind of work that genuinely shifted how she saw herself as a leader. She left the final session clear, energized, and certain she was going to lead differently. And for about a month, she did. Then her boss started copying her on the same kinds of emails. Her direct reports, sensing no

AI can't fix what is structurally broken, no matter how much the C-suite wants it integrated into operations. And the data is starting to make that case with uncomfortable clarity. The 2025 Writer and Workplace Intelligence survey of 1,600 executives and knowledge workers found that 42% of C-suite leaders say AI adoption is tearing their company apart. Not the tools. The organization. Everyone has a theory about why. Weak strategy. Poor data quality. Inadequate training. Chan

There are two work markets operating simultaneously, and most people can only see one of them. The first is the job market. It's transactional. Openings, applications, placements, salaries. You post a role, you get resumes, you fill the seat. The second is the talent market. It's strategic. Organizations aren't filling seats. They're searching for the people who will help them build their future. One market trades in credentials. The other trades in capability, judgment, and

Every job interview you’ve ever been in followed the same script. The organization asks the questions. You provide the answers. They evaluate you. You hope for the best. The entire architecture of the hiring process is built on one assumption: the organization is the buyer, and you are the product. That assumption is breaking. And the smartest professionals in the workforce have already figured out why. Think about what you prepared for your last interview. You researched the

That's the question nobody is asking as companies quietly reverse the AI-driven layoffs they celebrated just months ago. Forrester's research and Orgvue's survey of over 1,000 business leaders independently arrived at the same number: 55% of employers who laid off workers for AI now admit they made the wrong call. Not a slight miscalculation. The wrong call. A quarter of those leaders didn't even know which roles would benefit from AI before they started cutting. Nearly a thi

Last week, I gave you three diagnostic questions your organization can't answer, and based on the response, there was a quiet recognition that the silence was familiar. You've been living in it. But here's what became obvious from the responses. "Okay, I see the problem. Now what do I do about it?" That's the right question, and the answer requires something most people haven't been told. The solution isn't one-sided. Organizations have structural work to do, and I'll address

Last week, I told you the canary stopped singing. I walked you through the $1.9 trillion annual cost of disengagement in the US alone, part of a $9.6 trillion global crisis, the 68% of the workforce that's checked out, and the uncomfortable truth that most organizations see the warning signs and choose to keep mining anyway. But knowing the mine is toxic isn't enough. You need to know where the air went bad , and most organizations don't, because they've been measuring the wr

In 160+ episodes of the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast, I've heard the same pattern play out across industries, geographies, and organizational sizes: leaders see the warning signs, understand the diagnosis, acknowledge the dysfunction, and then freeze. Not because they're incompetent or malicious. Because they're trapped between quarterly earnings pressures, board expectations, and organizational inertia, which makes transformation feel riskier than the slow hemorrhaging of

Leaders are making a bet right now: that AI will solve their workforce problems. Replace disengaged workers. Increase productivity. Close the talent gap. Some are even treating it like the ultimate management tool, a way to become puppet masters pulling strings from above, finally achieving perfect control over every workflow, every output, every decision. It's an appealing fantasy, technology as the cure for organizational dysfunction. But isn't this exactly the frustration

Almost every person who has appeared on the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast is chasing the same ghosts. They're worried that AI will replace their workforce. They're scrambling to address "quiet quitting." They're struggling to understand what looks like Gen Z job-hopping and a perceived lack of loyalty, perceptions that may say more about broken organizational systems than about the generation itself. They're rolling out another engagement survey, hoping this time the data wi

There comes a time when people decide that purpose, meaning, self-determination, and making a difference are where the energy of life resides. And when they reach that conclusion, something shifts. They stop negotiating with systems that strip those things away. They stop hoping the next reorganization will be different. They just leave. So what happens when you look over your shoulder and no one is there? Not the comfortable absence of a quiet afternoon, but the unsettling r

Here's a hiring riddle for you: Would you rather bring on a 10/3 or a 6/9.5? That's a candidate with elite skills but lousy value alignment versus someone with solid skills and an exceptional value fit. If you said 6/9.5, congratulations, you just failed the test most organizations are actually running. In 2025, about 85% of employers say they're using skills-based hiring, and they'll report better performance and stronger retention as a result. But here's what the research q

Most companies confuse vision with foresight, and it's costing them their future. In their landmark book Competing for the Future , Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad warned us: "Vision is what you declare in boardrooms; foresight is what you earn through disciplined scanning of how industries actually evolve.” Vision is an apparition, a desired future conjured from hope and aspiration. Foresight is constructed from observable trends, emerging technologies, and shifting customer be

After 152 episodes of The Throttle Up Leadership Podcast featuring guests from literally around the world, I've noticed a pattern. When my guests talk about leadership, they almost always speak to empathy, authenticity, trust, and integrity. These words come up constantly, and rightfully so. But here's what I've also noticed: they're almost always framed as the individual leader's traits. Personal attributes. Qualities someone either has or develops. And that's where organiza

There's a can of lubricant in your garage that's named after failure. WD-40 stands for "Water Displacement, 40th formula,” which means formulas 1 through 39 didn't work. The chemist at Rocket Chemical Company who mixed formula number 23 couldn't afford to get emotionally devastated when it failed. Neither could the person mixing formula 12, or 31, or 38. They had to show up the next day and try again. They understood something profound: success wasn't about nailing it on the

August 27, 2025 Let’s be honest—nobody brags about being great at doubt. You never see a LinkedIn headline that reads: “Ambiguity...

August 13, 2025 There’s a moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark—a turning point that changes everything. Indiana Jones and his guide, Sallah,...

August 6, 2025 Leadership can no longer stay trapped in titles, traits, or heroic individuals. In an AI-augmented world, organizations...

We've heard of quiet quitting —but the new reality is even more unsettling: quiet cracking.Unlike burnout, which is visible and...

There’s a hidden cost in the way most organizations still approach leadership — and we rarely talk about it. It’s the cost of...