The People Managing People Podcast

If you’re out there being told to slap AI tools onto everything and call it “digital transformation,” this episode is your reality check. I sat down with Darren Murph—yes, the remote‑work oracle behind GitLab’s all‑remote strategy—to pull back the curtain on what needs to exist before you ever type “chatbot” or “LLM integration” into your roadmap.

We dug into why good documentation isn’t optional anymore, why remote‑work lessons are now directly relevant to AI adoption, and how companies who rushed ahead without building infrastructure are setting themselves up for a trust disaster. In short: if your data, your knowledge systems, your culture aren’t ready for AI, this technology is not your solution—it’s your liability.

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AI isn’t just generating insights anymore—it’s acting on them. In this episode, I talk with Francisco Marin, CEO of Cognitive Talent Solutions, and Dan George, the company’s Chief Experience Officer, about how agentic AI is changing the game for HR. These aren’t your standard dashboards—they’re autonomous systems that detect workforce patterns in real time and proactively intervene, from mentoring and onboarding to retention and burnout prevention.

We get into what makes AI “agentic” in the first place, why consent and trust must sit at the core of any autonomous HR system, and how early pilots are already cutting onboarding time by 40%. If you’ve been wondering what comes after analytics and automation in HR—this is it.

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• Check out Cognitive Talent Solutions
• Network-First Manifesto

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We’re in an era where everyone’s talking about AI, but few are actually getting value from it. In this episode, futurist and author Ravin Jesuthasan joins host David Rice to unpack why the ROI of AI is still so elusive — and why most organizations are looking at it backwards.

Ravin argues that the problem isn’t technological; it’s human. Companies are rushing to deploy tools before they rethink the work itself. He explains how leaders can shift from a tech-first to a work-first mindset, what it really means to be AI fluent, and why the job-based identity that defined the past 150 years of work is quietly crumbling.

If you’re an HR leader, executive, or strategist trying to navigate AI adoption without losing the human center of work, this conversation will help you see what transformation actually looks like — and where to start.

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• Check out Mercer and Ravin’s website

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Generative AI has crossed the threshold from novelty to necessity—but most organizations still haven’t caught up. In this episode, I talk with Kenneth Corrêa, global AI educator and author of Cognitive Organizations: Leveraging the Full Power of Generative AI and Intelligent Agents, about what it actually means to be AI fluent. Kenneth breaks down how leaders can move from scattered experimentation to systems-level adoption, why uploading your financials to a free chatbot isn’t “innovation,” and how education—not fear—is the key to responsible implementation.

We unpack the shift from predictive to generative AI, the cultural lag that keeps leaders from seeing tangible ROI, and why the real competitive advantage comes from empowered humans—not replaced ones. For anyone trying to make AI a force multiplier rather than a security nightmare, this episode’s a roadmap.

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• Connect with Kenneth on LinkedIn
• Check out 80 20 Marketing
• Kenneth’s book — Cognitive Organizations: Leveraging the Full Power of Generative AI and Intelligent Agents

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Why is financial wellness such a universally agreed-upon priority yet so painfully hard to deliver in practice? In this episode, I sit down with Jason Lee—founder of DailyPay, Salt Labs, and now Chief of Chime Enterprise—to break down why employees don’t engage with financial programs, why saving feels like the world’s most boring habit, and what it takes to design benefits that people actually use.

Jason lays out why most employer programs are stuck in the 1980s, why rewards points sometimes function better than savings accounts, and why the best financial wellness programs should look less like coupon clubs and more like full-service hospitals—ER, diagnostics, and rehab floors included. We also explore how brand trust, design simplicity, and modern tech will shape the next generation of employee financial benefits.

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• Check out Chime Enterprise

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Most people don't burn out because they're working too hard—they burn out because they’re performing at a pace they were never built to sustain, chasing goals that don’t align with who they are. Matt Granados joins David Rice to unpack why the language we use around productivity—high performance, hustle, passion—is misleading at best, and actively harmful at worst.

They get into the mechanics of optimal performance, the difference between consuming and contributing, and why fulfillment requires more than vision boards and vague inspiration. If you're leading people in an age of AI, distraction, and burnout, this conversation offers a clear path forward—one rooted in structure, intention, and personal agency.

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• Check out Life Pulse Inc.
• Free resources

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In a world where AI is eating the routine work and career ladders look more like Escher paintings, what does leadership agility really mean? In this episode, I sit down with David Jones, CEO and Partner at Mercer Assessments, to explore how leaders can ground themselves in productivity, positivity, people, and purpose while rethinking the broken systems we’ve inherited.

We dig into why organizations don’t actually have a leadership shortage—they have a followership problem. From the dark matter of astronomy to the dark matter of organizational life, David makes the case that 93% of performance depends on the people who don’t sit in the spotlight. We also examine how AI is reshaping careers, why assessments should be GPS systems for skills, and why employers may need to stop outsourcing education to institutions that are years behind reality.

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• Check out Mercer Assessments

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We’ve all heard the pitch: “Hybrid work is the future.” But dig beneath the slogans and you’ll find wildly different realities—some thriving, others quietly imploding. In this episode, I sit down with Lynette Caruso, a PhD candidate at Australian National University, to unpack her field research across public and private sectors on what makes hybrid work succeed—or fail.

From the power of casual coffee chats to the pitfalls of hot desking, Lynette shows how flexible policies often collapse under rigid cultures. If you’ve ever wondered why your “flexible” workplace feels anything but, or why your team can’t seem to find its rhythm under hybrid rules, this conversation will help you cut through the noise.

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• Connect with Lynette on LinkedIn
• Sir Roland Wilson Scholar

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We’ve spent the last few years talking about mental health at work like it’s always a crisis—trauma, burnout, damage done. Bryan Power, Head of People at Nextdoor, thinks that framing actually makes the conversation harder. Instead, what if we positioned mental health as something everyone can access, not just people in distress? In this episode, we cut through the jargon and look at resilience, performance, and the everyday practices that actually help people do their best work.

Bryan and I also dig into the cultural pendulum swing from “bring your whole self to work” to “respect my boundaries,” the generational divides shaping expectations around connection, and how AI is reshaping not just jobs, but how leaders set boundaries, communicate, and build culture. Spoiler: the hot takes on AI are everywhere, but the real opportunity isn’t doing more with less—it’s doing more with the same.

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• Connect with Bryan on LinkedIn
• Check out Nextdoor

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