Future Ready Leadership With Jacob Morgan – Details, episodes & analysis

November 13, 2025: Ford's CEO warns that the U.S. is entering a skilled-trades crisis as thousands of high-paying technical jobs sit vacant. Elon Musk's unprecedented trillion-dollar compensation package reveals the extreme performance targets Tesla must hit—ranging from 20 million vehicles a year to the deployment of a million robots. Glassdoor releases its top workplace trends for 2026, highlighting the rise of transparency, internal mobility, and human-centric leadership. And new reporting from The Wall Street Journal shows that skills-based hiring is fading as companies quietly return to college-degree requirements.

Stop patching problems and start designing an intentional workplace. The 8 Laws of Employee Experience gives you the how. Preorder your copy: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

November 12, 2025: PwC's 2025 Global Workforce Survey exposes a growing gap between empowered and excluded workers. Across Australia, employees are already facing the reality of AI-driven job disruption. A WIRED feature explores a startup run entirely by AI agents—including executives—raising new questions about what leadership looks like when teammates aren't human. Amazon announces a massive $2.5 billion investment to upskill 50 million people worldwide. New research from Yahoo UK and Modern Sciences shows AI is reshaping pay and opportunity, rewarding those who work with technology instead of against it. And Honeywell CEO Vimal Kapur tells Fortune why AI isn't just a tool—it's a complete redesign of how business operates.

 

If you lead people, you design experiences—do it on purpose with The 8 Laws of Employee Experience. Preorder now: https://bit.ly/8exlaws

October 30, 2025: Today's episode explores the shifting dynamics shaping business and leadership. Across industries, experience itself is being questioned as companies reject overqualified candidates, revealing how age bias and short-term thinking are reshaping hiring. Business leaders are entering 2026 with growing pessimism as geopolitical instability overtakes inflation as their top concern, and 84% now cite political and legal volatility as a major business risk. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase is using its in-house AI system to help employees write performance reviews, offering a glimpse into how artificial intelligence is changing not just operations but management itself. And in retail, Walmart's CEO warns that AI is no longer an emerging tool but a leadership necessity. Together, these stories show a world where adaptability, technological fluency, and cultural stability have become the defining traits of future-ready organizations.

________________

If you lead people, you design experiences—do it on purpose with The 8 Laws of Employee Experience. Preorder here: 8EXLaws.com

Have you ever wondered if vulnerability could backfire? Leaders often face tough decisions about when and how to be open, and the stakes are high when trust is involved. In today's Leadership Spark, we explore a powerful story about a CEO who learned hard lessons about vulnerability after it was used against her early in her career. You'll hear insights on navigating trust, why vulnerability is essential for leadership, and how self-compassion can be your safety net when things go wrong. This episode also introduces the "Vulnerability Wheel" framework to help leaders use vulnerability effectively.

 

________________

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/

The way that cities evolve impacts our lives, personally and professionally. Jonathan Reichental works as the Chief Information Officer for the city of Palo Alto, reinventing sectors of the government that are struggling. Cities need a CIO because technology is the center of operations and almost all projects have a technical aspect. Not every city currently has a CIO but we are seeing the shift and demand to take IT to the center of delivering better services to citizens.

  Jonathan's office is in the city hall of Palo Alto. They built a civic tech center that looks like a start up, offering on-site training and team building. His team consists of 32 full time staff, plus temporary staff related to different companies like contractors and employees from vendors. Relative to cities of its size, Palo Alto has a large IT group. The city delivers all of its own utilities which generates half of its revenue. The population of less than 100,000 people doubles during the day with workers and students commuting in. The area has a huge appetite for technology!   Jonathan is in a position to really observe and influence The City of the Future. So what does that look like? If the current trend continues, the vast major majority of the future will be in an urban setting instead of rural. Cities aren't currently ready for that. Our commutes are horrendous and we have crumbling infrastructures. The climate change and its effects need to be addressed. Our energy systems need to advance. Cities are typically inefficient and each part doesn't communicate. Many sectors of city government need new innovation and ideas. The Internet of Things will make the City of the Future possible... we can connect traffic signals to software for maximum efficiency and better traffic flow. We will be able to do the dreaded activities like renewing a driver's license and acquiring permits on a phone or computer, instead of spending the whole day at a government office. The parts of our daily lives that are still trapped in the past will catch up to the present. The software to facilitate The City of the Future exists, we just have to take a risk!   What you will learn in this episode: Technology and people components of The City of the Future Big data Transportation Education Community versus Organization involvement Sustainability and going green Smart cities   Link From The Episode: Palo Alto CIO Twitter Account City Of Palo Alto   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Mark Curtis started his career in the marketing and digital field, and is now the co-founder and Chief Client Officer at Fjord. Fjord is the design and innovation part of Accenture Interactive that employs 750 people in 18 cities... mainly designers spread across the world! The company is growing rapidly due to the increasing demand for service design and the delivery of end design digital products. Mark and his team are responsible for inventing services and laying out the design.

  Fjord's recent report, The Era of Living Services, describes how data analytics will be combined with the Internet of Things to create services that come to life! It is based on the thought that we are currently experiencing the third era of digital that adds complexity on top of the previous eras - desktop web and smart phones. These services are described as living because they will change in real time, be all around us, and effect our lives in really profound ways. The Era of Living Services will be very impactful at work, at home, and in our education, health, and shopping! This will introduce a whole new level of individualized digital experiences.    The Era of Living Services has arrived due to several trends. For one, the price point is at the right place. Technology is becoming more affordable than ever. Also, the expectations of consumers are raised. Millennials in the workforce have a completely different attitude to this kind of progress. They accept and encourage it. And technology, such as AI and robotics, is advancing at an exponential rate that will fuel the Era of Living Services!

 

Things you will learn in this episode: What is living service? Concepts of liquid experiences Why living services are starting to happen How this impacts how we work and live What this means for privacy, security, and ethics Challenges this will create How liquid consumer expectations spill over into workplace Employee experience   Links From The Episode: fjordnet.com   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

Marco Annuziata is the Chief Economist and Executive Director of Global Market Insights at General Electric. He is relatively new in the company, only having been there for 5 years in a newly created position. Marco is tasked with studying what is happening around the world and how it will affect employment, economies, and growth. He looks at the long term geopolitical, economic, social, and technological trends, then maps that to the risks and opportunities for GE's different businesses around the world. 

GE uses the Global Innovation Barometer to learn how people feel about innovation. It is a survey of business executives and the informed public across 26 countries that identifies the implications, obstacles, advantages of innovation. Marco's team uses the barometer to get a sense of what is happening globally and in each country. One of the key findings is surprising... people are generally optimistic about the 4th industrial revolution's affect on economic growth and living standards.   Marco's team essentially tries to predict the future based on the data from the Global Innovation Barometer. They build their own forecasts of growths, investment outlooks, and more. They can then bring insights to management and the rest of GE. It is a very demanding and fallible process, but extremely fascinating!   What you will learn in this episode: What is the Global Innovation Barometer Key findings of the Barometer Marco's outlook for the U.S. economy Automation 4th Industrial Revolution Startup mentality Talent acquisition   Links From The Episode: GE Global Innovation Barometer 2016 Marco Annunziata On Twitter   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

  Joe Burton comes from a corporate background, working in high stress situations with long hours and constant travel. His career was on an uphill track but his personal life and health started to decline. He even developed insomnia and asthma around the age of 40. Up until then, he would have laughed if someone suggested mindfulness as a way to alleviate his stress. Joe realized that mindfulness training helped him be more present and aware. He developed a deeper relationship with his emotions and central nervous system. It changed the way he is with his family and as a leader.   Now Joe is the founder and CEO of Whil, a mindfulness training company that offers three digital programs that work on any computer or mobile device. Mindfulness and Yoga for Adults which is all about stress reduction and improving performance. Grow is for helping teenagers deal with being a teen in today's world. Search Inside Yourself is focused on leadership, emotional intelligence, teamwork, and collaboration skills. Whil is primarily focused on serving corporations, healthcare systems, and universities but can be used by anyone that is looking for a way to help calm their life down. It now has 350,000 users and for every product sold, Whil gives one away.   The average person spends almost half of their time with their mind wandering, usually worrying. We are living in an age that has our brains trained for activity. Mindfulness trains our brain to go to a place of calm and focus so we can be more present in our lives. Just 5-10 minutes of practice a day on bringing our attention back to a focal point can help us be able to maintain sustained attention for longer periods of time. It is like going to the gym for your brain..not easy but very rewarding!   "Having the awareness to understand when to act and when not, and being able to act out of choice instead of compulsion is a big part of mindfulness." - Joe Burton   Mindfulness training is becoming more common on the workplace because there are now thousands of studies in the field of neuroscience that correlate it with improved health and performance. It is linked to improved cardiovascular health, immune systems, healing time, memory, and focus. Studies even show a link to reducing chronic pain and PTSD. Of course this is important to employees but it also benefits companies that want to reduce absenteeism and health care costs. In this on demand world, it is important to be equipped with ways to relieve stress and mindfulness training is the perfect tool.   What you will learn in this episode:

• What is mindfulness
• Myths and misconceptions
• What it means to be mindful
• Examples of mindfulness
• Impact of mindfulness
• Leadership and relationships
• Tips on how to become more mindful

  Link From The Episode:   whil.com    (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

The workplace of the past is gone... We are now talking about homing from work, not working from home. Tim Oldman uses his background in interior design and architecture, along with his fascination in merging diagnostic tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to get a better understanding of employee spaces. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Leesman, famous for the Leesman Index, which is an independent auditor of the relationship between employees and the space that is provided for them. Tim compares Leesman to the radiographers of the corporate workplace and that couldn't be more appropriate!   Leesman releases a variety of reports on ideas like cost of occupancy and employee retention. They adhere to the concept of open source knowledge so anyone can view the reports on their website.The Leesman Index looks at the impact of work spaces on employees and identifies the most effective spaces. Tim is clear that it isn't about how pretty, or how large, or how expensive a space is designed. The key is knowledge transfer. A successful organization must capitalize on knowledge existing within so they should create an environment that better facilitates knowledge transfer.    The most recent Leesman Index was released in November 2015 and shredded many myths about the physical work space. It found that there is no difference on how work spaces impact gender and that age does have an impact but it is not generational. The report also shows that natural lighting is preferred over artificial, informal areas are more effective, and other important factors. However, one-dimensionally planned spaces never work. The highest performing workplaces take all factors into account. They have flexibility and variety which increases employee production and pride.   What you will learn in this episode:   What is the Leesman Index Who is the company that has the highest LMI Differences in high performance and low performance work spaces Shredding work space myths Work-life balance How the leading organizations are already way ahead   Links From The Episode   Leesman   Tim Oldman on Twitter   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)

We are currently in the midst of an industrial revolution with an exponential pace of change and it is disrupting industry in every country. This revolution is different from the past three in terms of velocity, scope, and impact. It is a digital revolution, characterized by a fusion of technology that is impacting every aspect of how we work and how we live, creating threats and opportunities. Skills that we learned in formal education are now becoming irrelevant. Employees should be prepared to completely reskill themselves.

I recently spoke with Sandeep Dadlani, the Executive Vice President and Head of Americas for Infosys, on what is going to be required from employees of the future to succeed and thrive. Infosys is a massive, quick growing global consulting firm. Sandeep has been with them for over 15 years in a variety of roles. They have studied the 4th industrial revolution and the impact it is going to have thoroughly. Infosys believes the answer to the challenges we face in this revolution is education.   With technology evolving so quickly, corporate training programs are behind the times and desperately need to be updated. We should focus on education in areas like computers, data, artificial intelligence, and designed thinking to enable consistent training for the workforce. Learning should be a creative, clever environment that allows employees to prove that they are innovators. Managers just need to listen to the future... youth already has a good idea about what they want to be trained on.      What You Will Learn In This Episode:  

• World Economic Forum
• What is the 4th Industrial Revolution
• Amplifying human potential
• Skills gap
• Emerging markets versus the United States
• Education and training in the workforce
• Gender divide

  Links From The Episode: Sandeep Dadlani on Twitter Infosys Report on Amplifying Human Potential   (Music by Ronald Jenkees)