What if the problem isn’t that your people aren’t performing… but that your system is broken?

Right now, many organizations are rushing to adopt AI, cutting entry-level roles, and asking more from leaders who are already at capacity. It feels efficient. It looks strategic. But it’s quietly eroding the very foundation of future performance.

In this episode, host Mark Edgar sits down with Kelly Monahan to challenge the way we’re thinking about work, leadership, and AI. They explore why starting with technology is the wrong move, how outdated systems are limiting human potential, and what leaders need to rebuild if they want sustainable performance.

This is a conversation about getting the moment right. Not just implementing AI, but redefining how value is created, how people are developed, and what leadership actually requires now.

If you’re feeling the pressure to “move faster” while sensing something deeper is off, this episode will help you step back and rethink where to start.

About Our Guest

Kelly Monahan is a future of work advisor, researcher, and bestselling author focused on the intersection of human behavior, leadership, and technology. With a background in HR and a PhD in organizational research, she works closely with executives to help them navigate AI-driven transformation while keeping human performance at the center.

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• Naomi Titleman Colla
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For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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What if you could see your organization’s culture like an X-ray?

In this episode, host Naomi Titleman sits down with behavioral scientist Dr. Harry Toukalas and talent strategist Mark Jesty to explore how organizational network analysis is replacing guesswork in HR and what the rise of AI means for human accountability at work.

Because most leaders believe they understand their culture. They’ve run the surveys. They’ve reviewed the data. They’ve built action plans.

But they’re often working from a partial view.

This conversation challenges that assumption by unpacking what sits beneath the surface: the informal networks of trust, influence, and communication that actually determine how work gets done. The parts of culture that don’t show up in surveys or org charts, but shape performance every day.

We explore the gap between what people say and what they do, why hybrid work is quietly eroding cross-team collaboration, and how behavioral data can reveal early signals of disengagement before they become exit interviews.

Most importantly, this episode reframes the role of HR. From interpreting opinions to measuring behavior. From reacting to problems to predicting them.

Because when you can see how culture is forming and spreading in real time, you can finally intervene with precision and credibility.

About Our Guests

Mark Jesty is a talent strategist and advisor who has spent decades helping leaders strengthen performance and leadership inside complex organizations.
Dr. Harry Toukalas is a behavioral scientist and CEO of Swarm, where he combines behavioral science and AI to analyze how decisions, culture, and performance actually form and evolve inside organizations.

Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, click HERE

Follow us on LinkedIn:

• Mark Edgar
• Naomi Titleman Colla
• future foHRward

Follow us on Instagram

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

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Most leaders know meetings are broken. What’s harder to admit is that we keep reinforcing the system that makes them that way.

Calendars are full. Teams are exhausted. And yet, meetings continue to multiply. Not because they work, but because they signal work.

In this episode, Rebecca Hinds challenges the idea that meetings are just a scheduling problem. She reframes them as a deeper organizational issue rooted in visibility, status, and outdated ways of measuring value.

You’ll hear why meetings often aren’t the root problem, but the most visible symptom. Why hybrid work and AI haven’t fixed collaboration, and in many cases have made it worse. And what it actually looks like to design meetings and workflows with intention, not habit.

For HR leaders, this conversation is a wake-up call. Not just to reduce meetings, but to rethink how work itself is defined, measured, and experienced.

Because if we don’t change it deliberately, AI will simply help us do more of what isn’t working.

About our guest
Rebecca Hinds is a leading expert in organizational behavior who works with companies navigating the challenges of modern work. She founded the Work Innovation Lab at Asana and the Work AI Institute at Glean, where she bridges the gap between academic research and real organizational practice. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and more. She is also an instructor for CNBC's Make It Masterclass: How to Use AI to Be More Productive and Successful at Work, and the author of Your Best Meeting Ever.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[~12:50] Check-In: Rebecca's best meeting ever

[~19:40] Why meetings got worse after the pandemic

[~22:10] Visibility bias: why we equate busyness with value

[~24:45] The WWII sabotage manual

[~27:00] The $1.4 trillion problem

[~30:10] Meetings as your most expensive, overlooked product

[~35:45] "Process is a proxy"

[~36:00] Where AI helps and where it hurts meetings

[~38:30] The brainstorming debate: to AI or not to AI?

[~43:40] One tip for HR leaders: where to start

[~45:05] It's okay to cancel

Resources & Links

• 📘 Book: Your Best Meeting Ever by Rebecca Hinds
• 🌐 Website: rebeccahinds.com
• 🔬 Work AI Institute: workai.institute
• 💼 LinkedIn: Rebecca Hinds
• 📺 CNBC Make It Masterclass: How to Use AI to Be More Productive and Successful at Work

Stay connected with foHRsight

• Sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight
• Follow us on LinkedIn:
  • Mark Edgar
  • Naomi Titleman Colla
  • future foHRward
• Follow us on Instagram

For more information on our private community for forward-thinking HR leaders, including how to join our next Manager-Director HR Leader cohort launching this spring, visit our website at futurefohrward.com/community. We are also currently welcoming new members in our CHRO and VP+ HRBP & Talent cohorts. Don't miss your chance to join the community you've been missing!

Support the show