Two-pizza teams are over. The forever layoff era grinds on. And a Wall Street bank hit 90% AI adoption through peer learning, not mandates. July 2026 was a month of paradoxes in the world of work. Here are the top stories, the data, and what they mean for HR.
Stop reading about AI and start building with it. This is a 30-day challenge: pick one small real thing, build it with whatever tool you already have, ship by day thirty. Take it to your team for the real unlock. I am doing it right alongside you, working or broken.
A month of building AI agents, and 90% still broke. Six hard-won lessons on building, dependencies, and failing loudly, from an HR practitioner.
April arrived with longer days, warmer weather and a world of work that felt like it was cranking the temperature just like the weather was. OpenAI published ideas on how to keep people first, while Meta drew fresh scrutiny for plans to capture employee mouse movements and keystrokes to train its AI systems. Elsewhere, Tim … Continue reading What happened: April 2026
March already feels like a long time ago, yet it was a surprisingly memorable month, and not just because it was my birthday month. I really should get these monthly wrap-up posts out sooner, but before everything fades into the blur of “earlier this year,” here’s a quick look at three moments from March that … Continue reading What happened: March 2026
My favourite podcasters don’t make predictions. Instead, they call them wishes. Predictions are a dime a dozen, mostly similar and already overdone by mid-January. But wishes? They add a touch of rebellion against what’s supposed to be realistic. Every year, the duo behind The Best One Yet, a sharp and witty daily business podcast by … Continue reading Three wishes for 2026
My father often jokes that he and I live better lives than Queen Victoria did. At first glance, this comparison seems absurd - after all, she ruled the world's most powerful empire of her time. Yet, while Her Majesty commanded vast resources and armies, she lacked what we consider basic amenities today: no temperature control … Continue reading Creative Destruction: The key to innovation
When Julia had a brilliant idea recently, she chose not to send it as a simple one-liner. Instead, she used ChatGPT to transform it into a comprehensive email for the leadership team. What started as a paragraph ballooned into a lengthy exposition complete with made up market analysis, generalised implementation strategies, and various unrealistic scenarios. … Continue reading Workslop: The latest productivity killer
‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ If you engage in a conversation with me, a version of this question will inevitably surface. And I am willing to bet that you will have an answer – one that will likely not match your current career. The good news is that you aren’t … Continue reading Boring Businesses: Trading Ping Pong Tables for Laundromats
Dwindling start-up investments, relentless headcount pressures (read layoffs), and an obsession with productivity metrics clearly demonstrate that there's no running away from our current 'era of efficiency.' As organizations continue to grapple with their largest expense, it’s time to talk about the silver bullet that is supposedly solving this big bulging bill i.e., Agents and … Continue reading Let’s talk about the cost of AI
The HR Business Partner Story 