Workplace Stories by RedThread Research
by Stacia Garr & Dani Johnson · 138 episodes
BusinessManagement
Workplace Stories is a podcast for HR and people leaders who are tired of noise and need clarity that actually holds up. It is hosted by Stacia Garr and Dani Johnson of RedThread Research.Each episode features candid conversations with practitioners, thinkers, and executives who are navigating real decisions inside complex organizations. Not hypotheticals. Not vendor promises. Real tradeoffs, real experiments, and real lessons learned along the way.You’ll hear how leaders are making sense of skills, AI, organizational design, and culture when there’s no clear playbook and pressure to show progress is high. The focus is always the...
Latest episodes
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1 h 04
Cisco’s Cross-Functional Approach to Learning and AI: Marci Paino & Lawrence Stevens
Building a skills-focused organization isn’t just about creating learning content or adopting the latest technology. As Cisco has shown, the journey to a skills-first culture is as…
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1 h 00
ServiceNow's Approach to Skills and Workforce Readiness: Jayney Howson
The rapid transformation of work, driven by technological acceleration and evolving business needs, is leaving organizations scrambling to keep their employees future ready. Servic…
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1 h 07
Pay Transparency and Living Wage Initiatives: Colleen McCreary
When we think about culture, compensation is rarely at the heart of the conversation. But how organizations approach pay, structure, transparency, and performance ties speaks volum…
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47 min
Making Order Out of Chaos in L&D: Tracie Cantu
In this episode, I welcome Tracie Cantu, Chief Learning Strategist and author of Running L&D Like a Business. We discuss the operational challenges facing today’s L&D teams, the cr…
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48 min
Rethinking DEI Paradigms: Jennifer McCollum
This week on the podcast, we welcome Jennifer McCollum, President and CEO of Catalyst and author of the new book Men at Work: The Roadmap to Gender Partnership. Jennifer shares her…
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60 min
Why Pulling Beats Pushing in the Modern Workplace: Benjamin Granger
Leadership is often the deciding factor in whether organizations thrive or falter, but the way we lead matters even more. In the latest episode of Workplace Stories, Dr. Benjamin G…
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59 min
Driving Workforce Agility at Scale: Maryjo Charbonnier
When IBM spun off its infrastructure services business into Kyndryl, it created the largest public company spin in New York Stock Exchange history—launching with 90,000 employees a…
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58 min
Preparing Students for the AI-Driven Workplace: Michael Noble
Artificial intelligence is transforming not just our workplaces, but the very nature of education and professional development. Our guest this week, Michael Noble, Vice President o…
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59 min
Three Paths for L&D in the Age of AI: Don Taylor & Egle Vinauskaite
Learning and Development (L&D) is at a crossroads. As artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates changes in the workplace, L&D’s traditional stronghold—the creation and curation of c…
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52 min
Inside Hearst Networks’ Culture and Profit Revolution: Lucy King & Dean Possenniskie
Organizational change is now a constant rather than a phase. Few stories illustrate this better than Hearst Networks’ journey, as shared by Dean Possenniskie, CEO, and Lucy King, C…
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58 min
How McKinsey Is Rewiring L&D for the AI Age: Heather Stefanski
This week on the podcast, we welcome Heather Stefanski, Chief Learning and Development Officer at McKinsey & Company. We explore how organizations like McKinsey are reimagining emp…
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1 h 04
Challenges and Solutions for Supporting Frontline Teams: JD Dillon
Frontline workers form the massive, beating heart of the global workforce, constituting up to 80% of all employees. But their enablement, experience, and upward mobility often rema…
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50 min
Transforming Performance Management in the Public Sector: John Barrand
In this episode, we sit down with John Barrand, CHRO for the State of Utah, to discuss an inspiring transformation in public sector performance management. John led a bold effort t…
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53 min
Designing Future Narratives in a Changing Workplace: Lisa Kay Solomon and Jeffrey Rogers
In this episode, we welcome Lisa Kay Solomon, designer-in-residence at Stanford's d.school and host of the "How We Future" podcast, and Jeffrey Rogers, principal of Learning and Fa…
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56 min
How Workplace Culture Shapes Business Success: Ron Storn
This week, we’re sitting down with Ron Storn, Chief People and Culture Officer at Truckstop, to discuss culture—how it forms, who owns it, and how it scales in growing organization…
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47 min
A Culture of Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Jenna Filipkowski
On this episode, we’re with Jenna Filipkowski, the Head of Learning and Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With a background in organizational psychology and rese…
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50 min
Strategic Workforce Planning: David Edwards
Strategic workforce planning is back, and not in a nostalgic “this trend is back around” kind of way. It is back because the old staffing model, react late, hire fast, hope the mar…
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58 min
Authentic AI Adoption and Cultural Impact: Dessalen Wood
From overcoming initial anxieties through hackathons and playful experiments, to setting an ambitious organizational roadmap for AI, Dessalen Wood shares how Syntax is embedding ar…
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50 min
Five Levels of Becoming AI Native: Melissa Reeve
The way organizations think about artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace has shifted dramatically over the past few years. While early conversations centered on isolated exp…
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59 min
Reimagining Work at Scale: Manuel Smukalla on Skills, Dynamic Shared Ownership, and the Future of Bayer
Manuel Smukalla, Global Talent Impact, Skills Intelligence, and Systems Lead at Bayer, joins Workplace Stories to unpack one of the most ambitious organizational transformations un…