About this episode

Greg La Blanc interviews Ashley Goodall about the challenges of change management in the workplace, particularly in the context of rapid transformation and AI.

Ashley Goodall is a longtime consultant, Fortune 50 executive, speaker, researcher, and writer in the areas of leadership and human resources. His two books are Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World and The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance. Greg and Ashley discuss how rapid transformation, especially with AI, often worsens work because human employees are wired for stability, ritual, predictability, and belonging. Change and improvement are not synonyms. They discuss creating “equilibrium under varying load” by making decision processes transparent, offering voice without confusing it with vote, and giving people information to improve predictions, since bad news is often preferable to no news. Ashley notes how leaders underinvest in people due to short-termism, and layoffs and constant uncertainty damage both remaining employees and health. He emphasizes building many great teams, choosing and training team leaders well, recognizing excellence publicly, making contributions legible to boost self-efficacy, and reorienting HR toward long-term human performance and organizational prosperity as administrative work is…

People in this episode

Host: Greg La Blanc

Guest: Ashley Goodall

Topics covered

• change management
• leadership
• human resources
• organizational performance
• AI impact on work
• employee well-being

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University FM

Books & works: Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World, The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance

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