Your Work Friends | Fresh Insights on the Now and Next of Work

Send us Fan Mail Work friends can feel like a bonus, something nice if it happens and irrelevant if it doesn’t. We don’t buy that, and the research doesn’t either. Today we dig into what workplace friendships actually do to performance and culture, using three years of data from KPMG that points to a clear conclusion: connection at work is not incidental, it’s central. We’re joined by Sandy Torchia, KPMG’s U.S. Vice Chair of Talent and Culture, to unpack what the numbers reveal about the emp...

Send us Fan Mail Smart people don’t automatically make a smart team. In this episode of Your Work Friends, we talk with Dr. Anita Woolley, professor at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the world’s leading researchers on collective intelligence, about what actually drives team performance—and what most leaders get wrong. Anita breaks down why high-performing teams aren’t about talent density, charisma, or motivation, but about coordination, goal clarity, and participation—most of which is...

Send us Fan Mail “With AI you can delegate a bunch of the work, but you cannot delegate the accountability.” This week on Your Work Friends, we sit down with Zapier’s Chief People & AI Transformation Officer Brandon Sammut to break down how Zapier hit 97% AI adoption without traditional L&D, why they declared an internal “Code Red,” and how culture—not tools—is the real engine of AI transformation. We get into Zapier’s AI fluency rubric for new hires, their “clear the lane” discipline...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s the deal—fear isn’t the villain. Left alone, it just drives. In this episode, we sit down with Harvard Business School professor and Thinkers50 honoree Ranjay Gulati, author of How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage to talk about acting through fear—at work, in leadership, and in a world that feels permanently uncertain. We get into why uncertainty hijacks the brain, what separates risk from true unknowns, and how everyday people “...

Send us Fan Mail Ever felt like you’re on your own at work—even in a “great culture”? That’s because culture isn’t the same as community. One happens whether you shape it or not. The other takes intention, safety, and a shared purpose. In this episode of Your Work Friends, we sit down with DeMario Bell—community strategist, speaker, and founder of Gatherful, who’s spent over a decade building communities across higher ed, startups, and global enterprise, including leading Culture Amp’s 100,00...

Send us Fan Mail Ever felt like your hard work wasn’t enough? That’s because the biggest career breaks don’t always come from effort alone—they come from the people who open doors for you. In this episode of Your Work Friends, we sit down with, Carnegie Mellon Professor, organizational psychologist and author Rosalind Chow to unpack the power of sponsorship. Not mentorship (that’s important too), but sponsorship—the behind-the-scenes advocacy that shapes reputations, gets your name in ...

Send us Fan Mail New Week, New Headlines: Burnout turns deadly at Microsoft, the U.S. job market flatlines, “job huggers” cling to stability, and Salesforce cuts while Google opens 20,000 apprenticeships. What it all means for how you work, earn, and lead. This week we’re covering four stories shaping how you work, earn, and lead: Dying at Work. A Microsoft employee died on campus at 35. What it reveals about the way we normalize overwork, and the guardrails leaders should be setting now.The ...