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Digital HR Leaders with David Green


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  • 283. What Neuroscience Reveals About Making Change Stick

    51:08||Season 54, Ep. 283
    What if the resistance you're seeing from your team isn't opposition at all? David Green is joined by Travis Hahler, who leads global strategy and transformation at Salesforce and is also the founder of Neurological Nomad, where he applies neuroscience and neuropsychology to how leaders manage change. Travis is the author of the new book Rethink Resistance, and his central argument reframes almost everything: resistance isn't personal, it's protective. Why resistance to change should be read as information, not opposition: The six neurological barriers to change, and why leaders need to understand each one How routine and old habits quietly pull people back toward what made them successful before, even when they're not against the future Why cognitive load and pacing determine whether people actually learn through a transformation, or just survive it What employees are really losing in change that's genuinely good for them, and why leaders often miss it How to apply these insights practically to workforce transformation and AI adoption Whether you're leading a transformation right now or preparing for one, this conversation will change how you think about the resistance you're seeing. This episode is sponsored by Valence.  Nadia, Valence's AI coaching platform, connects talent strategy to the work employees are actually doing — offering coaching from the frontline to the boardroom, and surfacing organisational insights that weren't visible before.  As the most widely deployed coach in the Fortune 500, Nadia is already helping global leaders like Nestlé, Delta, CVS, and Kraft Heinz transform talent at scale.  Learn more at valence.co/insight222  Additional resources: Rethink Resistance: Embracing Neuroscience to Lead Transformational Change

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  • 282. From HR Silos to One Connected People System

    37:31||Season 54, Ep. 282
    Is your HR function organised the way employees actually experience it, or just the way it's always been done? In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by Tony Truong, VP of People Strategy, Operations, Technology and Analytics at Chime, to unpack why most HR functions are still organised in silos, by specialty, while employees experience work as a series of moments: getting hired, being onboarded, going for a promotion. Tony has spent the last two years closing that gap, rebuilding Chime's people function from the ground up as the company has scaled into a public company. In this episode, David and Tony discuss: Why the real limitation holding HR back is fragmentation, not ambition What it's taken to rebuild a people function from the ground up at a newly public company How AI has reshaped recruiting at Chime, cutting a process that used to take days down to hours Tony's three-stage framework for thinking about AI's role in the business: assistance, automation, and orchestration What it actually looks like to move people analytics from the periphery of HR to the centre of how a business makes decisions This episode is sponsored by Valence.  Nadia, Valence's AI coaching platform, connects talent strategy to the work employees are actually doing — offering coaching from the frontline to the boardroom, and surfacing organisational insights that weren't visible before.  As the most widely deployed coach in the Fortune 500, Nadia is already helping global leaders like Nestlé, Delta, CVS, and Kraft Heinz transform talent at scale.  Learn more at valence.co/insight222  Additional resources: Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2026 Report
  • 281. How AI Coaching is Changing Talent Management and Workforce Transformation

    57:20||Season 54, Ep. 281
    How do you tell the difference between AI that's genuinely transforming HR and AI that's just a slide in a vendor deck? In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by Parker Mitchell, Founder and CEO of Valence, the team behind the AI coaching platform Nadia, to discuss what it really takes for HR to prove value in an increasingly crowded AI market. Join them, as they discuss: How to separate genuine AI capability from marketing claims in an increasingly crowded marketWhy AI budgets are increasingly coming from the C-suite rather than HR, and what that means for how HR shows up in these conversationsWhat CHROs should be asking before choosing between an AI-native provider and a legacy platform with bolted-on AI featuresHow the best people analytics teams are proving ROI from AI coaching, beyond adoption metricsWhat it looks like to make performance management continuous rather than a once or twice-a-year processWhy frontline and operational workers need a different approach to AI coaching than knowledge workersValence's recent partnership with Microsoft and what it signals about where AI coaching is heading This episode is sponsored by Valence.  Nadia, Valence's AI coaching platform, connects talent strategy to the work employees are actually doing — offering coaching from the frontline to the boardroom, and surfacing organisational insights that weren't visible before.  As the most widely deployed coach in the Fortune 500, Nadia is already helping global leaders like Nestlé, Delta, CVS, and Kraft Heinz transform talent at scale.  Learn more at valence.co/insight222
  • 280. The Octopus Organisation: How HR Can Make Transformation Stick

    50:33||Season 54, Ep. 280
    What would your organisation look like if it worked more like an octopus — distributed, adaptive, and capable of sensing and reacting without waiting for instructions from the centre? In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by Phil Lebrun and Jana Werner, Executives in Residence at Amazon Web Services and authors of The Octopus Organization, to explore why so many transformations fail to stick — and what a more adaptive, human approach to change actually looks like. Join them as they discuss:What the octopus organisation metaphor is, and why it offers a different model to the traditional, hierarchical "Tin Man" organisation The three themes — clarity, ownership, and curiosity — that separate organisations that adapt well from those that don't Why transformation can no longer be treated as a one-time event HR's evolving role in driving and supporting transformation How to measure whether change is actually working, beyond vanity metrics Real examples of leaders and organisations putting these ideas into practice This episode is sponsored by Valence.  Nadia, Valence's AI coaching platform, connects talent strategy to the work employees are actually doing — offering coaching from the frontline to the boardroom, and surfacing organisational insights that weren't visible before.  As the most widely deployed coach in the Fortune 500, Nadia is already helping global leaders like Nestlé, Delta, CVS, and Kraft Heinz transform talent at scale.  Learn more at valence.co/insight222Resources:The Octopus Organization by Phil Lebrun and Jana Werner 
  • 279. What the Research Really Tells Us About Purpose at Work

    50:55||Season 54, Ep. 279
    Is purpose at work as straightforward as we've made it out to be? In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David Green is joined by Jessica Zwaan, VP People Strategy and Operations at Leapsome and author of Built for People and Purpose and Work, to explore what the research actually tells us about purpose at work — and what that means for how HR shows up for people. Join them as they discuss: Why treating HR like a product function changes the questions you askWhat the research on purpose at work really reveals, and why the reality is more nuanced than the narrativeWhat purpose washing is, how it happens, and what it can look like in practiceWhat a more grounded alternative to purpose-led culture could look likeWhy really knowing your people is the foundation of all of itHow perceptions of HR are evolving, and what's driving that shift This episode is brought to you by Leapsome - the people-first HR platform that connects performance, engagement, and HR operations in one place, so you get a complete picture, not half the story.  See it in action at leapsome.com/demo. Resources:  Built for People by Jessica Zwaan  Purpose and Work by Jessica Zwaan People over Perks, the Leapsome Community
  • 278. How GSK Built a Skills-Based Organisation in 18 Months

    43:25||Season 54, Ep. 278
    How do you rebuild a company's entire capability infrastructure — and fund the transformation through the savings it generates? Zaka Farhat is Global SVP for Talent, Learning, Organisation and Capability Development at GSK, where she leads the company's enterprise-wide skills, learning and capability agenda. In this episode, Zaka shares the full story of how GSK rebuilt its capability infrastructure in 18 months - retiring more than 20 legacy systems, building a single skills and learning ecosystem, and funding the transformation through the savings it generated. Join them as David and Zaka discuss:Why GSK's skills transformation began with a commercial question about capability and cost The five conditions for organisational readiness that had to be in place before any platform launched How GSK approached skills taxonomy, job architecture and inference, and what they had to redo along the way What personalised learning looks like at scale, and how skills data is now shaping workforce planning decisions What GSK chose to stop, and why decommissioning is the step most transformations skip How Zaka's team is measuring impact across three KPI layers This episode is sponsored by TechWolf. The world of work is being rewritten faster than HR systems can keep up. Skills age in months. Roles get redesigned quarter by quarter. CHROs have quietly become AI transformation leads, and the data they need to lead it doesn't exist in any HR system. That's why the world's most forward-looking enterprises such as HSBC, AMD, T-Mobile, GSK, ServiceNow, Pfizer, have built on TechWolf.  As the data layer for the AI era of work, TechWolf gives enterprises the skills, they need to move faster and lead with confidence.  Skills Intelligence, Work Intelligence, and Market Intelligence, in one layer. Visit techwolf.ai.
  • 277. Work Intelligence Playbook for CHROs in the AI Era

    44:32||Season 54, Ep. 277
    How do the world's most forward-thinking organisations use skills intelligence, market intelligence and work intelligence together to stay ahead? In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, host David Green is joined by Mik Wornoo, co-founder and President of US at TechWolf, to explore how organisations are using three signals together to build a strategic workforce planning strategy that can keep pace with AI, and what that looks like in practice. In this conversation, David and Mik discuss: What skills intelligence, work intelligence and market intelligence each bring to strategic workforce planning, and why all three matter What work intelligence actually means in practice, and how decomposing work into tasks is changing how organisations understand the impact of AI on their workforce How AI is actively reshaping roles right now, and what that means for strategic workforce planning, job architecture and redeployment Real-world case studies from organisations using all three signals to make smarter workforce decisions and align their people strategy with their AI strategy What it actually looks like to get started, and why the barrier to entry is lower than most HR leaders think This episode is sponsored by TechWolf. The world of work is being rewritten faster than HR systems can keep up. Skills age in months. Roles get redesigned quarter by quarter. CHROs have quietly become AI transformation leads, and the data they need to lead it doesn't exist in any HR system. That's why the world's most forward-looking enterprises such as HSBC, AMD, T-Mobile, GSK, ServiceNow, Pfizer, have built on TechWolf.  As the data layer for the AI era of work, TechWolf gives enterprises the skills, they need to move faster and lead with confidence.  Skills Intelligence, Work Intelligence, and Market Intelligence, in one layer. Visit techwolf.ai. Resources:  TechWolf podcast