Analytics & Insights.
Analytics, insights, and ideas on how people, systems, and technology evolve together. Where strategy meets practice, exploring the workforce, change management, and the future of work.
Beta Insights.
Tech Fluency: It’s Not What to Offload. It’s What to Protect.
Meet Bob: thirty years of expertise, zero malice, one AI-generated section of a critical report — and the failure mode every organization is deploying at scale without knowing it.
2026 Workforce Insights: Burning Questions
Ten insights on the workforce questions keeping professionals up at night—and what they mean for 2026.
AI Resistance: The Lighthouse Is Out
Are we sending the right signals for AI adoption? And is it creating or mitigating resistance?
Why a Sandbox? The Power of Play in Adult Learning
Exploration of play and sandbox environments for adult learning.
Beta Analytics.
The Great Stay Dashboard.
Tracking the macro unfreeze against the lived experience.The market is unfreezing — the experience is not.
Quits rate held at 1.9% in July and August, two months running below the 2010s normal range. The Great Stay is real but it’s increasingly turning into a shift, not an unfreeze. Workers are staying put — not by choice, but by conditions.
Reported job openings sit near the 2010s norm, not above it. That baseline is the story: employers are listing like it’s a normal market, but hiring rates say they’re not actually moving. The gap between listing and hiring is where the signal gets loud.
The gap between data and experience. Jobs data can look good at the macro level. This is the mainstream media take. But the micro experience of each applicant can still be frustrating, demoralizing, and often painful. Both truths can coexist. Quits rate is part of the story; I’ll explore more.
Follow the analysis. New reads monthly.
Sources: BLS JOLTS, Employment Situation Report.
Field notes.
When the Solution Is the Failure
September 2026002The Employee Journey and Manager Value
September 2026003Cognition In Organizations With Mature AI Adoption
September 2026004AI Adoption When Every Employee Wears Three Hats
September 2026005Trust the Tool, Lose the Thinking
September 2026006Trades Are the Darling of a Stagnant Job Market
September 2026007Scaling the Doing Doesn’t Replace the Thinking
September 2026008Are Trades a Bet on Today Borrowed Against Tomorrow?
August 2026009The Watermark Paradox
August 202601061.4: The Quiet Exit
August 2026011America Has a Back-Pay Crisis
July 2026012Cognitive Depth vs. Temporary Speed
July 2026013How to Ask Your Leaders for What You Need During Disruption
June 2026014Meritocracy Cannot Survive a Market of Unverified Experts
June 2026015The Threat to Meritocracy Isn't DEI. It's Your ATS.
June 2026016What Leadership Composition Reveals
May 2026017Does the hiring market feel broken to you? That's because it is.
May 2026018The Great Stay Destroyed Workforce Mobility
May 2026019America is Experiencing AI Burnout
April 2026020Bots Battling Bots
April 2026021Diversity of experience is your human advantage over AI.
April 2026022“If Claude Doesn’t Come Up Soon”
March 2026023People Recession. Corporate Boom.
March 2026024Recalibration or Shadow Cut?
February 2026025The Validation Trap
February 2026026Pay Transparency Theater
January 2026027Trades are the 2026 Power Play
January 2026028The Middle is Vanishing
January 2026029Staying isn’t Loyalty
January 2026030The Employee-Leadership Divide
January 2026031Silence at the Top
January 2026032Hybrid Creep
January 2026033Networking Won’t Save You
December 2025034Fall Forward
December 2025035The Painful Reality of Leading
November 2025036They're calling it the "Great Stay”
October 2025037Candidate experience matters
September 2025The most dangerous thing for a leader isn't a high turnover rate. It’s a workforce that is too afraid to leave and too exhausted to stay.
— Karida Palmer
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