Workplace Stories by RedThread Research

Stacia Garr & Dani Johnson

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 same: what’s actually working, what isn’t, and what leaders are doing next.

Workplace Stories helps you make sense of complexity, build credibility with evidence, and move from ideas to action with more confidence.

Want to be part of the conversation? Join our community for free and connect with others shaping the future of work.

Learn more about RedThread Research here: https://redthreadresearch.com/home

Play

Open in

22 episodes
fortnightly
Avg 54 min
English

Episodes 22

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.

#136
September 16 · 1 hr 7 min
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 volumes about their values and priorities. We sit down with Colleen...
- Transcript
#135
September 2 · 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 critical distinction between workflows and processes, and the...
- Transcript
#134
August 19 · 47 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 perspective on whether true gender equity in the workplace can be...
- Transcript
#133
August 5 · 59 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 Granger, Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics and author of A...
- Transcript
#132
July 22 · 58 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 and a daunting reality: 60% of customer accounts were unprofitable, and...
- Transcript
#131
July 8 · 57 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 of Academic Program Development at Western Governors University (WGU),...
- Transcript
#130
June 24 · 58 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 content—is rapidly losing its strategic value. In this episode,...
- Transcript
#129
June 10 · 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, Chief People Officer, on this episode of Workplace Stories. Moving from...
- Transcript
#128
May 27 · 57 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 employee development for the age of AI, shifting learning into the...
- Transcript
#127
May 13 · 1 hr 4 min
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 remain quietly neglected. We sit down with J.D. Dillon, author of the...
- Transcript
#126
April 29 · 49 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 to overhaul Utah’s performance management system—moving it from a...
- Transcript
#125
April 15 · 52 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 Facilitation at Radical and co-founder of Projectory. We discuss why...
- Transcript
#124
April 1 · 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 organizations. We explore the relationships between systems, processes, and...
- Transcript
#123
March 18 · 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 research, Jenna brings a fresh, outsider perspective to the world of...
- Transcript
#122
March 4 · 49 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 market delivers, is failing more often than it works. The biggest...
- Transcript
#121
February 17 · 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 artificial intelligence across departments, focusing on pragmatic...
- Transcript
#120
February 4 · 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 experiments and technological hype, organizations now face the much harder...
- Transcript
#119
January 21 · 58 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 underway today. As Bayer confronts significant market, legal, and...
- Transcript
#118
Dec 17, 2025 · 52 min
Centralizing for Strategy: Christine Crouch on L&D Transformation at General Mills
Christine Crouch, Senior Director of Learning at General Mills, joins Workplace Stories to discuss a massive shift in how one of the world's legacy food companies approaches talent development. General Mills has recently transitioned to a centralized...
- Transcript
#117
Dec 3, 2025 · 56 min
Building a Skills-Based Organization with Koreen Pagano
On the latest episode of Workplace Stories, we sit down with Koreen Pagano, author of "Building a Skills-Based Organization," to talk about one of the hottest and most complex topics in the world of work: how organizations can become truly...
- Transcript

Showing 1–20 of 22 episodes