Leadership & Teams
LEADERSHIP: Decision-Making
To Thrive In Complexity, Think Like An Engineer — Chief Executive
Development: A National Academy of Engineering study concluded that engineering provides a structured approach to identifying opportunities, addressing problems, and making decisions—valuable across many industries because it fosters continuous learning and adaptation, per the article.
Why it matters
If the framework holds, leaders who lead with curiosity, get to root cause, and challenge the status quo can systematically generate better outcomes—worth applying the three-step approach (ask the right questions, listen to learn, make judgments under uncertainty) in your next strategic planning session.
LEADERSHIP: Alignment
Volkswagen CEO tells employees brand may need to cut thousands of jobs to keep up with market — Ragan Communications
Development: Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume told employees in a note obtained by Reuters that 50,000 more job cuts might need to happen across the carmaker's brand profile, on top of 50,000 that were already agreed upon, stating the company was assessing cuts "across all brands, companies and regions."
Why it matters
The note communicates urgency clearly but offers less clarity—if you're communicating restructuring, this kind of message can turn into weeks or months of guessing about what's coming next, leading to reduced performance at a time when the company needs workers doing their best, per the source.
LEADERSHIP: Feedback
Management by Toothache — Leadership Freak
Development: The source proposes that foolish leaders wait for pain to motivate action—postponing difficult conversations, ignoring declining performance, tolerating destructive behavior, and delaying developing people—while wise leaders act with the future in mind before it hurts.
Why it matters
The boring work of leadership prevents the need for heroes—have the conversation before resentment grows, clarify expectations before disappointment, give feedback before failure, and develop people before you need them, per the source.
LEADERSHIP: Team Dynamics
The Global Scaling Gap: Why Strategic Clarity Is Crucial in the Age of AI — MIT Sloan Management Review
Development: Research shows that business leaders can more easily recognize the demand signals of local users and learn more effectively about their company's nascent product when they share a common background or geography, per the article.
Why it matters
Companies that try to pursue multiple global markets at once often overlook early users whose feedback they could more easily interpret—worth testing whether your team is chasing every available opportunity or defaulting to what is closest and most convenient, both of which can systematically disadvantage scaling efforts.
Sales & Revenue
SALES: Enablement
Sales Competencies: What They Are and How to Improve Them — Corporate Visions
Development: Corporate Visions analyzed buyer feedback from more than 150,000 B2B buying decisions and found that traditional competencies like product knowledge and industry expertise are up to 31 percent less predictive of success than the competencies that buyers say influenced their decisions.
Why it matters
Buyers reported that over half of deals that sellers marked as "lost" were winnable, if not for a misstep in the sales experience—the difference came down to fixable seller behaviors in critical moments, per the research. If you're coaching based on only what sellers report is working, you aren't addressing the root cause behind win rate problems.
People & Culture
PEOPLE: L&D
Learning Insights: Shaleenah Marie brings passion and curiosity to L&D — Chief Learning Officer
Development: Shaleenah Marie, head of learning and development at Siemens, describes a reverse mentorship initiative that connected junior employees with leaders navigating complex transformation, which accelerated digital adoption, fostered inclusivity, and built resilience in leadership teams, per the interview.
Why it matters
Junior mentors gained confidence, visibility, and agency while senior leaders developed humility, adaptability, and a deeper understanding of emerging skills and generational shifts—the cultural shift from "leaders teaching employees" to "leaders and employees learning together" has been the most powerful outcome, per Marie.
PEOPLE: Culture
Why HR needs a bigger role in M&A success — HR Executive
Development: The source argues that deal value is ultimately realized through execution, and execution is fundamentally a people challenge—culture, institutional knowledge, workforce continuity, and critical talent all shape whether an integration succeeds, yet HR is often involved too late.
Why it matters
Leading acquirers are starting to treat critical talent identification as a diligence activity rather than a post-close exercise—that means bringing HR alongside finance and operations early to identify the individuals and teams whose departure could materially affect deal value, with retention plans and role clarity ready for day one.
PEOPLE: Engagement
What employees need when everything around them is changing — Ragan Communications
Development: Bonita Brodt, chief communications and brand officer at the University of Vermont Health, will speak at Ragan's Employee Experience Conference about how communicators can design a 90-day onboarding journey to ensure incoming employees succeed in their roles from the first day, per the conference preview.
Why it matters
When you step into a new job, the sheer amount of information you receive can be overwhelming if it's not communicated with intent—identifying the key points in an onboarding journey where trust is built through clear communication is worth testing in your next new-hire cohort.
PEOPLE: Organizational Design
3 span-of-control questions HR leaders need to ask — HR Executive
Development: In a global, cross-industry survey of more than 1,200 HR leaders conducted by APQC in the fall, 61% of respondents said that optimizing span of control is very or extremely important to their workforce and organizational design strategy, yet only around 37% said they can effectively analyze and manage spans across teams or functions.
Why it matters
The gap suggests that many organizations understand the stakes involved but struggle to determine what the right management structure should look like—before reducing management headcount, HR leaders should identify which management responsibilities require ongoing managerial oversight and which could be redesigned without creating new gaps elsewhere.
PEOPLE: Career Development
Navigating Career Change: Transitioning from HR to a New Career Path — Workology
Development: The source proposes that with AI and automation taking over the administrative heavy lifting of payroll and basic compliance, HR pros are finding themselves at a pivot point—they aren't just an "HR person" anymore; they are a data-literate, empathetic strategist.
Why it matters
The rise of generative AI hasn't replaced HR; it has liberated practitioners from the "paperwork" side of people management—companies don't just need software; they need people who can implement that software without breaking the company culture, per the source.
Future of Work
FUTURE OF WORK: AI-at-Work
Instagram CEO outlines the qualities he wants in new hires — Ragan Communications
Development: Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" that he values three qualities in new hires—quick learners, gritty, and self-aware—adding that tech is going to change a lot over the next decade and these skills will be necessary.
Why it matters
Mosseri added that he also values employees who are willing to experiment—"Are you willing to sound like an idiot? Are you willing just to say it and be corrected and not be offended and then just get better and better?"—signaling that the company's leadership is communicating that it wants to find people with the right AI-friendly skills.
FUTURE OF WORK: Comms Tech
Study: More positive language in AI-assisted workplace emails makes for better engagement — Ragan Communications
Development: A recent study found that tone in emails that were written with assistance from AI resonated more and earned more engagement when they were rewritten in a playful tone rather than in a professional one.
Why it matters
AI-polished messages can sound clean and correct, but if they don't have the warmth of a human touch, employees may not want to engage with it—this research emphasizes the importance of putting in the work to train AI models with the right kind of human influence and maintaining human control over AI-assisted comms to maintain connection.
FUTURE OF WORK: AI-at-Work
Making AI's impacts resonate with your employees — Ragan Communications
Development: Samantha Stark, founder and chief strategist at Phuysion, and Ed Mayer, corporate vice president of corporate communications strategy at New York Life, will discuss at Ragan's Employee Experience Conference how AI comms rollouts can fall flat when they're not approached correctly, per the conference preview.
Why it matters
Communicators need to know how to talk about AI adoption in a way that helps employees approach automation with an understanding of the technology and without fear—among their strategies for success is communicating about AI-related changes in a way that focuses on the changes at hand for employees.
FUTURE OF WORK: Collaboration
AI-Ready or AI-Exposed? Rethinking the Role of SharePoint in Your Digital Workplace — Ragan Communications / PR Daily
Development: Staffbase experts Karen Downs and Jeff Corbin will explore in a webinar what it takes to build a genuinely AI-ready digital workplace, arguing that contrary to popular belief, AI doesn't fix disorganized content; it amplifies it—whatever gaps, inconsistencies, and governance debt exist in your digital workplace today, AI will surface them at scale.
Why it matters
The question facing leaders isn't whether to keep SharePoint, but what job each platform in the ecosystem should do—mature organizations are moving from "which platform should we use?" to "what does this moment require?" including practical approaches to content stratification and orchestration, per the webinar description.