People Managing People

AI isn't creating high-performing teams—it’s exposing the difference between teams that already know how to work well together and those that don’t. In this episode, David Rice sits down with social psychologist and Superteams author Ron Friedman to unpack new research on what separates the top 8% of teams from everyone else. The conversation challenges the assumption that AI is a universal productivity boost, revealing instead how it can amplify poor habits, deepen burnout, and create false confidence when used without judgment.
They also explore why the best teams protect focus over busyness, replace brainstorming with brainwriting, rethink meetings entirely, and create cultures where experimentation—not perfection—drives performance. If you're leading people through the AI era, this episode offers a practical blueprint for building stronger teams instead of simply working faster.
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AI transformation doesn't fail because the technology isn't good enough. It fails because organizations try to layer it on top of cultures that were already struggling with trust, learning, experimentation, and leadership. In this conversation, David Rice sits down with Meagan Bond, Founder and CEO of The Human Method, to unpack why psychological readiness—not technical readiness—is the real foundation of successful AI adoption.
Together they explore the hidden costs of dysfunctional culture, why managers play an outsized role in determining whether AI succeeds or fuels burnout, and why organizations chasing quick AI wins often undermine their long-term competitive advantage. If culture is treated as an afterthought instead of infrastructure, AI simply accelerates the problems that were already there.
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Resumes still matter—but not for the reasons we think. In a world where AI can polish anyone’s experience into a compelling narrative, the traditional hiring signals many organizations have relied on are losing their value. Heather Krueger, Chief People Officer at Engine, joins David Rice to explore what comes next when a polished resume becomes proof of tool usage rather than proof of talent.
Their conversation challenges hiring leaders to rethink where and how they evaluate candidates, shifting from credentials and company logos toward judgment, learning velocity, resilience, and real-world decision-making. They also unpack why pedigree is often an expensive shortcut, how experimentation should influence both hiring and leadership, and what actually predicts success in an AI-driven workplace.
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AI isn’t arriving as a gradual workplace evolution—it’s arriving as a societal shift that many leaders are still struggling to describe honestly. In this conversation, David Rice sits down with Leap Academy founder and CEO Ilana Golan to explore what happens when skills expire in one to two years, organizations expect dramatically higher productivity, and career stability becomes the exception rather than the rule.
Together, they unpack why adaptability is becoming the defining professional skill, how portfolio careers may become a necessity rather than a choice, and why the future belongs to people who can continuously reinvent themselves. From the “pattern interrupt” needed to escape career pigeonholes to the practical 5-5-5 framework for making faster decisions, this episode offers a candid look at what it will take to stay relevant in an era of relentless change.
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David Kolbe argues that most organizations are only measuring two-thirds of what drives performance. We assess what people know (skills) and how they tend to behave (personality), but often ignore how they instinctively take action. That missing piece—what Kolbe calls conation—shapes how people gather information, solve problems, make decisions, and navigate uncertainty.
In this conversation, David Rice and David Kolbe explore why burnout is often a mismatch problem rather than a motivation problem, why high-performing employees can be the most at risk of quietly disengaging, and why leaders who want better results may need to stop trying to standardize how work gets done and focus more on creating environments where different working styles can thrive.
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