SPONSORED BY

Welcome to this special Best of February issue of Talent Edge Weekly!

A shout-out to Melissa Carducci, Director HR Business Partner at Coupa, for referring new subscribers to Talent Edge Weekly. Thank you, Melissa, for your support of this newsletter!

🗞️ Not subscribed to Talent Edge Weekly? Subscribe now and immediately get 5 of my PDF cheat sheets!

PRESENTED BY TechWolf

Why the CHRO is the New Architect of the AI Era

Boards are no longer asking if AI matters. They are asking which business units will feel the impact first and what it means for next quarter’s financials. Here is the operating reality:

• Most enterprises are making billion-dollar AI infrastructure investments with limited insight into the human side of the equation.

• They can tell you how many GPU clusters they are provisioning, but they cannot tell you which roles are most exposed to disruption or where the biggest productivity gains will come from.

At TechWolf, we believe the AI revolution is a people transformation, not just a technology deployment.

Read our latest Vision Paper to learn about three moves high-performing HR functions are making to lead this revolution.

THIS MONTH’S CONTENT

This Best of February issue includes the 14 most popular resources from the February issues of Talent Edge Weekly. They span three sections:

• AI & Future of Work. Examines how AI and broader workforce trends are reshaping jobs and work—from which occupations are most at risk of elimination versus enhancement, to where worker vulnerability is concentrated, to how AI is intensifying rather than reducing workloads.

• Talent Strategy & Practices. Helps practitioners act on talent priorities, including performance management, M&A-talent integration, succession, tapping into overlooked talent segments, and internal mobility.

• HR Leadership & the CHRO Agenda. Addresses the evolving strategic role of the Chief HR Officer in an AI-driven enterprise, examines business leader priorities for 2026 and their implications for HR, and offers a practical framework for building the business case for new HR teams.

There are bonus resources, such as information about company layoffs and movement in and out of the Chief HR Officer role.

I. AI & FUTURE OF WORK

Examines how AI and broader workforce trends are reshaping jobs and work—from which occupations are most at risk of elimination versus enhancement, to where worker vulnerability is concentrated, to how AI is intensifying rather than reducing workloads.

FUTURE OF WORK

The State of Organizations 2026 | McKinsey

A 74-page report outlines nine shifts reshaping organizations; I expand on one focused on improving productivity and performance through better ways of working.

In this 74-page report based on input from 10,000+ executives across 15 countries and 16 industries, McKinsey highlights nine shifts reshaping organizations. These shifts are driven by three forces: 1) AI and technology acceleration, 2) Economic and geopolitical disruption, and 3) Evolving employee expectations and work models. While there are several insights throughout the report, the section I want to zoom in on is “From Structure to Flow: Reaching the Next Productivity Frontier” (p. 35). The chapter title is shorthand for this: familiar productivity plays (restructuring, delayering, downsizing, cost cuts) are hitting diminishing returns, so the bigger upside is improving how work moves across the enterprise by redesigning workflows, reducing handoffs and duplication, cutting unnecessary meetings, clarifying decision rights, and streamlining decision points and approvals. The opportunity is big: two-thirds of leaders say their organizations are overly complex and inefficient, and nearly 40% say redefining process flows is the biggest unlock over the next 1 to 2 years. This isn’t “just automate more.” It’s about simplifying workflows and decision routines first, then automate where opportunities exist. This point is reinforced through several posts I’ve made and tools I’ve created that underscore one key point: capacity is often trapped in ineffective ways of working. If this resonates, check out my earlier post and cheat sheet with 10 diagnostic questions to help leaders unlock capacity through improved ways of working.

Read report

AI AND WORK TRENDS

9 Trends Shaping Work in 2026 and Beyond | Harvard Business Review

An article by the HR team at Gartner outlines nine AI-era workforce risks for 2026. I expand on one related to performance and ways of working.

Much of the conversation about AI in the workplace has focused on investment and upside potential. Yet organizations must also address the second-order risks of AI adoption, meaning the unintended consequences that emerge in execution, culture, and the employee experience as AI use scales. A new HBR article from Gartner’s HR practice highlights nine AI-era trends that reveal where AI can create risk in the workforce, including premature AI-driven layoffs that lead to costly rehiring, low-quality output that fuels “workslop” as employees are pushed to deliver more with less time for quality checks, and rising distrust in hiring as automation expands. One area that stood out to me is the warning that AI can create operating conditions that drive unrealistic performance pressures, quietly eroding results. While this is framed as an AI issue, the broader lesson applies to any ways of working that enable—or hinder—an organization’s ability to achieve its goals. With that in mind, I’m resharing my editable one-page cheat sheet that helps leaders and teams identify which current work practices may hinder goal achievement. It’s anchored in one question: “If we fast-forward to year-end and fell short of this objective, which ways of working would we say got in our own way?” From there, teams can pinpoint two to three actions to turn risk into a performance advantage.

Read article

AI AND JOBS

Measuring US Workers’ Capacity to Adapt to AI-Driven Job Displacement | The Brookings Institution

A new analysis pairs AI exposure with an “adaptive capacity” index to identify where worker resilience is high and where vulnerability is concentrated, which is useful for workforce planning.

When evaluating AI’s impact on jobs, much of the analysis starts with “Which roles have the most tasks AI can do?” and then jumps to who will be displaced. That’s one part of the narrative, but it’s incomplete. That’s because exposure measures show which jobs have tasks AI can replace or augment, but they don’t tell us who has the resources and options to transition if job loss occurs. This report adds the missing dimension: adaptive capacity, an index of how well workers could weather displacement, based on four factors: 1) Net liquid wealth (financial buffer) savings to absorb shocks; 2) Skill transferability (mobility potential) how portable skills are, weighted to growing roles; 3) Local labor market density (option availability) nearby employers and roles; 4) Age profile (transition friction) older workforces face higher costs and lower reemployment odds. This challenges the view that “the most AI-exposed roles will automatically experience the greatest harm.” A few themes from the analysis: Resilience: 26.5M of 37.1M in the top exposure quartile have above-median adaptive capacity; Vulnerability: 6.1M workers (4.2%) sit in the high exposure/low adaptive capacity zone, largely clerical/administrative roles and disproportionately women (~86%); Geography: these vulnerable roles are more common in smaller metros and college towns. This broader lens helps talent and workforce leaders see where transitions are most likely to be hardest, so they can better prioritize mobility pathways, transferable-skill building, and targeted support.

Read report

AI AND JOBS

Enhance or Eliminate? How AI Will Likely Change These Jobs | HBS Working Knowledge

Shares research on how AI is shifting job demand, and provides an interactive tool that lets you quickly see which occupations are more likely to be enhanced vs. eliminated by AI based on how exposed their core tasks are.

As AI continues to reshape how work gets done and by whom, this HBS Working Knowledge piece shares insights on where it is already shifting job demand, including which roles employers are posting for and the skills they now expect. Using U.S. job-posting data from 2019 through March 2025, the research team used ChatGPT to categorize 19,000+ job tasks across 900+ occupations and created an “augmentation score” based on each occupation’s mix of AI-exposed vs. unexposed tasks. The analysis finds that postings fell 13% for occupations dominated by structured, repetitive tasks after ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch, while postings rose 20% for jobs requiring more analytical, technical, or creative work. The main reason I’m sharing this article is that it includes an interactive tool that lets you quickly gauge how vulnerable a job is to AI replacement vs. augmentation. Use the dropdown filters to search by job category or keyword, then click to see where specific occupations land on the augmentation vs. automation spectrum without having to sift through dense tables. The tool provides insights that are useful for workforce planning and talent strategy.

Read article

AI IN THE WORKPLACE

AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It | Harvard Business Review

Shares study findings on how AI can speed work and expand task scope; authors caution that this benefit can come at a risk, such as burnout.

A new HBR article argues that AI does not reduce work and often intensifies it. The authors share findings from an eight-month study at a U.S.-based tech company with about 200 employees (a small sample, so not broadly generalizable, but still a data point to consider). Over the eight-month study, researchers observed employees in person two days a week, tracked internal work activity channels, and conducted 40+ interviews across engineering, product, design, research, and operations. AI use was not mandated, though the company provided enterprise subscriptions. The result: AI users worked faster, took on a broader range of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often by choice. The upside was that work moved faster and felt easier to push forward. However, workload creep can look like productivity at first, and then gradually become the new baseline for speed and responsiveness. Over time, that intensity can contribute to burnout, cognitive strain, and decision fatigue, which can weaken judgment and decision quality. The authors suggest clear team norms for when to use AI, when to stop, and how to preserve recovery (for example, brief “decision pauses” before high-impact choices). For organizations already building strategies to reduce AI risk, such as privacy, bias, IP exposure, security, and compliance, this article offers a useful prompt to expand those efforts to include the human risks of AI-enabled work, including burnout and decision fatigue.

Read article

II. TALENT STRATEGY & PRACTICES

Helps practitioners act on talent priorities, including performance management, M&A-talent integration, succession, tapping into overlooked talent segments, and internal mobility.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

2026 Performance Management Report | The Talent Strategy Group

Zac Upchurch shares findings from a new global survey on how companies design, manage, and execute performance management today.

A few weeks ago, Marc Effron, thought leader and President of The Talent Strategy Group (TSG), joined my private community for internal HR practitioners, The Talent Edge Circle, for a 90-minute discussion on enabling business strategy execution through performance management (PM). One point he led with that too many teams miss: clarify the purpose of PM before designing or redesigning it. PM can support multiple outcomes (development, engagement, pay decisions), but it usually does one thing well (and maybe a second “kind of well”). According to Marc, the primary purpose should be increasing performance, which is what CEOs care about. When PM tries to serve too many outcomes, it often underdelivers on all of them. While there are many other insights from that discussion that I can’t do justice to in this short post, I’m glad to point you to TSG’s 2026 Performance Management Report, authored by Zac Upchurch (Partner/COO). Based on 250+ organizations, it shows how companies design, manage, and execute PM today, from goals to feedback to evaluation. If PM is on your 2026 agenda, this report is a great reference point, not as a set of best practices, but as a way to spark ideas about potential design choices that support your PM purpose. And of you’re an internal HR practitioner and want access to deeper, private discussions that help you advance your talent priorities faster and with more impact, alongside other practitioners and with me in The Talent Edge Circle—apply here.

Read report

There is more content in this issue, but you must be subscribed (or logged in if you are a subscriber) to access the rest. It is FREE to sign up, and a new issue comes out every Sunday, 6 PM EST! ⬇️