Send us a text BONUS EPISODE — and somehow, our 75th. Your main event today is our conversation with Radhika Dutt, so if you only have time for one episode, go listen to her burn OKRs to the ground first. This bonus drop is the after-party. Now… for everyone still emotionally recovering from HR in 2025, here’s our annual debrief: Battery Hens, Bullshit & Burnout — HR’s 2025 “You’ve Got to Be F*cking Kidding Me” Year in Review. Danny, Marion, and Cacha look back at the most unhinged year H...

Send us a text What if the problem isn’t how you set goals… but the fact you’re using goals at all? In this episode of The Elephant in the Org, we declare 2025 the year we fire OKRs — and we’ve brought exactly the right arsonist. Author, entrepreneur, and product leader Radhika Dutt joins Danny, Marion, and Cacha to explain why traditional goal-setting, targets, and OKRs were built for 1940s assembly lines, not modern, messy, knowledge work. Radhika, author of Radical Product Thinking and adv...

Send us a text The HR Breakdown: Dr Jo Burrell on Why the Function That Fixes Everything Is Falling Apart HR isn’t “a bit stressed.” HR isn’t “managing fine.” HR isn’t “designed to be everyone’s emotional shock absorber.” The latest data finally confirms what every HR human already knows in their bones: The profession responsible for everyone else’s wellbeing is quietly falling apart. In this raw, unfiltered, data-driven conversation, we sit down with Dr Jo Burrell — Clinical Psychologist, co...

Send us a text What happens when flexibility stops being a perk and becomes the backbone of inclusion, well-being, and high performance? In this episode, we sit down with Michelle McDaid, founder of The Leading Place and long-time engineering leader across FinTech and HR Tech, to unpack how trust, autonomy, and psychological safety reshape the modern workplace. Michelle brings over two decades of experience leading and scaling global distributed product development teams — most recently as Se...

Send us a text What if “success” wasn’t someone else’s checklist—but a life that actually fits? In this uplifting, reflective conversation, Dan Smolen—Executive Producer & Host of What’s Your Work Fit? and fellow member of the Future of Work Alliance—joins Danny, Marion, and Cacha to explore how purpose, passion, and fit overlap (and don’t), why agency over your day matters, and how “soft eyes and soft ears” help us hear what truly lights us up. 📄 Full Show Notes We cover: What WorkF...

Send us a text When crisis hits, clarity collapses — and HR is often left holding the mic. In this episode, Marion, Danny, and Cacha sit down with Alison Arnot, award-winning consultant, trainer, and author of Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to Secure Employee Trust, Support, and Advocacy in Crisis Situations. From her early-career baptism during the 2007 Glasgow Airport terror attack to decades guiding organizations through chaos, Alison shares what really happens when comms g...

Send us a text Want Inclusive Workplaces? Listen Up — and #HirePaul This special episode of The Elephant in the Org isn’t just a conversation — it’s a call to action. Meet Paul Meyer, a Deaf HR professional and inclusion advocate with extensive experience in talent acquisition, onboarding, and culture building. Paul has spent his career helping organizations make work truly inclusive, from hiring practices to day-to-day communication and leadership behavior. We recorded this as our first f...

Send us a text Episode Description: ⚠️ Trigger Warning: Suicide, grief, and trauma. In this deeply human episode of The Elephant in the Org, we confront one of the hardest workplace conversations: suicide, loss, and mental health at work. Our guest, Don Ryan — author of The Secret Struggle: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One and veteran social worker — brings both professional expertise and personal experience, having lost three close family members to suicide. Together with Marion, Danny, ...

Send us a text When AI does the homework but skips the hard work, businesses will be the ones picking up the tab. In this final episode of our AI trilogy, we’re joined by Mark Evans — serial entrepreneur, Fractional Chief AI Officer, and strategic advisor who’s spent 30 years building, scaling, and exiting tech ventures. Now, he helps leaders navigate AI adoption without outsourcing the very thing that makes us human: our ability to think. From classrooms to boardrooms, Mark warns of a creepi...

Send us a text “AI will make your job easier.” Translation: Here’s a shiny new tool — now do 10x more with half the resources. In Part 2 of our AI Trilogy, we’re joined by Felix Mitchell (Co-CEO of Instant Impact, host of We Need to Talk About HR) to unpack how leaders are spinning AI as a miracle cure — while quietly restructuring work, cutting jobs, and pushing employees harder than ever. We dig into: The 3 phases of AI adoption (and why most companies are stuck in Phase 1).Why CEOs love to...

Send us a text We’re back, baby! 🎉 Season 3 of The Elephant in the Org kicks off with a bang — and a little chaos. Marion, Danny, and Cacha dive into: The HR scandal everyone’s pearl-clutching over (while ignoring the real workplace issues).Why HR burnout is at crisis levels — and nobody’s talking about it.What’s coming in our AI Trilogy: three straight episodes on how AI is reshaping trust, culture, and psychological safety at work.Messy, spicy, unfiltered — exactly how you like us. 👉 Full s...

Send us a text What happens when ChatGPT decides you’re not a Black woman… but a 40-year-old white man named Ralph? That’s exactly what happened to attorney and entrepreneur Aubria Ralph, who turned an AI glitch into a full-blown LinkedIn social experiment. She flipped her name, posted as “Ralph Aubria,” and watched the offers, DMs, and algorithm love roll in. The results? Both hilarious and deeply troubling. In this episode, Marion and Danny unpack: Why AI assumed “thoughtful leader” = white...

Send us a text If your DEI strategy can’t even get someone a standing desk, we’ve got bigger problems. In this bold and unfiltered episode, host Danny Gluch sits down with three powerhouse professionals who know what it’s like to advocate for equity — not just in theory, but in real life, in real workplaces, with real consequences. Together, they unpack the systemic ignorance disabled employees often face — and the everyday empathy that could fix it. Pearl Brady – DEI practitioner and inclusi...

Send us a text It’s the final episode of Rethink Ability, and we’re wrapping the series with reflection, laughter, and a whole lot of heart. Hosts Marion Anderson, Danny Gluch, and Cacha Dora are joined by Greer Procich and Lia Seth to revisit the mic-drop moments, hard truths, and big feelings from the series. From allyship to HR’s blind spots, from policy pitfalls to psychological safety — we’re talking about what hit hardest, what changed us, and what comes next. This episode is more than ...

Send us a text What do you do when your body doesn’t follow the calendar, and neither does your capacity? In this episode of Rethink Ability, co-hosts Danny Gluch and Cacha Dora are joined by Greer Procich, Lia Seth, and Megan Rees for a candid, humorous, and deeply validating conversation about the unpredictable nature of working while living with a disability. We talk about surprise flare-ups, medical trial-and-error, navigating grief and identity, and the hard-earned skills that disabled p...

Send us a text What’s the most common workplace stereotype about disabled people? According to our live “Family Feud”-style panel game: "They’re not as capable as their peers." In this fiery and funny episode of Rethink Ability, host Danny Gluch is joined by five powerhouse advocates and professionals to unpack the lazy assumptions, outdated beliefs, and quiet biases that disabled folks still face at work — especially if their disability isn’t visible. We’re getting real about: Why being “wel...

Send us a text They say the system is broken. But for many of us, it was never built with us in mind in the first place. In this raw and powerful episode, we explore the realities of invisible disability in the workplace — the ones you can’t see, the ones people don’t believe, and the ones we’ve been forced to explain, downplay, or hide to get by. From masking and microaggressions to inaccessible processes and performative allyship, our guests share what it's like to navigate work in a world ...

Send us a text In this candid kickoff to Rethink Ability, co-hosts Marion Anderson, Danny Gluch, Cacha Dora, and Lia Seth unpack the personal journey that sparked this series — born from lived experience, late diagnoses, awkward conversations, and the realization that HR wasn’t trained for this. What began as DMs and shared frustrations turned into a collaborative effort to rethink how we talk about disability at work — and to create the resource we all wish we had. We talk about: Becoming th...

Send us a text What happens after the diagnosis? In this raw and revelatory episode, co-hosts Marion Anderson and Danny Gluch sit down with guests Lia Seth and Don Ryan to explore the emotional whiplash of becoming — or realizing you’ve always been — disabled. From the relief of finally having an answer to the quiet rage of having to justify your needs again and again, this conversation unpacks the emotional toll behind the label. We talk about: The surprise of late diagnosis and misdiagnosis...

Send us a text Stack ranking is back, y'all — and we’re not clapping. In our Season 2 finale, we’re calling out the lazy leadership, performative culture, and warped sense of “objectivity” fueling the comeback of rank-and-yank reviews. HR strategist Greer Procich joins Marion, Danny, and Cacha to unpack why stack ranking never really went away — it just got rebranded. From AI-driven “calibration” to the gaslighting of good employees, we’re naming the elephant in the org (again). We dig into: ...