In this episode of the Inside Learning Podcast from the Learnovate Centre, Aidan McCullen speaks with Barry Winkless, Chief Strategy Officer at Cpl, Head of the Future of Work Institute, and author of Future Work World: How Leaders Can Create Destinations for Talent that Excite, Entice, and Engage.

Barry argues that future-of-work conversations must begin with mindset. Before leaders redesign work, talent, teams or technology, they need a new language and a new way of seeing. He introduces three leadership roles from the book: the Destination Designer, the Societal Whisperer, and the Systems Architect.

The conversation explores the structure of Future Work World, including Barry’s four-part journey through mindset, “meta waves”, the “mixing desk” of 16 areas for work innovation, and the use of immersive storytelling to move people emotionally. Barry also shares how music, science fiction, and fictional near-future stories shaped the book’s distinctive style.

Aidan and Barry discuss the idea of “work type salads”, where organisations blend permanent employees, contractors, consultants, gig workers, temporary talent, and specialist networks to create strategic advantage. They also explore the concept of organisational “wisdom worlds”, using AI inference, immersive learning, and tacit knowledge capture to build deeper capability over time.

The episode closes with a reflection on the shift from mono careers to poly careers, where individuals increasingly become the hero of their own working lives and organisations become part of their journey rather than the whole journey.

Episode Timeline

00:00 Podcast intro and guest 01:10 Why this book now 01:58 Music and storytelling 04:47 Mindset comes first 11:25 Mixing desk equalizers 14:46 Meta waves and work type salad 18:39 Building a wisdom world 22:37 The new hero journey at work 27:06 Where to find Barry 27:57 Closing credits

In a world where technology is accelerating faster than ever, how do leaders make the right decisions—without losing sight of what makes us human?

In this episode of Inside Learning, Aidan McCullen is joined by Kate O’Neill, tech humanist, author of What Matters Next, and advisor to organizations like Google, Netflix, and the United Nations.

Kate shares a powerful framework for navigating uncertainty, making smarter decisions, and shaping a better future—while keeping human experience at the center.

You’ll discover:

• Why not making a decision is still a decision
• The critical difference between harms of action vs. inaction
• How to move from questions → insights → “bankable foresight”
• Why the future isn’t singular—but made up of multiple “futures”
• How leaders can align purpose, values, and strategy in a fast-changing world
• The emerging skill of “prompting” as a leadership capability
• Why AI should support human meaning—not replace it

Kate also explores a crucial idea: 👉 We must not leave meaning-making to machines.

This episode is essential listening for leaders, educators, and anyone trying to stay relevant—and human—in the age of AI.

Inside Learning is brought to you by Learnovate, the global experts in the future of work and learning. Based at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, Learnovate is a research centre with a mission to enhance the competitive advantage of the learning technology industry and help organisations maximise the impact of learning technology.

Learnovate’s vision is to play a significant role in transforming the lives of learners in the workplace, schools, universities, and the home. We are proud to be part of the Technology Centre programme funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, enabling Irish companies and multinationals to collaborate on market-focused strategic R&D with research institutions.

To find out more about Learnovate, visit the Learnovate Centre website.

https://learnovatecentre.org/

Find Kate here:

https://www.koinsights.com/

Kathryn Jablokow. Dean of Manhattan University’s School of Engineering, former NSF deputy division director, and co-author of the NSF Artificial Intelligence Roadmap joins Aidan McCullen to explore design cognition: how people think while solving design problems.

They unpack why high-performance teams don’t just match skills to problems, but also match thinking styles to the type of challenge, plus how great facilitators make space for different contributors (including introverts who need time to reflect).

The conversation then turns to AI as a teammate: how to avoid “sycophant” answers, how to prompt AI to generate genuinely different perspectives, and what it could look like to train LLMs to emulate cognitive diversity for better decisions and more creative outcomes.

Find Kathryn's papers:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2025/12/30/what-ai-cant-replace-and-why-that-matters/

https://www.techradar.com/pro/how-applying-cognitive-diversity-to-llms-could-transform-the-user-experience