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S3E13 — Cute Survey. What Are You Going to Do About It?
with Jeffrey Fermin (Host of People First, tech founder, advisor)

If your org runs surveys but never closes the loop, people don’t just get annoyed — they stop telling the truth. Silence becomes the culture.

In this episode, we get brutally practical about what happens after the survey:

• Why surveys often become “listening theatre.”
• How dashboards replace decisions
• The trust damage caused by silence (and how fast it spreads)
• A simple five-step Close-the-Loop Ladder you can steal and use immediately:
  Acknowledge → Prioritise → Commit → Explain “Not Yet” → Report Back

If you’ve ever read survey results and thought, “Cool… now what?” — this is your playbook episode.

Link to Show Notes

🔹 Jeffrey Fermin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfermin/

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

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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 HR has seen in decades — the RTO theatre, the DEI backlash, the AI delusion spiral, productivity cosplay, surveillance creep, and burnout so widespread it probably deserves its own ICD medical code.

We also celebrate the 23 incredible guests who joined us across The Elephant in the Org and RethinkAbility — a full-on stampede of elephants whose honesty, humour, and humanity kept us going.

If you’ve ever stared at a performance management template and thought, “I’m one KPI away from moving to the forest", this episode is your emotional support beverage.

Happy Holidays! We will see you again in the new year!

Link to Show Notes

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

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 advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, has seen it all: pivotitis, obsessive sales disorder, hypermetrisemia, and leaders who cling to targets while flying blind. Her verdict? Goals don’t simply “need better implementation” — they structurally push people to hide bad news, optimise vanity metrics, and suffocate innovation.

So what’s the alternative?
Puzzle-setting.

Radhika walks us through OHLA — Objectives, Hypotheses, Learnings, Adaptations — a practical, psychologically safe, reality-based way to shift from “Did you hit the number?” to “What did we learn and how do we adapt?” OHLA is built for complex, creative work — not the spreadsheet theatre most orgs mistake for strategy.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why OKRs and targets quietly sabotage truth-telling and innovation
• The 1940s origin story of goal-setting (and why it no longer applies)
• How OHLA works in real organisations — and why it changes behaviour
• What leaders have to unlearn to stop demanding fake certainty
• How to build a bubble of psychological safety even inside a messy system

Full show notes

Connect with Radhika:
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhika-dutt/

🌐 Radical Product Thinking: https://www.radicalproduct.com

📚

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

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-founder of Ultimate Resilience, and one of HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers 2025 — to unpack her groundbreaking findings on HR mental wellbeing… and the systemic failures that put HR professionals at clinical levels of depression, anxiety, burnout, and moral injury.

Jo walks us through the research, the human cost, and the emotional labour nobody sees.
Then she introduces an actual solution: HR Supervision — the psychologically informed support model used in clinical professions that could finally make HR sustainable.

If you work in HR, lead HR, or have ever forwarded a problem with the phrase “Can HR just handle this?”, this episode is your reality check.

In This Episode

• The shocking stats from Jo’s HR Mental Wellbeing Report
• Why HR is experiencing clinical distress levels
• The moral injury of delivering decisions you didn’t make
• HR as the organisational “junk drawer”
• Why employees blame HR instead of the actual decision-makers
• The parentified-child → HR professional pipeline
• Why self-care is not — and never will be — the solution
• What HR Supervision is and why it matters
• How to build a psychologically safe workplace when HR is drowning

Dr Jo Burrell on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jo-burrell-04901a96/

2025 HR Mental Wellbeing Survey Report (Free Download):

📄 Full Show Notes

Listen, subscribe, share

If this episo

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

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 Senior Director of Engineering at Workhuman, and previously at Fidelity Investments and AIB. Now, through The Leading Place, she helps organisations design flexible, people-centred cultures that actually work. A qualified coach and MSc candidate in Work & Organisational Behaviour at Dublin City University, Michelle is widely recognised for her leadership in DEIB, gender equity, and Women in STEM. She has championed ERGs, mentored underrepresented groups, completed the 30% Club Ireland Board Ready programme with Deloitte, and has been honoured as a finalist in the Everywoman in Technology Awards and the Diversity in Tech Awards. She was also named in DiverseIn’s 133 Women Who Change The World.

🔗 Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleamcdaid/

Together with Danny, Marion, and Cacha, Michelle digs into the truth about flexibility:
Why it matters, who gets left behind when it’s taken away, and how brave leadership — not buzzwords — creates cultures where free-range humans thrive while battery-hen systems crumble.

We explore:
• Why flexibility is infrastructure, not a perk
• The weaponisation of resilience
• ADHD in women and the unseen cost of masking
• Gender equity and the real state of DEIB
• Trust as the starting point for performance
• Psychological safety inside rigid systems
• Courage vs. consistency in leadership
• The future of flexible work — and why it’s about design, not location

🔥 Full Show Notes

If you care about flexible work, inclusion, or building teams where people actually flourish, this episode will hit you right in the truth gland.

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

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 WorkFit really means—and how to find it in your life
• The difference between purpose, passion, and fit
• Reclaiming curiosity and joy after chasing others’ definitions of success
• Channeling pain into purpose (caregiving, identity, and advocacy)
• Why side hustles and “crazy-quilt” careers can restore autonomy and hope

Top takeaways:

• WorkFit isn’t a job; it’s a way of living
• Stop optimizing for other people’s expectations
• Agency and joy are the real metrics of success
• Lead with “soft eyes and soft ears”—stay open to signals and seasonality
• The future of work is hopeful when we design for fit

Connect with Dan Smolen:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dansmolen/

• Substack: https://dansmolen.substack.com

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@whatsyourworkfit9441

• Email: dsmolen@dansmolen.com

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

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 go quiet and people are left to fill in the blanks.

She introduces her Seven S’s Framework — Surviving, Supporting, Sense-making, Stabilizing, Stimulating, Sustaining, and Strengthening — and explains how it helps teams move from panic to trust. Together, we explore how HR often becomes the crisis communications department by default, what psychological safety looks like when everything is on fire, and why connection—not control—is the cornerstone of any credible response.

🎧 Expect stories, strategies, and a few uncomfortable truths about leadership, silence, layoffs, and the human side of crisis.

🔗 Connect with Alison on LinkedIn

📘 Get Alison’s book from Kogan Page
with code ALISONARNOT2025 for 25 % off.

Link to Show Notes

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...

Send us a text

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 fully accessible episode, featuring live ASL interpretation (Rebecca Davis) and CART captions (Annie Hargett, AH Real Time Captions). The audio version includes a full written transcript, and you can access the ASL + CC video via the YouTube link below.

🎥 Watch the accessible video version on YouTube → https://youtu.be/2fGpnCNUi1o

👉 Paul is actively job-seeking. Listen, learn, and help us #HirePaul.

In this episode:

• Why “culture is communication”
• How to build accessible onboarding that works
• Why AI captions aren’t yet a reasonable accommodation
• Practical team habits that build belonging
• What HR can learn from lived experience

Connect & Support:
🔗 Connect with Paul on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmeyerpm/
💼 Share open roles or referrals
📣 Spread the word: #HirePaul #ElephantInclusive

Credits
Hosted by Marion Anderson & Danny Gluch
Guest: Paul Meyer
ASL: Rebecca Davis
CART: Annie Hargett, AH Real Time Captions
Collaboration: Greer Procich, Rethinkability

Link to Show Notes

📩 Got a hot take or a workplace horror story? Email us at elephant@thefearlesspx.com

🚀 Your Hosts on LinkedIn

• 🐘 Marion Anderson — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marionandersonpx
  
  
• 🐘 Danny Gluch — https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgluch
  
  
• 🐘 Cacha Dora — https://www.linkedin.com/in/cachadora
  
  

💬 Like what you hear?
Follow/subscribe so you don’t miss an episode — and if this one hit home, leave a ★★★★★ review to help more people find the show.

🎙️ About the Show
The Elephant in the Org drops new episodes every two weeks starting April 2024 — fearless conversations about leadership, psychological safety, and the future of work.

🎵 Music & Production Credits
🎶 Opening and closing theme music by The Toros
🎙️ Produced by The Fearless PX
✂️ Edited by Marion Anderson

⚠️ Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily reflect any affiliated organizations' official policy or position.

Topics: employee surveys, listening culture, trust, people analytics, psychological safety, em...