Claim OwnershipThe Talent Sherpa Podcast
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© 2026 Ninety Consulting LLC
Description
Where Senior Leaders Come to Rethink How Human Capital Really Works
This podcast is built for executives who are done with HR theater and ready to run talent like a business system. The conversations focus on decisions that show up in revenue, margin, speed, and accountability. No recycled frameworks. No vanity metrics. No performative culture talk.
Each episode breaks down how real organizations build talent density, set clear expectations, reward the right outcomes, and fix what quietly kills performance. The tone is direct. The thinking is operational. The guidance is usable on Monday morning.
If you are a CEO, CHRO, or senior operator who wants fewer activities and more results from your people strategy, you are in the right place.
Keep Climbing.
106 Episodes
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Send us a text W. Edwards Deming said 94% of problems in organizations are system driven. Only 6% are people problems. We all nod when we hear that. We love the quote. We put it in our slide decks. And then we go right back to building performance improvement plans. The Work Institute found that 75% of voluntary turnover is preventable. Three out of four departures did not have to happen. And yet we're spending our energy on the 6% while ignoring the 94%. Imagine you're a surgeon and your pat...
Send us a text Watch this happen to exceptionally capable people. CHROs who transformed functions, built credibility, did everything right in the mandate conversation, and still hit a ceiling they cannot explain. We talk about the identity shift the CHRO must make. Functional leader to business leader. HR expert to enterprise problem solver. But here's what no one talks about. The CHRO cannot complete that shift alone. There's a corresponding shift the CEO must also make. If the CEO doesn't m...
Send us a text You've diagnosed the problem. Now here's how to fix it. In Part 1, we unpacked why 31% of first-time CHROs are fired within 18 months and why doing a "good job" on HR metrics isn't enough. The issue? A strategy gap that starts as unclear language, becomes structure, and ends with a quiet exit. In Part 2, we're giving you the playbook. Scott Morris (former CHRO, founder of Propulsion AI) and Jackson Lynch break down the three concrete moves you can make starting Monday morning t...
Send us a text Most CHROs lose credibility not because they fail, but because they succeed at the wrong things. They deliver what was asked, show up prepared, complete the work. And still, when critical conversations happen, the CEO routes elsewhere. This isn't a relationship problem. This is a forecast problem. Jackson Lynch breaks down three ways CHROs train CEOs to discount their judgment—and five plays that create predictable accuracy. What You'll Learn The forecast problem: CEO deciding...
Send us a text You cannot bolt a "serve first" identity onto someone who has spent 20 years operating on achievement, control, and self-preservation. No seminar is going to rewrite that. Pretending otherwise is how companies end up with inspirational quotes and mediocre execution. Jackson Lynch breaks down why servant leadership, as it's popularly sold, is one of the biggest myths in leadership—and what actually works: engineering leadership context instead of trying to reprogram person...
Send us a text Ready for the sting that actually helps? We pull back the curtain on why AI fails in organizations that can’t define outcomes and introduce the clarity ratio, a simple metric that exposes whether your team is truly ready to scale AI or just good at shipping slide decks. If your top workflows can’t be expressed in one sentence—Do X so that Y—you’re at risk of scaling confusion instead of value. We start with the 2026 reality: CEOs want adoption, boards want ROI, and...
Send us a text Every organization running a transformation has people who see exactly what's going to fail. Most of them stay silent. Not because they lack courage, but because they lack permission. In this episode, Jackson breaks down the red team pre-mortem: a structured way to surface uncomfortable truths before they become expensive failures. He shares a real example from his time at Nestlé Dryer's, explains why most pre-mortems produce nothing useful, and walks through five p...
Send us a text The company hires a new CHRO. The CEO introduces them like they've found the missing gear in the leadership machine. The board nods in relief. The executive team exhales. And then, month by month, the narrative starts to shift. Around month nine, the CEO starts offering compliments that land a little oddly. Around month 12, the tone tightens. And by month 15, the question isn't coded anymore: Are we getting the strategic partnership that we need? This is part one of a two-part ...
Send us a text Most companies say trust matters, but when they run interviews, they only evaluate skills and polish. They focus on what candidates have rather than how they operate. And when you hire that way, you get predictably unpredictable results. Lou Adler has spent over 50 years studying the difference between people who elevate an organization and the people leaders end up managing around. He's examined thousands of hires across roles, industries, and eras, and he keeps seeing the sam...
Send us a text In the final episode of the year, Jackson Lynch revisits ten workforce predictions made at the start of 2025 and scores them against what actually happened. Using real data and observable outcomes, the conversation walks through headcount reductions, early-career hiring collapse, AI adoption, merit-based systems, board oversight, and the widening divide in the labor market. The episode matters because it separates narrative from reality. Growth masked inefficiency for yea...
Send us a text If your CEO has ever said, “Let us get back to nuts and bolts HR,” you are not hearing clarity. You are hearing a leadership alarm bell. That phrase sounds responsible, but it is really code for something far less strategic. It means the CEO wants relief, not growth. It means they want HR to remove complexity instead of building capability. And it means the organization is about to drift backward. In this episode, Jackson breaks down why strong CHROs get trapped when CEOs rever...
Send us a text Skills based hiring sounds like the future. The research is glowing, the consultants are excited, and every conference panel is certain that skills first is how CHRO strategy wins the next decade. There is only one problem. Most companies cannot get managers to turn in performance reviews on time, let alone maintain a living skills architecture. In this episode, Scott and Jackson go head to head on one of the buzziest ideas in HR leadership. Scott plays the evangelist and argue...
Send us a text This episode of the Talent Sherpa Podcast unpacks one of the least discussed realities of senior HR leadership: the structural loneliness of the CHRO role. Using Notre Dame Coach Marcus Freeman’s quote, “I do not have anybody to talk to sometimes,” as the anchor, Jackson explains why the CHRO becomes the emotional center of the organization with almost no place to put the weight they absorb. Listeners learn how the CHRO becomes the confidante for executives, employees, an...
Send us a text Most leaders blame people when performance stalls; this episode argues the real culprit is the invisible system wrapped around them. In this Talent Sherpa conversation, Jackson O. Lynch and Scott Morris sit down with Dave Foley, founder and CEO of Vendi, to talk about a problem every CHRO and senior operator feels but rarely names: you cannot manage what you cannot see, and right now most companies cannot see how work actually moves. AI is speeding everything up, but your opera...
Send us a text Every senior leader has seen it. Some pretend they have not. If your CEO is running a quiet little “after meeting” once everyone leaves the room, the team has already failed. And the performance hit is bigger than executives like to admit. In this episode, Jackson breaks down one of the most uncomfortable leadership truths: when decisions migrate out of the room, power does too. That is the silent audit. And most leadership teams fail it long before they notice the consequences...
Send us a text Most executive teams can quote their strategy and rattle off values. Ask what they believe about talent and you’ll get a different answer from every leader in the room. That’s not a system, and you need a system. In this episode, Jackson and Scott unpack the hidden operating code behind every promotion, pay call, and hiring trade-off: your talent philosophy. You already have one. The question is whether it’s explicit and consistent, or manager-by-manager improvisation. Wh...
Send us a text Most leaders talk about AI with the confidence of someone who skimmed a headline and called it research. They love the idea of transformation, but not the part where they must change how they lead. That is the tension we dig into in this episode: AI is replacing excuses. It makes work visible. It exposes gaps leaders have glossed over for years. And it audits leadership in real time. In this conversation, Jackson breaks down why AI surfaces something deeper than productivity. I...
Send us a text Gratitude shows up every November, usually squeezed between pie logistics and Q4 panic. Most leaders treat it like decoration. Nice sentiment, zero business value. The truth is the opposite. Gratitude is one of the simplest and most reliable performance systems you have, and most organizations barely use it. In this episode, Jackson reframes gratitude as operational fuel, not seasonal fluff. When people feel seen, they contribute at a higher level. When they do not, performance...
Send us a text Most executive teams can quote their strategy and rattle off values. Ask what they believe about talent and you’ll get a different answer from every leader in the room. That’s not a system. In this episode, Jackson and Scott unpack the hidden operating code behind every promotion, pay call, and hiring trade-off: your talent philosophy. You already have one. The question is whether it’s explicit and consistent, or manager-by-manager improvisation. When you make your belief...
Send us a text Every CHRO loves a good aspiration. Build an engaged culture. Be the employer of choice. Create a world-class talent strategy. The only problem? None of those are measurable—and none of them move the P&L. In this episode of The Talent Sherpa Podcast, Jackson Lynch goes straight at one of HR’s most expensive bad habits: the addiction to aspirational goals. These lofty slogans sound good in PowerPoint, but they don’t allocate capital, lift margin, or speed up execution. Jacks...
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