For CHROs, summer is a key inflection point. We are halfway through the year, and fall will bring a new hiring cycle, sharper workforce planning conversations, and fresh predictions about what comes next. That's why we've curated a summer reading and podcast list to give you timely insights to help you see around the corner.

Every book and podcast on this list speaks to a conversation happening right now—whether in boardrooms, C-suites, compensation committees, or offline peer discussions. The themes are urgent and connected: how to scale and govern AI across the organization, why talent density and culture are becoming defining sources of competitive advantage, how global politics and labor markets are reshaping workforce strategy, and how leaders can unify teams in uncertainty.

 

 

RECOMMENDED PODCASTS:

The CHRO Mindset

By HROne

This podcast focuses on the mindset shift from HR service delivery to enterprise leadership: using AI, data, operating-model changes and executive presence to move the CHRO closer to strategy, growth, and transformation.

Listen: hrone.cloud · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

 

All-In

By Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg

A weekly conversation about markets, technology, and policy debates shaping the business world. The hosts bring direct, often contrarian opinions on AI, regulation, and Silicon Valley strategy. It is a useful pulse check on how top investors and operators are thinking about the forces reshaping talent, technology, and competitive strategy.

Listen: allin.com · Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube

 

Managing the Future of Work ™

By Harvard Business School

A strong, senior-level podcast for CHROs who want labor-market context and systems-level workforce thinking. The podcast covers skills, education-to-work pathways, workforce development, automation, employer strategy, and the changing social contract between companies and workers. Particularly useful for CHROs responsible for long-range workforce planning, reskilling, and enterprise talent strategy.

Listen: hbs.edu · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

 

AI and the Future of Work

By Dan Turchin

An AI-focused podcast about how intelligent agents will reshape work itself. The podcast looks at the broader implications of AI for productivity, jobs, organizational design, leadership, and human-machine collaboration. This is a strong pick for understanding AI as a workforce transformation issue, not just a tool-adoption issue.

Listen: peoplereign.io · Apple Podcasts

 

The Talent Transformation

By Dimitri Boylan

A useful listen for CHROs focused on talent pipelines, strategic recruiting, internal mobility, and workforce planning in complex labor markets. This is particularly relevant for large employers competing for scarce skills, managing global hiring, and refining talent acquisition.

Listen: avature.ai · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

 

The Talent Sherpa

By Jackson O. Lynch and Scott Morris

A CHRO-level podcast focused on the realities of leading the people function at enterprise scale. The show is strongest when it moves beyond HR trends and into the operating questions senior people leaders face: how to step into the CHRO role, influence the C-suite, shape enterprise talent strategy and build credibility as a business leader.

Listen: talentsherpa.com · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

 

Future Ready Leadership

By Jacob Morgan

A leadership-focused podcast on how executives need to evolve as work becomes more digital, distributed, and AI-enabled. For CHROs, the value is in connecting leadership capability to business transformation: what kinds of leaders can operate in uncertainty, build trust, use technology well, and bring organizations through change.

Listen: thefutureorganization.com · Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube

 

At Work with The Ready

By Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin

This is not a traditional HR podcast, which is precisely why it is useful for CHROs. It helps senior people leaders think about the architecture of work: how authority flows, how teams adapt, how organizations make decisions, and what has to change when legacy structures slow transformation.

Listen: theready.com · Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube

 

A Walk on the Wild Side

By Alan Wild

A thoughtful, senior-HR podcast from the mind of Alan Wild. The podcast offers an experienced operator's lens to leadership, culture, organizational change, workforce transformation, and the human side of business performance. For Fortune 250 and Fortune 500 CHROs, its value is not tactical HR advice, but perspective from someone who has worked at the executive level on how people strategy connects to enterprise change.

Listen: chro.org · Apple Podcasts

 

People Managing People

By David Rice and the People Managing People Team

This podcast helps CHROs pick up on practical themes and trends emerging on the C-suite leadership level. The strongest episodes connect employee experience, culture, leadership, and operating systems rather than staying at the level of HR program design.

Listen: peoplemanagingpeople.com · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

 

Acquired

By Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal

A long-form deep dive into the strategy and history behind major companies, from NVIDIA to Costco to LVMH. Each episode functions as a business case study, tracing how a company built its advantage and where it could falter next. It offers a fresh perspective on competitive dynamics and organizational decisions made at the C-suite level.

Listen: acquired.fm · Apple Podcasts · Spotify · YouTube

 

The Future of Less Work

By Nirit Cohen

A more futurist and niche podcast for CHROs thinking beyond traditional employment models. The show is useful for exploring how technology, demographics, flexibility, portfolio careers, and changing worker expectations may alter the structure of work.

Listen: niritcohen.com · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

 

RECOMMENDED BOOKS:

Making Organizational Culture Great

By Jennifer A. Chatman and Glenn R. Carroll (April 2026)

The most relevant book this year for CHROs. Chatman (Berkeley Haas) and Carroll (Stanford GSB) replace culture mysticism with a measurable, manageable system, and argue that as AI commoditizes capability, culture becomes the durable source of competitive advantage. Former Google CHRO Laszlo Bock calls it "an indispensable guide for building enduring, high-performing organizations."

Read or buy: Columbia University Press · Amazon

 

The AI Imperative

By Amy Porter (April 2026)

Written by a former CHRO and Chief Innovation Officer, this book argues CHROs should treat AI as an enterprise-wide transformation effort, not a technology project to delegate. Porter explains how the HR team can carry this out and why the CHRO is positioned to lead alongside the CEO.

Read or buy: Amazon

 

Who's Got the Power

By Dave Kamper (October 2025)

Labor historian and organizer Dave Kamper traces the resurgence of the American labor movement since the pandemic, from the Frito-Lay strike in Topeka to Starbucks Workers United to the UAW. For CHROs, it offers a grounded look at what is driving new organizing activity and where similar pressure could surface next.

Read or buy: The New Press · Amazon

 

More Human

By Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter (March 2025)

Built on interviews with more than 100 CEOs and executives and 360-degree surveys worldwide, this book gives CHROs a practical model for AI-augmented leadership—and a reminder, echoed by CPO peers at Mastercard and HP, that succeeding with AI takes more investment in people than technology.

Read or buy: Harvard Business Review Press · Amazon

 

How to AI

By Christopher Mims (January 2026)

The longtime Wall Street Journal technology columnist delivers one of the most practical executive guides to AI adoption published this year—built around organizational readiness, productivity, and the workforce implications most pilots ignore. A grounded road map for the CHRO tasked with enterprise-wide transformation.

Read or buy: Penguin Random House · Amazon

 

Co-Existence

By Ethan Mollick (October 2026)

Mollick's follow-up to Co-Intelligence turns to a new phase of AI, where systems are sometimes smarter than the people working with them. He argues the real work is knowing where human judgment still matters most as AI capability keeps advancing. For CHROs, it is a practical guide to building durable human advantage in that environment.

Preorder: Penguin Random House · Amazon

 

Design Love In

By Marcus Buckingham (April 2026)

Buckingham, longtime researcher on strengths and human performance, argues love functions as a measurable driver of engagement, loyalty, and business results. He shows leaders how to design it deliberately into policies, products, and daily interactions. For CHROs, it reframes culture and engagement work around a concrete, researchable mechanism.

Read or buy: Harvard Business Review Press · Amazon

 

Furious Minds

By Laura K. Field (November 2025)

Field, a political theorist who spent nearly a decade in conservative academic circles, traces the rise of the intellectual network driving the MAGA New Right, from the Claremont Institute to National Conservatism to Project 2025. For CHROs, it provides context for the ideological currents shaping policy debates on immigration, DEI, and labor regulation.

Read or buy: Princeton University Press · Amazon

 

The Skill Code

By Matt Beane (June 2024)

Beane, a UC Santa Barbara researcher who studies work and robotics, argues that the productivity push to put AI and automation between junior workers and experts is quietly breaking the apprenticeship bond that builds real skill. He lays out three conditions for healthy skill development: challenge, complexity, and connection. This is the most direct read for any CHRO worried about what AI does to early-career hiring and the pipeline of future experts.

Read or buy: Amazon

 

Exile Economics

By Ben Chu (January 2026)

BBC journalist Ben Chu examines the global shift away from economic interdependence toward self-sufficiency, tracing how commodities from silicon to soybeans reveal the hidden costs of decoupling. For CHROs managing global workforces, it offers grounding in the trade and supply chain pressures shaping site location, hiring, and international operations.

Read or buy: Basic Books · Amazon

 

The Age of Extraction

By Tim Wu (November 2025)

Columbia law professor and former White House antitrust official Tim Wu argues dominant tech platforms have shifted from creating value to extracting it, deepening inequality along the way. He lays out concrete proposals for rebalancing the digital economy. For CHROs, it is a clear-eyed look at the platform dynamics increasingly shaping labor markets and workforce technology.

Read or buy: Amazon

 

Mutiny

By Noam Scheiber (April 2026)

New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber traces the rise of a college-educated working class disillusioned by underemployment and debt, from Apple retail stores to Starbucks cafes to Hollywood writers' rooms. For CHROs, it offers a reporter's-eye view of why unionization is spreading among white-collar and service workers alike.

Read or buy: Macmillan · Amazon

 

How Progress Ends

By Carl Benedikt Frey (September 2025)

Oxford economist Frey challenges the conventional notion that innovation is constant; rather, it comes in bursts, disrupts, and then stagnation or a steady effect follows. It helps leaders understand why transformation efforts fail despite new technology—usually for organizational reasons.

Read or buy: Princeton University Press · Amazon