The Future of People Analytics Isn't About (Just) People

People analytics has spent years analyzing people. Now it needs to analyze the work.

Recorded live at People Analytics World, Meg Bear and Amy Wilson make the case that as AI changes how work gets done, the function has to move past studying humans and start studying the system of work itself: how humans and AI share it, where it gets stuck and how it should be designed.

They also discuss why the bottleneck in software was never the code, and why AI should change how the whole engineering organization works, not just the engineers. They also cover why "learn it, train it, deploy it" breaks down when AI keeps improving this fast, and why leaders need to keep learning too.

From there, they get into what it takes to lead right now. It takes a special person who's willing to unlearn and relearn, and a special organization around them. They talk about why the manager job just got a lot harder and is likely to be split into separate roles. And they make the case that you can't start a movement alone.

If you work in people analytics, lead teams or design how work gets done, this conversation is about the questions you'll face next.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome: Live from People Analytics World

02:14 David Green Keynote: A Teams vs B, C, D Teams

04:17 AI Use Cases Still Stuck in HR Topics

05:09 Work Design Goes Mainstream: From Evangelism to Urgency

06:44 DRI vs Dynamic Team: Prasad Setty and Amy's Debate

09:20 Why Committees Fail and Movements Need Co-Creators

10:40 Intel's Kelsey Klein: Real Work Redesign Use Cases

12:04 Changing the Organisation vs Changing the Individual

13:26 Software Dev Bottlenecks Are Not the Code

17:49 Bundling and Unbundling: Roles, AI Tasks and the Manager

20:06 Jack Dorsey's Model as an Extreme Provocation

22:12 Human-AI Systems: Measuring What Makes Humans Better

25:35 The Special Person and the Special Organisation

28:36 The Future of the People Analytics Role

30:56 Context Engines, Strategy Alignment and Sense-Making

34:25 Storytelling as a Core Analytics Skill

35:33 Dashboards Are Dead, Long Live Interactive Data Spaces

📚 RESOURCES:

People Analytics World: https://home.paworld365.com/

PAWorld26 New York: https://home.paworld365.com/events/26nyc/

Ikona Analytics, our podcast stage host: https://www.ikonaanalytics.com/

Richard Rosenow: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardrosenow/

"The End of People Analytics As We Knew It" (Ikona): https://www.ikonaanalytics.com/insights/the-end-of-people-analytics

"Context Is All You Need" (Ikona): https://www.ikonaanalytics.com/insights/context-is-all-you-need

Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2025/26 (David Green): https://go.insight222.com/insight222-people-analytics-trends-report-2025/26

Prasad Setty: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/prasad-setty

Siobhan Savage, Reejig: https://www.reejig.com/company/siobhan-savage

"You Can't Redesign Work With a Team You Haven't Designed" (Amy): https://www.themegandamyshow.com/p/you-can-t-redesign-work-with-a-team-you-haven-t-designed

"From Hierarchy to Intelligence" (Jack Dorsey & Roelof Botha): https://sequoiacap.com/article/from-hierarchy-to-intelligence

Jaya Gupta on unbundling intelligence: https://x.com/JayaGup10/status/2101799427145183571

Our episode with Jason Cohen: https://wrkdefined.com/podcast/the-meg-and-amy-show/episode/hidden-ways-to-grow-without-more-hires-or-funding-jason-cohen

Kieran Snyder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieran-snyder-60572987/

Morgan Depenbusch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgandepenbusch/

Bill and Morgan's Dashboard Confessionals: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/bill-yost/

🔗 CONNECT:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/megandamyshow/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-meg-amy-show

https://www.linkedin.com/in/megbear/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-wilson-insight/

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