Ep 316: What Matters Next: Tech, Teams & Trust with Kate O’Neill, Founder & CEO of KO Insights; New York, NY, USA
If you’re making tech decisions faster than your team can absorb them or you’re worried AI might erase the “human” from your business; this conversation will feel like a deep breath and a reset button.
Today, I sit down with Kate O’Neill. She’s known as the “tech humanist,” founder and CEO of KO Insights, and newly named member of the Thinkers50 list of top management thinkers in the world. We unpack her new book, What Matters Next? A Leader’s Guide to Making Human-Friendly Tech Decisions in a World That Is Moving Too Fast, and explore how leaders can stay grounded in purpose while navigating AI, automation, and constant change. Kate shares the “now–next continuum” and her Insights & Foresights model as practical ways to reduce overwhelm, make better decisions, and design a future that works for both your business and your people. If you’re leading through chaos and want your organization to be both high-performing and deeply human, this one is for you.
Here are some highlights:
-Redefining purpose as a question: How Kate uses one core question “How can we help humanity prepare for an increasingly tech-driven future?” and why reframing your mission as a question can sharpen strategy and culture.
-The Now–Next continuum: A practical way for leaders to connect past, present, and future so the “future of work” feels less murky and more manageable, with clearer signals about what to do today.
-Insights, Foresights, and “bankable foresights”: Inside Kate’s decision-making model that helps executives ask better questions, synthesize what they’re learning, and build a growing bank of future-ready insights instead of reacting in panic.
-What “human-friendly” tech decisions really look like: From AI-driven layoffs to chatbots and educational tools, we talk about the hidden human costs of short-sighted tech choices for employees, customers, and students, and how to design more holistic, human-centered solutions.
-AI, higher education, and the next generation of talent: Why banning tools like ChatGPT is a missed opportunity, how good prompting mirrors good delegation, and what universities and employers can do to better prepare young professionals for a prompt-based, AI-enabled workplace.
About the guest:
Kate O’Neill, known globally as the “Tech Humanist," is the founder and CEO of KO Insights, a strategic advisory firm dedicated to improving human experience at scale. Her innovative approach bridges the gap between technological advancement and human-centric values, influencing how organizations navigate digital transformation. She is also author of the book What Matters Next: A Leader's Guide to Making Human-Friendly Tech Decisions in a World That's Moving Too Fast, which was named a Thinkers50 2025 Best Management Book. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate’s expertise is rooted in hands-on experience with category-defining companies. She was one of the first 100 employees at Netflix, where she pioneered the first content management role. She developed Toshiba America’s first intranet and founded [meta]marketer, one of the earliest digital strategy and analytics agencies.
Connect with Kate:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateoneill/
Website: https://www.koinsights.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-Next-Human-Friendly-Decisions/dp/1394296428
Connect with Allison:
Feedspot has named Disruptive CEO Nation as one of the Top 25 CEO Podcasts on the web, and it is ranked the number 6 CEO podcast to listen to in 2025! https://podcasts.feedspot.com/ceo_podcasts/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonsummerschicago/
Website: https://www.disruptiveceonation.com/
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