We Not Me

About We Not Me

Exploring how humans connect and get stuff done together, with Dan Hammond and Pia Lee from Squadify. We need groups of humans to help navigate the world of opportunities and challenges, but we don't always work together effectively. This podcast tackles questions such as "What makes a rockstar team?" "How can we work from anywhere?" "What part does connection play in today's world?" You'll also hear the thoughts and views of those who are running and leading teams across the world.

Publisher

Dan Hammond & Pia Lee

Category

business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 Aug 2021

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

152 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   Why AI needs to be led as a member of your team

   Episode Summary In this hosts-only episode, Dan Hammond and Pia Lee start with an uncomfortable question: what's your P(doom), the probability you'd put on AI destroying humanity? They quickly move past it. Their view is that the bigger near-term risk is not the technology but who governs it, and that most leaders can't control that anyway. The question that matters is the one inside your own sphere of influence: how do you bring AI into your team without hollowing it out? Organisations are spending heavily on AI adoption with little clarity about why, cutting roles and then rehiring for them. People increasingly ask AI rather than a colleague, and polished "slop" is moving around organisations with no human owning it. What changes the picture is treating AI as a team capability rather than an individual productivity hack. Research suggests teams using AI outperform both individuals and teams working without it, and AI can act as a neutral facilitator that helps groups get aligned faster. Pia maps a recent HBR piece on leadership mindset for AI adoption onto Squadify's Three Cs. The pairs are clarity over certainty, exploration over expertise, and emotional insight over emotional control. Together they make the case that AI adoption is a leadership job, not a tooling decision. Dan adds a reminder to look after the whole person, because individualised, always-on AI work can lead to brain fry and isolation. Key Themes & Takeaways: The real AI risk most leaders can influence is not doom but fragmentation: AI can turn a team into a "company of one" where everyone works alone to prove their individual value. Teams using AI are significantly more likely to reach high-quality solutions than teams without it, so design AI in as a team sport, not a private shortcut. AI can act as a neutral teammate: teams report getting on the same page faster when AI clusters and wordsmiths their ideas, because nobody's ego owns the output. Leaders can't offer certainty right now, but they can build clarity, and confusing the two leaves people chasing something that isn't available. Exploration beats expertise in new territory; holding tight to past expertise out of fear is how teams go down with the ship. You are accountable for your output: if you pass on AI-generated work you haven't owned, you're handing colleagues slop they'll just feed back into AI to summarise. When people ask AI instead of a colleague, it is often to avoid wasting that colleague's time; leaders need to judge when a conversation is worth more than the efficiency. Three Reasons to Listen: Listen if your organisation is spending on AI without being able to say what it's for, or has cut roles it may have to rehire. Listen if you've received a polished document, suspected no human really wrote it, and been tempted to ask AI to summarise it for you. Listen if you think of AI adoption as a tech rollout. Dan and Pia argue it's a leadership challenge, and that the human skills of pausing, reading the room and exploring matter more now, not less. Notable Quotes "AI needs leading and the adoption of it needs leading." — Pia Lee"Being curious and exploring is not the same as saying, I'm curious, and then making your opinion very much felt." — Dan Hammond"We've got to let the technology actually connect us in a really conscious way."

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Why change fails and what leaders can do to get a different result - with Michael Lopez

   Episode Summary Most transformation programmes are built around the hardware of an organisation: the systems, the ERP rollout, the AI licences switched on and handed out. Michael J. López, consultant, author of CHANGE, and the person behind a new national workforce study of 1,000 workers, has spent two decades delivering that traditional playbook, and the last five trying to change it. His starting point is simple: when his team asked employees for the top five things they get from their company during change and the top five things they actually need, the two lists had nothing in common. What people get is the stuff done to them. What they need is the stuff done by them. The conversation with Dan and Pia moves from diagnosis to what leaders can actually do differently. Michael names the "failure minimisation cycle," where everyone downplays how hard change will be to get budgets approved, which leaves people under-resourced and more cynical each time. His alternative is to treat change as a capability rather than a project: stress-tolerant cultures, executive teams that genuinely lead together, goals people feel they've contributed to, and progress measured through behavioural inputs and stories as well as hard outputs. It's an honest episode about why change takes 18–24 months, and why pretending otherwise costs more. Key Themes & Takeaways In Michael's study, the top five things employees receive during change (emails, communications, training) had zero overlap with the top five they need (experimentation, room for productive mistakes, coaching, leaders going first, the right environment). The "failure minimisation cycle" is well-intentioned but corrosive: underselling complexity to win approval leaves people under-resourced, so change feels harder than promised and trust drops with every programme. Treat change as an organisational capability, a muscle built over time, rather than a project with an end date, because the next change is always coming. 65% of employees in the study felt their company's change plan asked them to move faster than was realistic; the systems can be installed quickly, but people need more time. The "what's in it for me" document rarely moves anyone; people commit to goals they feel they've contributed ideas and effort to, not goals handed down with a reward attached. The CEO's job includes preparing the executive team to lead change together; a committee without a committed champion is where programmes stall. Measure progress through "hard input signals" (new leadership and team behaviours) and "soft signals" (stories and cultural shifts), not only red-amber-green dashboards of outputs. Three Reasons to Listen Listen if you've watched a transformation programme get approved on a promise everyone privately knew was too optimistic, and then watched people pay the price for it. Listen if your AI rollout amounted to "here are the licences, go and innovate" and you're wondering why so little has changed. Listen if you've ever been expected to show certainty in a planning meeting when the honest answer was "we'll learn as we go." Notable Quotes "What we tend to get from change is all the stuff that's done to people. And what employees really said is we need all the stuff that's done by people." — Michael J. López "I believe that change is about accuracy more than about precision." — Michael J. López "It does take boldness in a world where people mistake confidence for competence." — Dan Hammond Resources from Michael Website: michaeljlopez.coach (https://www.michaeljlopez.coach/) Rethinking Change Management (the 2026 workforce study): Free Executive Summary (https://www.michaeljlopez.coach/executive-summary-91611) · Full study (https://www.michaeljlopez.coach/rcm-product-page) Book, CHANGE: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Body, and Behavior: Amazon (https://a.co/d/0bgNCrOT) · Audiobook on Apple Books (https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/change-six-science-backed-strategies-to-transform-your/id1873081351) Top Voice Podcast (live every Tuesday): YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@TopVoicePodcast) · Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/top-voice-tuesday-with-michael-j-l%C3%B3pez/id1825174599) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3oicNQYpTu2xNFFCYHi4jB?si=8c04110ae17c4f57) Follow Michael: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-j-lopez9/) · Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/michaeljlopez9/)

3. 

   10 Sept 2026

   88% of change fails. How to be in the 12%, Part 1

   We Not Me turns 150 episodes old this month, and Dan Hammond and Pia Lee are using the milestone to talk about something every leader running a transformation is quietly grappling with: why 88% of organisational transformations fail — up from 70% not long ago. Prompted by a Forbes article on the subject, they dig into why "transformation" so often becomes corporate shorthand for restructuring, downsizing, or otherwise firing people, and why that confusion poisons trust before the real work even starts. The conversation centres on Charles Handy's sigmoid curve — the idea that any curve of growth eventually turns downward, and that a new curve must be started while the old one is still rising, not after it's collapsed. Dan and Pia unpack why this is so hard in practice: leaders can see the need for change most clearly, but their teams are always a few steps behind on the emotional journey. Drawing on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's stages of grief and William Bridges' distinction between change and transition, they argue that transformation isn't a communications exercise — it's an individual, leader-led process of helping people let go of identity, status, and habit before they can move toward something new. Key Themes & Takeaways Transformation failure rates have climbed from 70% to 88% — and much of that is definitional: restructuring, downsizing, and "realignment" get dressed up as transformation, which employees correctly read as "you're fired," not "you're transformed." Charles Handy's sigmoid curve shows that a new curve must start before the current one peaks — but because performance looks fine on the way up, leaders struggle to convince anyone that change is urgent until it's too late. The transition zone between two curves is genuinely painful: old and new parts of the business end up competing for resources and legitimacy, with the "old" side feeling like the unwanted stepchild funding a new venture that isn't yet profitable. People don't just resist change intellectually — they move through denial, anger, and bargaining before reaching acceptance, and no two people move through that cycle at the same speed. Defining the new curve requires clarity on three things: what you're aiming for (clarity), the climate/culture needed to get there, and the competence — skills and behaviours — the organisation doesn't yet have. Leaders often assume the organisation will change while they personally stay the same — a fallacy that, left unchecked, is itself a predictor of ending up in the 88%. "Change fatigue" is real, especially when sigmoid curves land too close together — teams that haven't finished processing one change get hit with the next before they've found solid ground. Three Reasons to Listen Listen if you've ever announced a change, moved on, and wondered months later why nothing actually shifted — this episode explains why communication isn't leadership. Listen if you're leading a transformation and privately think you'll be able to stay the same while everyone around you changes — Dan and Pia explain why that's a fallacy that quietly sinks change efforts. Listen if your team seems to be dragging its feet on a change you think is obviously right — the sigmoid curve explains why leaders are always further along the emotional curve than their teams, and what to do about the gap. Notable Quotes "It is the line of all things human — of our own lives, of organizations and businesses, of governments, empires and alliances, of democracy itself." — Dan Hammond, quoting Charles Handy "Organizations change and people transition." — Pia Lee, citing William Bridges "If you're leading change and you haven't changed, well, you're probably going to fit into the 88% (who will fail)." — Pia Lee

Who has been a guest on We Not Me

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Stephen Hunt
• Noj Hinkins
• Jon Whittle
• Jon Barnes
• Larry Chao

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

12 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 61 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

90

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

77

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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