Finding the next right step when the path isn't clear
Hi Reader
This is the first of these, so a quick word on what it is. I'll use this space to share what I'm actually seeing across people work and Agile in HR: the useful ideas, the conversations worth your time, and what my AltHR Hive co-founder Marnie Robbins and I are building.
It's a work in progress, like Agile in HR, you most likely will see my newsletter evolve with each issue.
I just got back from a stretch of travel, Seattle and then Bali in June, and the same theme kept surfacing in nearly every conversation: the gap in human skills at work is widening, right when we need those skills most. Almost everything below sits on that thread.
THE SIGNAL LOOP, LIVE ON JULY 30
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If you've ever wished HR worked more like a product team, this is for you. Marnie and I built the SIGNAL Loop as agile and human centered design applied to workplace friction: you start from a real signal, diagnose before you design, write a hypothesis, run the smallest meaningful experiment with guardrails and 3 to 5 measures, then hold a short retro and decide to continue, iterate, stop, or expand.
The part most agile-in-HR conversations skip is reinforcement. A clean experiment still fails if managers don't reinforce it, so we treat buy-in and a shared talk track as launch criteria, not nice-to-haves.
We're unveiling the Field Guide live on July 30: Creating Workplace Signal Loops for Forward Motion. If you're already working in iterations, come pressure-test it with us.
Or start now: Click here to grab your free worksheet.
FROM RESISTANCE TO ROCKSTAR, AT THE AUSTIN AI ALLIANCE
Ed Stockwell & Mindy Honcoop at Austin AI Alliance
Ed Stockwell and I co-facilitated "From Resistance to Rockstar" at the Austin AI Alliance Leadership Summer Intensive. The moment it landed was when it stopped being our slides and became a real back-and-forth, people questioning the material and taking it past where the deck went. A few folks said the takeaways felt usable on Monday, not just good in the room. The pressure on people asked to absorb constant change isn't easing, and the human skills for moving through it only get more important.
We are looking to take the interactive conversation to other groups! Reach out if you are interested to learn more!
LEADERSHIP AS INFRASTRUCTURE: THE RECLAIMED PODCAST
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Lindsay Harwell had me back on Reclaimed for a second conversation, and what makes her show worth your time is how she goes underneath the usual leadership talk. In part two, we reframe self-regulation as infrastructure rather than a soft skill: how a leader decides under pressure, holds boundaries, and manages their own bandwidth shapes every system around them. We get into how survival patterns like people-pleasing and hyper-vigilance can quietly run the show, and the practical work of moving from scarcity to clarity through value clarification, decision matrices, and boundaries as stewardship rather than walls.
Part one went deep on burnout: not just stress or long hours, but a disconnection from purpose, boundaries, and the inner signals that tell us we need support, and what sustainable recovery actually takes.
Listen to Reclaimed: https://open.spotify.com/show/7DKeAVOPXOCeLxX5n7I3tA
COMING UP ON AltHR The SHIFT
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Next up on our podcast, Marnie Robbins and me are in conversation with Dave Birss and Helena McAleer on this exact human skills theme: why it matters now, and what it asks of the people function. Keep an eye out. It drops next Thursday!β
A BOOK WITH A PIECE OF MY STORY: LIONESS
Jen Porter's Lioness Book Cover
Lioness recently launched, a collection of real stories of women who've moved through immense challenge into hope and resilience. My story is one of the chapters. If that's the kind of thing that fuels you, grab a copy.
Learn More + Stay Connected (this section needs more work! :))
Agile in HR is Mindy Honcoop's advisory practice, built on one idea: transformation starts with people. For 26 years, Mindy has worked inside the people function, in the rooms where strategy meets the humans who have to carry it out. She keeps seeing the same tension. Organizations want to move faster, adopt AI, and change how they work, and the piece that decides whether any of it holds is the people. HR sits closest to that reality and is often the most underleveraged voice in the room. Agile in HR exists to change that. Mindy advises, coaches, and facilitates for leaders and teams navigating growth, leadership transitions, and AI-driven change, helping them connect their people systems to business strategy instead of treating the two as separate problems. She is an ICF-certified executive coach and founder of Agile in HR, co-founder of AltHR Hive with Marnie Robbins, and fractional VP of Customer Success at MeBeBot, where she works at the intersection of people and AI. This newsletter, The Next Right Move, is where that work shows up: the tools, the conversations, and the shifts worth your time. No fixed schedule. It arrives when there is something genuinely useful to pass along.
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