New 'How's Work?' Podcast to Explore Building Workplace Culture

Work has changed. Again.

AI is reshaping workflows and forcing hard conversations around roles, productivity, and headcount. Hybrid work is still being debated years after companies thought they had settled it. Employees are trying to navigate uncertainty while leaders are being asked to move faster than ever.

Most companies are focused on strategy, systems, and performance metrics. Fewer are asking a harder question: What does all of this change feel like for the people inside the company?

That question led me to launch How’s Work?, a new podcast from Kindling Culture Agency focused on honest conversations about leadership, workplace culture, and the future of work.

The idea for the show began to take shape during a conversation I had over a decade ago with Patrick Colletti, then the CEO of Net Health, as part of the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Tech 50 Awards. Even then, Patrick talked about culture differently from most leaders. Not as a perk or a side initiative, but as something foundational to how companies operate.

When Patrick joined me recently to record the first episode of How’s Work?, he put words to something I have been thinking about ever since.

“When somebody asks me for the business case for culture, I think, what’s the business case for air?”

That line stuck with me because it gets at something many leaders know instinctively but struggle to articulate. Culture is not separate from the business. It shapes how teams handle pressure, how decisions get made, how people communicate, and whether employees actually believe leadership when things get difficult.

At Kindling, we often talk about work as what people do with their heads, hands, and hearts. The thinking, the doing, and the caring. But what surrounds those things matters too. The environment people work in matters.

In stable moments, companies can sometimes ignore that reality. Right now, they cannot. Every organization is navigating some kind of transition, whether that is AI adoption, new workplace expectations, hiring pressure, or shifting business models. Strategic change always creates cultural change alongside it.

That is why we created How’s Work?

The podcast is built around conversations with leaders who are intentionally creating workplaces where people feel clarity, trust, purpose, and value. Not perfectly, but thoughtfully. Leaders who understand that culture is not built through slogans or perks. It is built through decisions, communication, accountability, and how people experience work every day.

Season one features conversations with leaders across Pittsburgh, including Patrick Colletti of Net Health, Barbara VanKirk of IQ Inc., Sabrina Saunders Mosby of Vibrant Pittsburgh, and Kathy Humphrey of Carlow University. Each conversation explores what leadership actually looks like right now and how organizations can build healthier, more sustainable workplaces through change.

The goal is not to present easy answers. It is to create space for more honest conversations about what work is becoming and how leaders can build organizations where people still feel their value amid all that change.

How’s Work? launches Tuesday, June 2, on YouTube and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the newsletter at thekindlingagency.com to get every episode the morning it drops.

So, how’s work?

Nathan Wadding is the CEO and Founder of The Kindling Culture Agency, where he helps leaders gain clarity on their culture to design better places to work.