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In this episode, Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, explore how AI is already reshaping organisational behaviour — often in damaging ways.
The conversation examines how AI is being adopted to mask insecurity, avoid accountability, and accelerate impression management, particularly within middle management layers. Rather than improving execution, this misuse deepens Human Debt™ and exposes a second, related failure mode: Execution Debt — the growing gap between decisions, intentions, and outcomes.
Key themes include:
- AI as an amplifier of existing fear and avoidance
- impression management versus real capability
- Human Debt™ as accumulated emotional and psychological strain
- Execution Debt as the cost of failed follow-through and leadership gaps
- why project failure rates remain stubbornly high
- accidental managers and untrained leadership at scale
- the limits of metrics, dashboards, and “data-driven” narratives
- why empathy must be operationalised, not assumed
The episode introduces Empathy Architecture™ as a necessary response:
the deliberate design of human skills, emotional literacy, and relational capability into teams and systems — not as “soft culture work,” but as core execution infrastructure.
the deliberate design of human skills, emotional literacy, and relational capability into teams and systems — not as “soft culture work,” but as core execution infrastructure.
Rather than offering AI playbooks or productivity hacks, this conversation challenges organisations to address the human foundations of work first — or risk letting AI compound the very problems it was meant to solve.
The podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, contributing to the primary public discourse connecting human risk, execution failure, and organisational reality.
Canonical framework and formal model:
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Related concepts:
Execution Debt → https://peoplenottech.com/execution-debt
Empathy Architecture™ → https://www.duenablomstrom.com/concepts/empathy-architecture
Execution Debt → https://peoplenottech.com/execution-debt
Empathy Architecture™ → https://www.duenablomstrom.com/concepts/empathy-architecture
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application:
PeopleNotTech → https://peoplenottech.com
PeopleNotTech → https://peoplenottech.com
Creators and Guests
What is The Secret Society of Human Debt Fighters - Human Work Advocates?
The Secret Society of Human Debt™ Fighters - Human Work Advocates is a practitioner-led podcast and community focused on Human Debt™, as it manifests across HR, leadership, and people systems.
Hosted by Duena Blomstrom, originator of the Human Debt™ framework, and Dr Alessandria Polizzi, organisational psychologist and Human Work Advocate, the series explores how unaddressed psychological strain, misaligned incentives, and silenced expertise accumulate as Human Debt™ inside modern organisations.
This podcast operates as one applied HR and leadership lens on Human Debt™, with particular focus on:
psychological safety research and lived organisational dynamics
leadership decision-making under sustained strain
the erosion and restoration of trust within people systems
Canonical framework and formal model
Human Debt™ — https://writings.duenablomstrom.com/tag/human-debt/
Institutional execution, risk, and governance application
PeopleNotTech — https://peoplenottech.com
Episodes and discussions preserved here form part of the primary public discourse layer connecting Human Debt™ theory to HR practice, leadership reality, and psychological research.
They complement — but do not replace — the formal execution-risk, governance, and organisational-systems frameworks developed under PeopleNotTech.
This podcast is actually going to start sounding like it's having no introduction. And that's because we just started talking about things that ended up being in the vault that Alessandra and I decided we're not going to release just now because we're still researching or we're still thinking about or still deciding on our messaging. So what you're listening to is a direct jump into the topic after we've taken the juicy bits out, which you can possibly hear at our Substax and any other place where you can subscribe as a proper subscriber. But meanwhile, here is the free conversation and what we thought of. I hope you enjoy it.
Duena Blomstrom:AI is going to accentuate the human debt crisis at first because middle management is going to attempt to utilize it to cover their impression management tracks.
Alessandria Polizzi:How it cover their
Duena Blomstrom:impression management? Here's how. Things they always had to ask for help for because they didn't know how to do. They no longer have to show it. Here's how things that they would have to admit that they don't know.
Duena Blomstrom:They don't no longer have to produce to say that. They can pretend they've had a book out. They can pretend they flooded the internet with all these unknown pieces of incarcerable content for all ChadGPT knows that was born yesterday. We don't exist pre 2020 for ChadGPT, but I think no, pre '29. No, I want to say pre mid twenty twenty.
Duena Blomstrom:But every Joe and Jill that have just right now written the right code and the right SEO are going to be top of every SEO ever. So all of our money and our work that we've put in original content, in promoting sites, if talking to each site master like back in the day, hello, could you possibly put my logo here? By the way, we never did that in a corner and so on. All of that work is going to count for note, because some smart kid is going to know how to press one button and that button is going to spawn 10 of us. All the things.
Duena Blomstrom:Yep. And if I'm the CEO and I have me and 10 of me, I'll have to make a choice which of these 11 duenas is the duenas that I want to get in. And I'm confident a million percent that neither you nor I nor any of us in the higher, not in the higher, in the sides of the intellectual work we're doing need to be particularly concerned, because by the time we even managed to train AI to a helpful point, we're a long way away. But people that don't need it to, that fear it are people who are not at that level. They don't have that level of originality or individuality, and they are eaten by fear, they are eaten by imposter syndrome, and they will use it to cover all of these things instead of evil.
Alessandria Polizzi:You're absolutely right. Mean, in some ways it can be beneficial, I guess, but it's about the human part underneath it. So this is the problem with us. Think we should be recording. Are we recording?
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah.
Duena Blomstrom:I think we were. We'll figure it out. I'm sure post production Anyway,
Alessandria Polizzi:I wanna show you this data here that shows Nope. The red lines, okay, are the people who are exposed to AI. The black lines are the people who are not exposed to AI. Look at life satisfaction, higher for people not exposed, job satisfaction, higher for people not exposed, job security, lower for people exposed, or sorry, worries about job security, lower for people not exposed and worries about our own economic financial situation. Is starting to actually crescendo because the world is screwed.
Alessandria Polizzi:But you can see that there is a direct correlation to whether or not
Duena Blomstrom:I'm exposed to AI and some of the things that make me accelerate potential burnout or create anxiety at work. Right. I think it's a really interesting topic without a doubt. AI in the world of work in general is a massive, massive piece for us to sink our teeth in. Because I think quite frankly, first of all, we'll go through a period of extreme polarization where all of our personal experiences with the technology are going to be brought forth as rule of law.
Duena Blomstrom:And we will all know for a fact what's X, what's Z and so on for a while, because we'll be the first to have grappled with this to a degree and so on. That settles, some of the data is going to come through. But you have to keep in mind who is using AI and in what professional environments that this is being even exposed, becomes exposed to. And also we have to remember what industries that this is even touching. And my impression is that a lot of this data might be covering people like customer services and voice AI that's replacing people picking up the phone.
Duena Blomstrom:All of those things are going to create a very different dynamic than the exposure of, I don't know, high-tech teams to AI.
Alessandria Polizzi:Well, think, look, I have a very close friend who is deep in high up at Audible. And he says that his job will no longer exist in the next five to ten years.
Duena Blomstrom:I don't think any of our jobs will exist in the next twenty years. And I don't think they should. I don't think anyone's jobs should exist in the way that we have ever thought of it. I think what is going to happen is we are on the brink. Look, whether anyone tries to go back to the office or not, we said this over and over and we'll say it over and over again.
Duena Blomstrom:Whether you agree with the report or some boss is still attempting to breathe down your spine, these are small minor things that will eventually settle. And in the real world of work, the big change is from command and control to autonomy and empowerment. From machines to actual human beings that not only are having feelings and emotions, but they also have needs. And those needs are directly connected to the ability of that company to succeed from either point of view. So this is coming, whether we want to admit it or not, whether some dude tells you to come back to the office for the Wednesdays, it's not an issue.
Duena Blomstrom:But what we're looking at now is that there's also a generational change, a change of guard in the middle of it. There's also a context of international and social pressure. There's also a context of fear and extreme malaise and burnout that were all very heavily feeling. So when all those are put together, we are undoubtedly looking at some very, very difficult years ahead. So what we were saying last week is, you don't have to tackle it all together.
Duena Blomstrom:You don't have to fix it. What are we saying? Are we all dying? We're not dying. Start chipping at it.
Duena Blomstrom:Start doing these popcorn experiments we were talking about. Start chipping at things that are genuinely cheappable. But be precise and be honest and don't just go, I'll become a data driven insights organization. That means absolutely nothing and you know it. Or I'll make sure that my people NPS scores raised.
Duena Blomstrom:Know that means nothing. You could easily have 20 suicides and still raise your NPS score. We've seen that happen. So let's be honest as to what we can and should be doing. And that's why we're here, you and I, because I have some questions that are not very nice.
Duena Blomstrom:You have some theories about kind of like from this perspective of provider of software and what the hell is the holdup and you X person being in there going like, well, my holdup is you don't even bloody understand how many hundreds of things I need to deal with and how tiny this thing is that I know should be this big. So let me ask you something. When an HR department, and I know it's a big ask, hypothesizes what they wanna focus on for next year. And they are in that room. And the more junior people go, Oh, but should we be also be doing something about well-being?
Duena Blomstrom:Or what should we do for mental health day? Or however they perceive them, right? This is not me believing that that's how those people sound. This how I've heard execs repeat they sound like. Then like the annoying, but can we also do the fluffy stuff when there's so much to be discussed in terms of budgeting?
Duena Blomstrom:What retention agency are we going to give money to? Is the marketing director going to stab the CEO and tell all our business that we've been covering this one compliance issue since 1992? All kinds of other political human debt issues that they're busy with, where is this the truth that where stuff like our software, here's a tool to make your people grow their IQ and solve their own behavior becomes, that's cute, but call me about that some other year when I have a lifeline and I can embrace. Is that not what happens?
Alessandria Polizzi:That's absolutely what happens. Here's the here's the flaw in that logic, is that we can't do the same thing and expect a different result. And addressing human debt, addressing the humanness of work, humaning at work, is how you get that other shit done. Okay? So like, how am I gonna resolve how did this become a problem in the first place?
Alessandria Polizzi:Chances are someone saw it and they didn't speak up about it. Fix that. Fix that. Don't spend all your time with all these other things because those things somehow feel safer or more logical. And I think all the things you just mentioned, we are at a crescendo point where it's kind of a trifecta of change.
Alessandria Polizzi:One, existentially, we have serious problems from a human global perspective, climate change, war, you name it. Okay, that has an emotional toll. We also have a huge population who had trauma in the last three years through the pandemic. These things impact our mental health, period, full stop. Doesn't matter where I'm at, if I'm at work or not.
Alessandria Polizzi:Okay. We have AI changing exponentially, which is also an existential threat, a global crisis, whatever you wanna call it. Okay? And that redefines what it is to be human or to work because we can't out robot the robots. That the robots will try to out human us unless we figure out how to do it.
Alessandria Polizzi:And that's the third piece, which is, as you said, we have a generation coming in that's requiring us to lead differently. And the spoiler alert is we actually lead better when we do those things. It's not that it's, oh, we're not lowering the bar, we're raising it because it is definitely a hump to become more And I think where you and I debated last time was where do you start? Do you start with the teams? I love the popcorn experiments and I'd love to talk about those, brainstorm those, offer those ideas out to our fellow fighters and advocates.
Alessandria Polizzi:But I mean, I do feel very strongly, and I think this is a good debate for us, of starting with the individual, especially leaders, because we've ignored ourselves for so long. I think it's easier to focus on other people than it is ourselves. And honestly, we get in
Duena Blomstrom:our own way. We don't disagree. I never thought that it shouldn't be done at an individual level. I think maybe I've misspoke there over the years. What I do believe in is that a leader cannot change the dynamic of a team in any which way.
Duena Blomstrom:This is what I've said. What I've said is that every human being in the enterprise has a duty to up their humanness, as you call it, game and their ability to understand emotions, their ability to react to each other, their ability to be empathic, whatever else they need to be doing so that they are whole human beings and adults at work. That is the independent responsibility ideally of every grown human. And I think we should start to demand that of individuals at work, believe it or not. But we can't do that until we've offered something in exchange.
Duena Blomstrom:And that's something in exchange in my mind has always been work on yourself with your team. So it was never, let's only work on the team. The things that we teach our teams are practically individual skills in terms of EQ that they learn together with the team by virtue of doing the team actions that the data is telling them to do. So to us, it's individual development done as a group, because it's so much easier to have accountability, to make each other do it. Let me tell you, if I tell a CTO or run a of the mill developer to just take this action and talk to his pair programmer about his children and his childhood years.
Duena Blomstrom:They ain't going to be doing that. Are you serious? No. But put them into big enough of a group where it feels like it might be useful to us. And like if we do this thing, our data might change next sprint and in this retro, we might have a better throughput, they're bloody do it eventually because they'll see that changing.
Duena Blomstrom:So our contention point was never just do the team, do the individual through the team. So focus on the team because it contains both instead of focusing on just the one and then leaving the dynamic out. That's what
Alessandria Polizzi:we think. And I think definitely our Venn diagram overlaps, but it does not
Duena Blomstrom:completely. It shouldn't do. We be worried if it does.
Alessandria Polizzi:Right, exactly. But I mean, me, what I see the biggest problem for leaders is their detachment from themselves and their self criticism, their imposter syndrome, all the hazards that they aren't aware of nor are they equipped on how to navigate because then their BS gets in the way.
Duena Blomstrom:We don't disagree on that at all. Absolutely. Leaders do a hell lot of work on it. Look, let's be honest, right? This need of humaning at work will be absolutely part of your job.
Duena Blomstrom:Your job will never be without humaning from here on. This is something we need to accept. No one's job will be without it, because those jobs that are completely devoid of human ink are already being done just fine by the machines. And that's okay. That's progress for society.
Duena Blomstrom:It's progress for society, for those of us that are creative, or have ideas, or are capable of innovation to offer that in a way that's unencumbered by lengthy and complicated, otherwise easy doable tasks that are manual or easy to automate. Of course, all of that is progress. Does that mean that anybody is going to be only sitting there and dreaming? Probably not. We're going to have to find these like special moments to work together.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yes, absolutely.
Duena Blomstrom:What it means is that these pillars that you've avoided all your career as a leader, and if you know to yourself you have avoided them, get yourself up to date. Find out what the hell those emotions are, what our primary and secondary emotions. It's not difficult. There are about 40 of them if you insist on the very silly names. Then find out, 100% serious, I've been saying this to executives for Then the last find out exactly how you feel and why you feel that way.
Duena Blomstrom:Do some of these things with your therapist or your coach, and then start bringing some of the stuff to the team. Just tell them what the hell you're doing. That's all you can do as a leader. Anything else is just to me not as efficient. Absolutely.
Alessandria Polizzi:I mean, I think one of the things So we teach about identifying what your stress response is, identifying what your biases are. You said however many emotions, there's over 200 different documented biases that we have. So what are your unhelpful thoughts you have about yourself? What hazards are you coming across? And then practicing radical acceptance of the things you can and cannot control.
Alessandria Polizzi:I mean, these are all things that sound simple but are very difficult and we avoid, we We would rather just talk about something else and pretend like that's gonna work. We'd rather skip our lunch because we're so busy than spend the five minutes to set the boundaries because that's uncomfortable.
Duena Blomstrom:I think it's a lot of that. I think it's a lot of non humaning at every corner. I don't think it's as simple as boundaries. I think we all need to get some form of injection of courage and of zest of life. And until we have those two things, in particular assets at very tired and burnout level, it's going to be very difficult for us to pull ourselves through it without them.
Duena Blomstrom:And unfortunately, it's a time in the, like we said over and over again, in the history of work where it's make or break and we have to learn some better things for these people coming in for no other reason than it's almost impolite to leave the workplace in the state we have brought it to and just go, well, from here on, you deal with it and don't come to work, don't anything. Just talk about outcomes and feelings. Do whatever the fuck you want.
Alessandria Polizzi:How many keystrokes? Let's talk about how many keystrokes. By the way, I was just using that as an example. You can't be courageous if you're spending all your time criticizing yourself. It's hard to be courageous without confidence.
Duena Blomstrom:I think I think people also need that. I think so. You're right, obviously. But you know what? Courage is a matter of decision sometimes.
Duena Blomstrom:Is genuinely a matter of internal dialogue and you can train that. Can like train resiliency, you train anything else. You can train that ability of being consistently courageous and do that together with your team and then you're all going to be more policy. You're all going to be empowered and autonomous. You're all going wait for anyone to say as of today you're an empowered team.
Duena Blomstrom:You'll feel that way because you'd be in a better place from all points of view. Why do people put themselves through day in and day out pain and suffering for the avoidance of discussing fluffy things because they think they're incapable of it is beyond me.
Alessandria Polizzi:Yeah, same. But I think also, so let's talk about some of the data that we've seen, So you and Dave were talking about the fact that two out of every three projects fail, right? That's a huge problem. How are we not talking about this all the time? That is a huge waste of resources and money.
Alessandria Polizzi:I'm sorry. I'm not looking at you. Just think causes. Right? What do we think root causes on those projects failing?
Alessandria Polizzi:They didn't just all of a sudden fail.
Duena Blomstrom:Look, unfortunately it's not new research. We have known about the 60 plus percent of all projects for the last, I want to say ten years, but nothing much changed. It's actually like an internal joke. It's one in three that works. It's like it's a normal thing.
Duena Blomstrom:A lot has been normalized in technology that really should not be normal. There's a lot of waste that's acceptable. There's a lot of unquestionable elements of it that are acceptable. But look, I don't think that the technology industry needs to answer for anything because they're probably a lot better off than very many other places. While I have my issue with them that this is not it, but there's like so many In the technology issue, I think in the technology area, one of the biggest problems we have, the biggest clearest indications of human death is how we've talked about this before, is how when we promote accidental managers or accidental, that's what they call them now, believe.
Duena Blomstrom:The studies we've seen just recently was calling them accidental team leads. I can't remember exactly. But the idea is if you're become by mistake a leader and not by desire or by necessarily showing any type of EQ or leadership skills, then it's very likely you're gonna bloody struggle from then on continuously. There is no reason for us to believe as humans that managers learn on the job. That they learn communication, or they learn how to help people accept themselves, or they learn their own feelings.
Duena Blomstrom:None of that. We have no evidence to believe that any manager entered the job and then in time they became a better man. This
Alessandria Polizzi:is a miss. Doesn't matter how many leadership books, the billions of dollars you spend on leadership training, because it's usually about time management and reporting and coaching other people. Now Dave put in the chat that that was deployments, not projects, but the data is actually true on projects too, Dave.
Duena Blomstrom:Yes. So
Alessandria Polizzi:I know you're project manage from the Project Management Institute. So this is the institute of people who are responsible for leading projects saying that our batting average
Duena Blomstrom:It's kind of sad.
Alessandria Polizzi:It's the world series. Our batting average ain't good.
Duena Blomstrom:No, you know I don't like talking about the statistic at all is because it's been flopped to death to kill agile. Yes, of these initial numbers where agile transformations are failing, two out of three projects don't work. Is because the vast majority of projects were agile. But the truth of the matter is projects themselves fail. They fail because we're redoubled with human death.
Alessandria Polizzi:That's
Duena Blomstrom:right. We have it everywhere. That's just one reason for our subtitles to be catching it wrong this time around. So yes, we read that with human debt in every enterprise. But we can do something about it and we can do something about it today.
Duena Blomstrom:And that is one, don't make any wrong moves. Don't make any of the big wrong moves. And two, start making some of the small good moves. That's So avoid the horrible bad moves, the come back or else, the do every day or I kill you, the we're not flexible at all, the monitoring keystrokes, whatever the hell, crap, all of that. Don't do those, right?
Duena Blomstrom:And keep away from doing bad things and just do small good things. Do you feel a little bit better this week? Is this team slightly less burnt out this week? We're winning. Let's keep trying.
Alessandria Polizzi:That's right.
Duena Blomstrom:Well, best of luck to everyone that's listened this week. And if there's anything we can do meanwhile, please don't forget, you can subscribe to not only this podcast, but you can also subscribe to the People and Tech podcast, to the Married to Tech podcast, and very soon to the NeuroSpicy at Work podcast. And obviously, if you just want to listen to me, there's a Duana's Reads and Rants that have a bunch of the chapters of the older books that are being read in my insane and agitated tone, and a couple of really secret other things that we've released from the vault recently. We have a bunch of other big things we are going to be talking about over the next few days. But before I forget, here's another piece of an announcement, which is that my book Tech Lead Culture has now finally dropped in The US and the rest of the world.
Duena Blomstrom:And for anyone that is as kind as to buy it and to leave a review, there will be a 20% forever discount, whether it's for yourself, your enterprise, your CEO's transformational journey, or some other books. But we'll do our very best to get our human dead fighters, like, having the tools they need, so they succeed from here on. So thank you so much for everyone that has voted already, listened to us, subscribed. Please keep in mind that we are obviously trying to make these moves towards a more, if we wish, a more private atmosphere where some of us are discussing things that are bigger about the industry, come join us. There are other pods you can come talk to us in.
Duena Blomstrom:But over here, Sandhya and I have been compiling things for a good ten years in total. So if we don't have the thing you need to fix your culture, it's very unlikely any of the templates or the little open source things that you found on the internet will. And if you find yourself at that point where you go like I have 11 Alessandrias, which one is the real McCoy? Or I have 11 Joanna's, which one is the real McCoy? Then we've done a poor job and you've done a poor job and we should all just go home.
Duena Blomstrom:Anyhow meanwhile talk to you next week and thank you so much for listening to us.
Alessandria Polizzi:Bye! Bye!