foHRsight: HR, Leadership & the Future of Work
You’re leading people through constant change. Evolving expectations, AI disruption, and rising pressure to get culture and performance right.
If you’re an HR leader, People and Culture executive, or senior business leader shaping the future of work, foHRsight is for you.
foHRsight: HR, Leadership & the Future of Work is a weekly podcast from future foHRward, hosted by Mark Edgar and Naomi Titleman Colla. Each episode explores the most pressing issues facing HR and leadership today, including employee engagement, retention, flexible work, leadership effectiveness, and the real impact of AI on organizations.
Through candid conversations with CHROs, senior leaders, and forward-thinking experts, foHRsight delivers practical insight and strategic perspective you can apply immediately. The goal is simple: help you make better people decisions, build stronger organizations, and lead with confidence in an increasingly complex world of work.
Follow foHRsight on your favourite podcast platform and join the future foHRward community, a growing network of HR and People leaders connecting through conversation, events, and shared insight on what’s next for work.
foHRsight: HR, Leadership & the Future of Work
We’re Sleepwalking Into an AI Problem
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Everyone is trying to move faster right now. Faster outputs. Faster decisions. Faster adoption of AI.
But somewhere inside that acceleration, many leaders are starting to feel something else too: cognitive overload, constant mental switching, and a growing sense that work is becoming noisier instead of clearer.
In this episode, Mark and Naomi unpack two emerging ideas gaining traction in the AI conversation: “AI brain fry” and “cognitive surrender.” Together, they explore what happens when efficiency becomes the default goal, how over-reliance on AI can quietly erode critical thinking, and why HR leaders need to be paying closer attention to the human experience underneath AI adoption.
This conversation isn’t anti-AI. It’s about intentional AI use.
The discussion explores:
- Why productivity pressure may be pushing teams toward unhealthy AI habits
- The difference between learning moments and efficiency moments
- How AI-generated volume can actually increase cognitive fatigue
- Why HR professionals may be especially vulnerable to “brain fry”
- What organizations risk losing when human judgment disappears from the process
- How leaders can create healthier norms around AI use before bad habits calcify
Most importantly, this episode is a reminder that AI should augment human capability, not replace thoughtful human participation in work.
Stay connected with foHRsight
To sign up for our monthly newsletter, foHRsight, click HERE
Follow us on LinkedIn:
Follow us on Instagram
If you are looking for more foHRsight, sign up for our monthly foHRsight newsletter. It’s free and includes access to our quarterly white paper. This quarter’s white paper is about Rethinking Entry-Level work in the Age of AI, produced with Dr. Miranda Rodak from Indiana University’s Kelley school of business - an important topic for HR, Leadership and parents, students and society as a whole! https://www.futurefohrward.com/subscribe