Inside Learning | Unlocking human potential

I isn't a tool. It's a new kind of employee. And that's exactly why it belongs to HR, not IT.

Aidan welcomes Fiona Passantino, award-winning author of comic books for executives on AI and her new book AI-Powered Leader, to discuss why AI integration should be a human-led experience owned by HR rather than delegated to IT. Fiona argues AI is more like a new kind of employee than a classic tool, and failed adoption often comes from lack of training, governance, and leadership support rather than "resistance." She outlines HR's role in measuring an organisation's adoption curve, delivering baseline AI literacy (including EU AI Act requirements), supporting early adopters as a coaching centre of excellence, and bringing analog "hell no" employees over the line without creating a split organisation. The conversation covers phased L&D approaches by department and for desk-less workers, using AI earlier in workflows for bigger impact, and her five-step roadmap from "ostrich" to "eagle," emphasising joyful learning through comics and humour.

In this conversation, Fiona reveals:

Why AI behaves more like a new employee than a tool — and what that changes about who owns it

The "kidneys of the organisation" metaphor for what HR actually does all day

Why most AI roll-outs stall as "resistance" — and why that's a leadership failure, not a people problem

How the EU AI Act already makes AI literacy and governance a legal requirement

The two groups worth extra training: the 1% enthusiasts and the "hell no" analog holdouts

Why you must never let your company split into "AI people" and "analog people"

The five-stage bird roadmap — ostrich, sandpiper, pelican, sparrowhawk, eagle

Why most teams use barely 10% of a tool like Copilot

The "desk-less" training built for the 80% of workers who never log into a desktop

Why the comics in her book are a deliberate strategy: "if you're laughing, you can't resist"

Chapters:
00:00 Podcast Intro
00:15 Meet Fiona Passantino
01:03 Why HR Owns AI
04:16 Leadership And Change
07:05 AI Literacy And Governance
09:04 Early Adopters And Resistors
11:58 L&D Training Phases
16:58 Beyond Tools Mindset
19:36 Roadmap Ostrich To Eagle
21:50 Comics And Joyful AI
24:18 Where To Find Fiona
25:18 Closing Credits

 

Find Fiona:
Book — AI-Powered Leader (available wherever books are sold)
https://fionapassantino.com
https://www.working-humans.com
https://aihumanschool.com

 

About Inside Learning
Inside Learning dives into learning science and the future of work, featuring learning experts from around the world each month. Topics span AI, neurodiversity, creativity, unlearning, leadership, ethics, VR, blended learning, performance, and skills. The podcast is designed to make you think, question and learn. Hosted by author, consultant and coach Aidan McCullen, Inside Learning is produced by Learnovate, the future-of-work and learning research centre based at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland.

 

Subscribe to Inside Learning wherever you listen.
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"Decision-making is what you do with information. Judgment is what you do with your values when the information runs out."

Rahim Hirji has spent 20 years inside learning technology — at HarperCollins, running one of the UK's first online tutoring businesses, co-founding EtonX out of Eton College, and leading Quizlet's growth across 60 countries. His new book, Super Skills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page, out 3 July 2026), was the most requested title at this year's London Book Fair and is endorsed by Harvard's Karim Lakhani. Most AI books start with the technology. This one starts with a boat.

In this conversation, Rahim reveals:

Why most people are "sleepwalking" into an AI-shaped life without realising it

The boat that carried his family from India to East Africa — and why it frames the whole age of AI

How five generations of skills stack up: survival, street, specialist, soft, and now super

The difference between algorithmic drift and intentional design — and which one you're living in

Why a manager started receiving 12-page AI documents nobody had actually read

"Human at the start" (HATS) — the centaur/Iron Man approach that beats "human in the loop"

The one super skill Rahim believes AI will never have

Why losing busy work is good news, not a threat

The seven super skills: curiosity, change readiness, big picture thinking, principled innovation, empathy, global adaptability, and the augmented mindset.

Chapters:

00:00 Podcast Intro and Guest
01:16 Boat Story and Skills Ladder
04:27 AI Change Hope and Risks
07:53 Drift Versus Design
11:02 Augmented Mindset HATS
13:59 Judgment When Data Ends
15:27 Seven Super Skills Overview
17:54 Who the Book Is For
22:09 Website Extras and Wrap Up
23:08 Closing Credits
 
About the guest: Rahim Hirji is an edtech leader and author. His book Super Skills: The Seven Human Skills for the Age of AI (Kogan Page) publishes on 3 July 2026. Find the diagnostic, bonus chapters and extras at https://superskillsbook.com.

About Inside Learning: Inside Learning dives into learning science and the future of work, featuring learning experts from around the world each month — covering AI, neurodiversity, creativity, unlearning, leadership, ethics, VR, blended learning, performance, skills and more. Designed to make you think, question and learn. Produced by Learnovate, the future-of-work and learning research centre at Trinity College Dublin, funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland.

About the host: Aidan McCullen is the 2025 Thinkers50 Innovation Award recipient, a keynote speaker on AI, disruption, innovation and change, host of The Innovation Show, and author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention (Wiley).

Learn more about Aidan at https://theinnovationshow.io/about-aidan-mccullen 

Listen and follow:

Website: https://learnovatecentre.org

Podcast: https://learnovatecentre.org/insights/podcasts/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/learnovate-centre YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@learnovatecentre

In this episode of the Inside Learning Podcast from the Learnovate Centre, Aidan McCullen speaks with Barry Winkless, Chief Strategy Officer at Cpl, Head of the Future of Work Institute, and author of Future Work World: How Leaders Can Create Destinations for Talent that Excite, Entice, and Engage.

 

Barry argues that future-of-work conversations must begin with mindset. Before leaders redesign work, talent, teams or technology, they need a new language and a new way of seeing. He introduces three leadership roles from the book: the Destination Designer, the Societal Whisperer, and the Systems Architect.

 

The conversation explores the structure of Future Work World, including Barry’s four-part journey through mindset, “meta waves”, the “mixing desk” of 16 areas for work innovation, and the use of immersive storytelling to move people emotionally. Barry also shares how music, science fiction, and fictional near-future stories shaped the book’s distinctive style.

 

Aidan and Barry discuss the idea of “work type salads”, where organisations blend permanent employees, contractors, consultants, gig workers, temporary talent, and specialist networks to create strategic advantage. They also explore the concept of organisational “wisdom worlds”, using AI inference, immersive learning, and tacit knowledge capture to build deeper capability over time.

 

The episode closes with a reflection on the shift from mono careers to poly careers, where individuals increasingly become the hero of their own working lives and organisations become part of their journey rather than the whole journey.

 

Episode Timeline

 

00:00 Podcast intro and guest
01:10 Why this book now
01:58 Music and storytelling
04:47 Mindset comes first
11:25 Mixing desk equalizers
14:46 Meta waves and work type salad
18:39 Building a wisdom world
22:37 The new hero journey at work
27:06 Where to find Barry
27:57 Closing credits

In a world where technology is accelerating faster than ever, how do leaders make the right decisions—without losing sight of what makes us human?

In this episode of Inside Learning, Aidan McCullen is joined by Kate O’Neill, tech humanist, author of What Matters Next, and advisor to organizations like Google, Netflix, and the United Nations.

Kate shares a powerful framework for navigating uncertainty, making smarter decisions, and shaping a better future—while keeping human experience at the centre.

You’ll discover:

Why not making a decision is still a decision

The critical difference between harms of action vs. inaction

How to move from questions → insights → “bankable foresight”

Why the future isn’t singular—but made up of multiple “futures”

How leaders can align purpose, values, and strategy in a fast-changing world

The emerging skill of “prompting” as a leadership capability

Why AI should support human meaning—not replace it

Kate also explores a crucial idea:
We must not leave meaning-making to machines.

This episode is essential listening for leaders, educators, and anyone trying to stay relevant—and human—in the age of AI.

Inside Learning is brought to you by Learnovate, the global experts in the future of work and learning. Based at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, Learnovate is a research centre with a mission to enhance the competitive advantage of the learning technology industry and help organisations maximise the impact of learning technology.

Learnovate’s vision is to play a significant role in transforming the lives of learners in the workplace, schools, universities, and the home. We are proud to be part of the Technology Centre programme funded by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, enabling Irish companies and multinationals to collaborate on market-focused strategic R&D with research institutions.

To find out more about Learnovate, visit the Learnovate Centre website.

https://learnovatecentre.org/

Find Kate here: 

https://www.koinsights.com/

Kathryn Jablokow. Dean of Manhattan University’s School of Engineering, former NSF deputy division director, and co-author of the NSF Artificial Intelligence Roadmap joins Aidan McCullen to explore design cognition: how people think while solving design problems. 

They unpack why high-performance teams don’t just match skills to problems, but also match thinking styles to the type of challenge, plus how great facilitators make space for different contributors (including introverts who need time to reflect). 

The conversation then turns to AI as a teammate: how to avoid “sycophant” answers, how to prompt AI to generate genuinely different perspectives, and what it could look like to train LLMs to emulate cognitive diversity for better decisions and more creative outcomes.

 

Find Kathryn's papers:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marybethgasman/2025/12/30/what-ai-cant-replace-and-why-that-matters/

https://www.techradar.com/pro/how-applying-cognitive-diversity-to-llms-could-transform-the-user-experience