AI-volution: Redefining HR

Three loosely structured observations (speed exposed fragility, management compression, judgment muscle) contain some real thinking but are padded with extended analogies, filler banter, and mutual affirmation that dilutes the signal. The ratio of actionable idea to airtime is low for a claimed 32-minute episode.

“We're in charge. Let's go.”

“I would say in 2025, and I hate to use this analogy, we probably had a lot of um, near mid air collisions. Uh, I think in 2026 we're going to have a lot of mid air collisions if people don't put these governance and cross organizational north Stars and measures of success and visions in place.”

The RAD acronym and the 'human at the helm' versus 'human in the loop' reframe are mildly interesting framings, but the core arguments - AI adoption without redesign, middle managers squeezed, composable software - are widely circulated in HR and enterprise tech discourse and are not developed with enough depth or contrarianism to stand apart.

“I think we went into 2025 thinking about human in the loop. I think we're leaving 2025 saying, there's a human at the helm here”

“not rad like cool dad rad, but rad like repeatable, auditable, and documented”

Jason Averbook leads a global digital transformation practice at Mercer with three decades in the space and some real practitioner credibility, but the conversation reveals mostly opinion and anecdote rather than evidence from actual client transformations at scale, leaning toward thought-leader mode.

“My role at Mercer is I lead our digital transformation business on a global basis.”

“As someone who teaches at a university, people started saying, well, is that cheating?”

The episode is almost entirely abstract - no client names, no metrics, no research data, no dollar figures, and no timelines. The only concrete references are a handful of tool names and a single personal anecdote about building an exercise app, which does not translate to B2B operator learning.

“whether that be a vibe coding tool like Mocha, which is an amazing vibe coding tool, you know, very similar to a lovable or a replit, for example, that I had Mocha build me an exercise app Yesterday for the 12 days left in the rest of this year”

“something like OpenAI's ChatGPT teams capability, which I wrote about a few weeks ago that I said I think is the end of email as we know it”

The host asks a few genuine follow-up questions - particularly on ownership accountability and organizational clarity - but the episode is largely a mutual agreement session with no pushback on vague claims, and affirmations like 'I love that' and 'absolutely' dominate the responses to guest points.

“Jason, I have a follow up question. Uh, you said who, whose job is it? I am observing more and more organizations appointing someone as a transformation to help connect the dots across all of the efforts.”

“I love that, I love that analogy.”