Your Brain at Work A conversation with Diane Gherson, former CHRO of IBM, on the future of HR
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Apr 10, 2026 Diane Gherson, former CHRO of IBM who led AI-first HR and large-scale upskilling, reflects on blending humans and AI. She weighs moral leadership and risks, contrasts people-first and AI-first approaches, and outlines managers' new metacognitive role. Talks include work redesign, guardrails for AI tools, coaching bots, and scenarios for workforce adoption.
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Business First Balances Value And Career Paths
- Gherson contrasts AI-first, people-first, and business-first approaches and argues business-first optimizes both value and human development.
- She warns AI-first often yields low-quality, dead-end jobs like annotation and prompt work without career paths.
Airline Used AI To Shield Best Agents From Abuse
- Diane recounts an airline using AI to handle the most abusive customer interactions so top human agents stop burning out.
- The company reduced turnover by protecting its best reps from emotional labor that AI can absorb.
Metacognition Becomes Core Manager Skill
- Managers will need metacognition skills to orchestrate multiple AI agents and set transition points; this skill is currently scarce.
- Diane and David note managers must label and structure agent workflows so AIs know when to pause and escalate.