Why AI Is Making Humans Less Productive and How ServiceNow Is Fixing It | Jayney Howson

Most companies are promising an AI productivity revolution but their employees are frozen in fear. Jayney Howson, SVP and Global Head of Learning & Development at ServiceNow, explains why AI headlines are literally triggering the amygdala's fight-or-flight response, and what ServiceNow is doing about it. Jayney leads learning and development for ServiceNow, the $10B revenue, $200B+ market cap AI platform for business transformation. Previously, she was SVP at Salesforce where she championed 30,000+ team members across sales and customer sectors. In this episode, Jayney shares the neuroscience behind why employees resist AI adoption, how ServiceNow University uses the science of play to drive learning that sticks, and what the "human renaissance" looks like when AI is done right. 🔗 ServiceNow University: https://www.servicenow.com/learning ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction 1:14 Jayney's career: marketing to L&D 2:27 The Croydon food market pivot 3:37 Talent is equally distributed 4:13 What makes people come alive at work 4:54 Give humans the right environment 6:07 AI headlines are killing productivity 6:35 Job-role fit vs natural strengths 7:23 Clear expectations unlock performance 9:02 Jayney's mandate at ServiceNow 9:42 AI as a human renaissance 10:16 What "human renaissance" means 11:48 ServiceNow University explained 12:51 Powered by AI, built for you 13:01 Your personalized learning path 13:42 The playground: neuroscience of play 14:01 Fight-or-flight and AI adoption 14:46 Play state vs fear state 15:31 Why ServiceNow University is a playground 16:07 Work and play aren't opposites 17:34 Environment beats the individual 18:15 The magic circle: safe space to fail 19:16 Sales simulations in team environments 19:53 Learning in the flow of work 20:46 Contextualized training for sellers 21:28 Keeping training close to the learner 22:05 AI learning coach at ServiceNow 22:41 Will AI generate learning on demand? 23:51 Knowledge acquisition vs skill building 25:13 Biggest challenges in enterprise L&D 26:48 Decision paralysis in fast-moving AI 27:24 AI coaches: what they actually do 29:01 What could go wrong with AI in L&D 30:07 Building future leaders in an AI world 31:13 Is this a content or matching problem? 32:18 Foundational human skills that won't die 32:57 Career tips from Jayney's journey 33:28 The hedgehog principle for your career 34:46 Play-state advice: improv training 36:03 Build a network with more courage 37:31 Courage beats fearlessness 38:39 Closing thoughts ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/4xojeCk 🌐 More episodes: https://hai.work/podcast 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Please subscribe and leave a review — it helps more enterprise leaders find the show. #AILeadership #ServiceNow #EnterpriseAI #LearningAndDevelopment #FutureOfWork #AIAdoption #TalentDevelopment #HumanFirstAI #WorkplaceAI #PeopleAndCulture #HAIPodcast #HumanFirstAIPodcast ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from #InAudio: https://inaudio.org/ Upbeat Energetic Rock by Infraction / Dynamic Groove 📌 This episode was originally recorded as part of ProjectPro's AI Monetisation Podcast. The podcast has since evolved into HAI (Human-First AI), and this episode is now part of the HAI podcast archive. References to ProjectPro in the original recording have been retained.