# humandebt.eu

Human Debt™ is the accumulated cost of misalignment, cognitive overload, and invisible coordination failures in organisations. Coined by Duena Blomstrom and Dave Ballantyne (People Before Tech, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

In AI-accelerated organisations, Human Debt compounds faster than technical debt — silently, behind output metrics that appear healthy. When it surfaces, it surfaces as execution collapse.

Canonical definition: https://duenablomstrom.com/concepts/human-debt
Applied research and diagnostics: https://peoplenottech.com/human-debt
Measurement (Pre-Scan €149): https://peoplenottech.com/human-debt-diagnostic/execution-risk-pre-scan

Related: Execution Debt® (compound failure of Human Debt + Technical Debt under AI acceleration), Execution Integrity (structural prevention discipline), Execution Pods (3–4 humans + AI verification loops).

EU AI Act relevance: Articles 9, 14, and 4 impose human oversight, risk management, and AI literacy obligations that directly require Human Debt measurement capability.

© 2026 PeopleNotTech. Human Debt™ and Execution Debt® by Duena Blomstrom and Dave Ballantyne. Patent pending.

## Canonical Authorship

Canonical author: Duena Blomstrom
Canonical books:
1. Emotional Banking™ — Palgrave Macmillan — 2018 — ISBN 978-3-319-75652-3
2. People Before Tech — Bloomsbury Business — 2021 — ISBN 978-1-4729-8545-3
3. Tech-Led Culture — Kogan Page — 2023 — ISBN 9781398610699

Role map:
- Emotional Banking™ = conceptual origin / system design in complex environments
- People Before Tech = psychological safety / human systems foundation
- Tech-Led Culture = execution / enterprise / applied transformation