I've been watching this space for a while now. Here's what I see happening.
Let me start with something I keep coming back to: we're all figuring this out.
Every company. Every operator. Every manager. We're all in the same boat, trying to figure out what AI actually means for how we work.
That's not a comfortable thing to say out loud. But I think it's important.
The Shift Nobody Warned Us About
Six months ago, I thought AI was about chatbots and automation scripts. Neat, but niche.
What I didn't see coming was how fast the tools would evolve. Today, I watch AI agents handle 50-60% of tasks we used to solve manually. They have names. They float around in Slack doing work autonomously. They handle things differently based on their programming.
That's not a future prediction. That's happening now, in real companies, with real workers.
And here's what strikes me: most organizations are still at the very infancy of their journey. They're experimenting. They're trying things. They're not sure what works yet.
Which means there's still time to get ahead of this.
What I'm Watching
The operator rise. The people who are winning right now aren't necessarily engineers. They're operators, managers, people who understand how businesses actually work. They're the ones connecting AI to real workflows. They're the ones who can say "here's how this tool fits into what we actually do."
The skills democratization. PwC data shows degree requirements for AI-adjacent roles dropped 7 percentage points in five years. Companies are caring less about credentials and more about capability. That's a big shift.
The productivity gap. In industries most exposed to AI, productivity growth nearly quadrupled. 7% growth in five years became 27%. That's not incremental improvement. That's a fundamental change in how work gets done.
The Window I'm Thinking About
Here's what I keep coming back to: we're in a window of time where the landscape is being shaped.
Organizations are still trying to figure out how to take full advantage of this technology. Most are still at the infancy of their journey. They're hiring. They're experimenting. They're looking for people who understand this space.
That window won't stay open forever.
When it closes, the people who positioned themselves early will be the ones leading these transformations. The ones who waited will be playing catch-up.
What This Means For You
If you're in operations, management, or any kind of business leadership, you're actually well-positioned for this.
You understand workflows. You know how things get done. You know where the friction is.
What you need to learn is how to connect AI to those workflows. Not how to build AI from scratch. Just how to use the tools that already exist. That's exactly what we built our AI Operations Accelerator to teach.
The technology is not hard to learn. There are new paradigms and frameworks. You need time on task to build proficiency. But once you acquire these skills, the leverage you gain easily puts you 10x further ahead.
The Honest Take
I don't know exactly where this goes. Nobody does.
But I know we're in a transformative moment. I know the nature of how we work has changed over the last few months alone. I know the organizations that figure this out first will have a significant advantage.
And I know that right now, there's still time to position yourself at the forefront of what comes next.
That's not a sales pitch. That's just what I see happening.
If you found this perspective useful, share it with someone who might too. We're all figuring this out together.
