The Only Prediction That Matters in 2026
It’s AI adoption.
We usually open the year with a flurry of workplace predictions. Not this time. There is only one that matters, and yes, it involves AI. At this point, unless you’re in a blue-collar job, AI is the main character, whether we like it or not.
Listeners of our podcast will note that this was our guest John Trainor’s top prediction. He would know, as he’s on the front line watching it happen every day in real time.
2026 will be the year organizations begin evaluating their workforce through one dominant lens: readiness for AI, adoption, and real utilization.
That means assessing, evaluating, monitoring, judging, and making hiring, firing, and layoff decisions based on a single capability. Think about that for a second. We have not seen a technological shift this tightly bound to talent decisions in modern work. The closest parallel takes us back to the late 1990s when email arrived and instantly divided the office into two camps: the people who figured it out before lunch and the people who thought it was a waste of time.
Every office had that guy. The one who asked their assistant to print out emails “because it’s easier to read on paper,” then dictated handwritten responses with arrows, circles, and the occasional Post-it note reading “pls respond.” Entire forests died so this man could reply, “Sounds good.” He would not survive 2026. He might not survive the first all-hands meeting where someone says “machine learning workflow” out loud.
The reason this matters now is simple. AI is not creeping into the workplace; it is hitting the gas for full-throttle. Most had not even heard of it in November 2023. Now, every white-collar organization is staring at the same inflection point Blockbuster faced when Netflix was still shipping DVDs. Move quickly or get very good at explaining to future historians why you missed the most obvious transformation of your era. This is every sector, every function, every team.
Over the next few weeks, we will explore what this actually means. Not theoretically, but in practical terms: how organizations will struggle with evaluating AI adoption. Why organizations will be perplexed that their workers aren’t that jazzed about it.
In summary, it’s because they have never built the employee experience muscles required to support it. If people do not understand expectations, do not trust leadership, and do not feel equipped to learn new skills, there is no AI adoption strategy. There is only a press release with a robot graphic.
More next week.
SpeedStudio Podcast
Ep. 121 - Predictions with John Trainor
In the final episode of 2025 we give the people what they want. Predictions, podcast stats and the one and only John Trainor. We chat AI, technology, sports, fashion and much more. At the risk of giving any spoiler alerts, you’re just going to have to give it a listen to find out more. Happy New Year!
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