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The AI wave is forcing us into a sink-or-swim moment.”
Our CEO Ben Reuveni shared these words during Gloat Live in March and they’ve been on my mind ever since. During his welcome note, he captured an important sentiment no leader can afford to overlook: the opportunities and disruptions from AI, GenAI, and AI agents are a seminal moment for businesses and people everywhere.
The AI era is shaping up to be a transformative one. And we’re talking about a big “T” TRANSFORMATION. And yet, while some companies are taking significant steps to integrate AI into their work, workforces, and workflows, many are treating AI as an incremental improvement. It’s a far cry from the 10X employee concept we unveiled at Gloat Live.
As we move through 2025, we must ask ourselves whether we are viewing AI as something we tack onto our existing work or whether it represents a whole new set of opportunities for how we combine human and machine skills in new and dynamic ways. In other words, in the realm of workforce transformation, what are the big opportunities in front of us in 2025 and beyond?
For most—if not all—organizations, AI will be the common theme connecting this year’s highest-potential initiatives. Many companies are already moving from AI experimentation to AI as an expectation, as this memo from the CEO of Shopify illustrates. In it, Tobi Lutke writes that “AI usage is now a baseline expectation for everyone at Shopify.” AI usage will in turn be part of the company’s performance review process. Before adding headcounts, teams must now “demonstrate that they cannot get what they want done using AI.”
These are big moves. And they illustrate the mindset shift we must all make to look beyond the confines of traditional work practices and broaden our horizons when it comes to who and how work gets done. This theme underpinned every Gloat Live conversation we had, from the agentic AI panel I had the privilege of hosting to Josh Bersin’s Superworker research, which explores how businesses can harness AI to dramatically enhance their productivity, performance, and creativity.
Expanding on these themes, I’m dedicating this research roundup to spotlighting the articles, podcasts, and research reports that will help us push our thinking about work and workforces beyond the optimization challenge and into the transformation opportunity. The challenge is three-fold:
I hope these insights help you push your own thinking and reimagine how your organization integrates work, skills, and technology to drive a more dynamic future.
In case you missed it, we unveiled something big at Gloat Live last month: Mosaic, Gloat’s new work deconstruction and work redesign tool. Shortly after the big reveal, Josh Bersin published this article on his website, which explores the rise of work intelligence tools, with Mosaic receiving a special shoutout. In his words, “When I first saw Mosaic, I was stunned. For all the years I’ve done Sales, Marketing, and Research, I’ve relied on my own experience to know what to do. Gloat could tell me every step to consider. And in case I’m not familiar with one of these steps, Gloat could find me a person with the skills needed to do it. This is a big deal.” We couldn’t agree more.
I look forward to Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Report every year—and this edition doesn’t disappoint. In the report, Microsoft describes a world where “intelligence on tap will rewire business” and suggests that “Every leader needs a new blueprint.” The report goes on to explore the emergence of an entirely new type of organization Microsoft refers to as a “Frontier Firm” that is structured around on-demand intelligence and powered by teams of humans + agents. To become a Frontier Firm, businesses must go through a three-step journey, which includes a Phase 1 with Humans with Assistants, Human-Agent teams for Phase 2, and finally human-led, agent operated work. This research reinforces the trajectory our community is on at Gloat and why we’re so excited about the Agile Workforce Operating System 2.0.
This important and timely research reported by Ethan Mollick and his colleagues at Harvard Business School explores the positive impact and performance of individuals and teams working with AI. To summarize, individuals with AI performed at levels comparable to multi-disciplinary teams and teams with AI performed even better. Let’s prepare for a world of superteams, people and AI on teams. At Gloat, this thinking is central to our platform and product strategy with a multi-ontology strategy: work, skills, and tech (that’s tools and AI agents) working together.
Everyone’s talking about AI—but according to this piece written by Columbia Business School’s Stephan Meier and Todd Jick, only 6.6% of businesses adopted AI in the fall of 2024. They’ve combined their expertise in business strategy, the future of work, behavioral economics, and change management to create the 5is leaders must follow when trying to drive AI adoption successfully, which include:
Fast-moving organizations aren’t just dipping their toes into AI’s waters; instead, they’re reworking their talent strategies from end to end to leverage these innovations. One such company, Shopify, recently made headlines for a new policy change: teams must demonstrate why AI can’t perform a job before they’re permitted to ask for more headcount and resources. In a recent memo, CEO Tobi Lutke, wrote, “What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?”. I have a feeling many other CEOs are about to be asking similar questions.
If you’ve been a regular Research Roundup reader, you’ve heard me talk about today’s great work reinvention challenge. Author Richard Tobaccowala explores this very concept in his new book, Rethinking Work, which was published earlier this year. The book is divided into three sections: the first examines why we need to rethink work and the factors that cause traditional structures and styles to be ineffective. The second section analyzes the ways in which work needs to be rethought. And the third section addresses what we can do about it—the steps that organizations can take to change themselves so they can prepare for the Great Rethinking.
This is a great and timely conversation with Microsoft’s Jared Spataro on how intelligence on tap is the foundation for an entirely new type of organization, the Frontier Firm. These firms will build hybrid teams of human and digital workers that can scale instantly to meet the needs of the business. With AI agents handling complex cognitive work, teams can increase their expertise without adding headcount. This isn’t just a 1-to-1 incremental improvement. It’s about dramatically expanding what every individual and organization can accomplish, and at a much lower cost.
One of my personal Gloat Live highlights was leading a panel called “Meet your new co-workers: Agentic AI.” During this session, we explored how to merge human skills and capabilities with technology such as tools and coworkers. For an amazing set of insights on this topic, don’t miss the latest Microsoft WorkLab Podcast with Azeem Azhar. Azeem’s insights are both practical and provocative, which is exactly what we need when confronting technologies as disruptive as AI, GenAI, and AI agents. Perhaps my favorite story from the podcast is when Azeem and host Molly Wood compare AI and electricity.
A special thank you to Naomi Titleman, Co-Founder at future foHRward, for inviting me to take part in one of the most interesting podcast conversations I’ve participated in in recent years. During our discussion, we explored how leaders should reframe questions in 2025 and weighed in whether the focus should be evolution or revolution, optimization or transformation, and exploitation or exploration
There’s no substitute for attending our transformation summit in person. But if you couldn’t make it to New York City for Gloat Live this year, I’ve got the next best thing: our On-Demand page. We’ve published the recordings of most of our sessions, including a very exciting product keynote with Esty Yehuda, Brian Hersey, and Shira Antselovitch and panels with top leaders at Mastercard, Spotify, Standard Chartered, Seagate, Slice, MetLife, Molson Coors, Lenovo, and more.
Deloitte’s 2025 Human Capital Trends report is out—and the research findings won’t disappoint. One of my favorite sections explores the Human-AI Value Proposition and the role AI currently plays in our working world. According to their research, 6 out of 10 employees already think of AI as a coworker, 54% of employees and leaders are concerned about blurred distinctions between work done by humans and work done by technology, and 49% of employees fear that AI will reduce collaboration with people.
At Gloat, we’re privileged to partner with organizations that are committed to harnessing the next generation of technological innovations to fuel better outcomes for their businesses AND their people. Standard Chartered’s Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Impact Report showcases the strides that one of our most visionary partners is making to continue to foster a culture that enables the organization to better serve the needs of their clients and drive positive outcomes for the communities where they operate. Their report showcases the impressive impact they made throughout 2024, including using their Talent Marketplace to power an International Buddy Programme.
This whitepaper highlights the macro trends that are impacting our working world and the critical connection between these macro trends and the resulting human impacts, as a backdrop to prioritizing people solutions that supercharge human performance. The report also highlights a new approach to skill-building known as the “sunset-to-sunrise strategy” which involves identifying work that will sunset in the next 3-7 years, mapping emerging “sunrise” roles and skills, using AI to analyze current workforce capabilities, and creating pathways from sunset to sunrise roles.
ONE MORE THING A thought piece on humans in the coming age of AI
AI leaders currently predict that we should expect AGI, artificial general intelligence, within the next decade—and in some cases, within the next few years. This thought provoking article, from Daniel Susskind, the author of A World Without Work and co-author of The Future of the Professions, is an excellent piece to prime your thinking. In the article, Susskind addresses the question: “What paid work might remain for human beings to do if we approach a world where AI is able to perform all economically useful tasks more productively than human beings?” Susskind outlines three limits to AI which we need to consider. Worth a read and some thought.
Let us know what you would add to our list
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