After nearly 15 years helping leaders and teams evolve their skills and build new ways of working, I can confidently say—this year feels like the most pivotal. And that’s a big statement, right? I’ve lived through multiple waves of digital transformation. Remember “the year of mobile” that lasted for years? Or when businesses scrambled to redesign everything for mobile-first? Or how about when everyone needed to learn how to code? (BTW, I tell my teen daughter these workplace stories and she doesn’t believe me.)
smith & beta launched over a decade ago to tackle the gap in digital skills – and here we are again. But this time, the shift is bigger, faster and more transformative than anything we've seen before.
Right now, it’s AI. The headlines are all about working smarter, faster, picking the right tools, shifting operations, and the looming question of who will keep—or lose—their job. For companies just starting to sift through AI’s talent implications, the transformation can feel like a bridge too far. It’s overwhelming. What tools do we need? What skills? What type of talent? What shifts in ways of working? These questions aren’t just in the minds of leaders—they’re in boardrooms everywhere, because AI isn’t some distant future. It’s right now. Well, or yesterday.
And we can’t sit still. It all has to translate into action, into workplace learning, into building the skills that will define the next decades of work – together. Because AI isn’t just about efficiency or doing things diferently—it’s about skill reinvention.
So if you’re just getting started or well on your way, we’d like to hear from you. Is learning at the center of your AI strategy? If not, what is?
