Compression, Not Just Disruption

AI is collapsing timelines, roles, and decision cycles faster than organizations can adapt.

For decades, we’ve told the story of technology as a series of disruptions. Mainframes gave way to desktops. Desktops shrank into mobile devices. Mobile connected us to the world, and machine learning began to make sense of the data it created. Each wave took time to absorb. Each change gave us a decade or more to adapt.

That cycle’s over.

The next five to ten years won’t feel like a new disruption. They’ll feel like compression, like someone pressed fast-forward on forty years of transformation and squeezed it into a single decade. This is what artificial intelligence is doing.

And no, it’s not a fad. It’s not the next metaverse or the next blockchain bubble. It’s a fundamental rewiring of how work gets done, who does it, and who gets left behind if we don’t adjust.

Yet too many people are still being told the same tired lines: “Just reskill.” “AI will create more jobs.” “Keep applying.” That’s not a strategy. That’s avoidance.

If you’re over forty, you’ve already lived through a complete transformation in how we work. What’s different now is the speed. Change doesn’t slow down. It accelerates. And workers and companies alike are being asked to adapt on a timeline that feels almost impossible.

What Companies Can Do

For companies, this is the moment to choose transformation over extraction. Roles need to be redesigned for AI and human collaboration, not just cost-cutting. Workforce transition plans can’t just be token reskilling programs, they need to create real pathways for adaptation. If AI drives higher margins, profits should be reinvested in people, not hoarded.

Organizations also need to recommit to human skills machines can’t replicate: empathy, trust-building, community leadership. And they need to be transparent about adoption plans and the impact those plans will have.

This isn’t about riding the hype cycle. It’s about designing the next version of work in a way that strengthens, rather than hollows out, the people who keep organizations alive.

What Workers Can Do

Workers, too, have choices in how they respond to compression. The future’s already reshaping industries, and survival depends on a new set of skills. Getting literate in AI doesn’t mean becoming an engineer, but it does mean understanding how your field is shifting. Thinking beyond job titles is essential. The better question is: what human value do you bring that technology can’t replace?

At the same time, the future won’t be navigated alone. Building communities instead of just resumes will matter more, because networks rooted in trust and shared purpose outlast most systems. Speaking up matters too. Workers need to demand clarity, fairness, and a seat at the table where the redesign of work is already happening.

The truth is that no one’s coming to save us. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless.

A Call to Re-Design

We can’t afford to cling to outdated models of work, pretending old guarantees still hold. What we can do is design something better: more human, more stable, more just.

The question is whether we will.

Because this isn’t just disruption anymore. It’s compression. And the choices we make in the next few years will determine whether compression crushes us or forges something new.