Something Big is Happening (Leader's Edition)
Matt Shumer’s piece “Something Big is Happening” is going viral for good reason. As someone who builds AI startups and lives in this space daily, he’s watching his own job fundamentally transform in real-time. And he’s sounding the alarm that what happened to tech workers in 2025 is about to happen to everyone else.
I know this because I saw a similar pattern back in 2007.
I was one of the first 2,000 users on Twitter. When I told eighteen consulting firms that social media would fundamentally change how we communicate, how we market, how we connect, they all said the same thing: it’s a fad. Focus on something serious.
This was before the Egyptian revolution. Before Twitter sparked social movements. Before Instagram, before TikTok, before any of it had proven itself.
They weren’t stupid. They were just watching lagging indicators. Somehow, I was tuned into leading ones and was able to decode what it meant for the future.
I’m seeing those same leading indicators again today.
The reason I share this isn’t to dwell on 2007. Instead, it’s to highlight that the exact same pattern of denial is happening right now with AI. And just like back then, the organizations that wait for “proof” will be the ones that get left behind.
So when Matt writes about the gap between what’s actually happening in AI and what most people perceive, I recognize that pattern immediately.
But here’s what Matt’s piece doesn’t address: what you should actually do about this if you’re leading an organization.
He tells individuals to start using the tools, spend an hour daily experimenting to get ahead of the curve. That’s correct. But if you’re responsible for a team, a department, a company? Individual skill-building isn’t enough. Here’s why:
While individuals are figuring out how to use ChatGPT, entire organizational structures are being rewritten underneath them.
Your customer service team that used to need 15 people? With the right playbooks and AI, you can run it with 3–5. The rest of the team can be redeployed to higher‑impact work instead of burned out on tickets.If you’re not seeing how this organizational rewriting impacts everything from how revenue gets generated to what you can actually offer customers to how fast you can move, you’re already behind.
The Canary in the Coal Mine: What’s Already Happening
While Matt describes what’s coming, the reality is most of that is already here. Look at what happened last month at two major companies.
PwC consolidated new advisory hires into 13 major hubs instead of 72 offices. Google offered voluntary buyouts to employees not “all in” on AI.
Both moves were framed around culture and community, but that’s not the real reason.
What’s actually happening? These companies know they need fewer people because of AI. They’re just letting geography and culture do the cutting instead of announcing layoffs.
Now think about what this means for you:
If you’re a customer of PwC or Google, your costs aren’t going down proportionally. They’re restructuring to need fewer people while maintaining pricing. That margin expansion? That’s the tailwind they’re catching while you’re still paying last year’s rates.
If you’re a vendor to these companies, your primary contacts are about to change. Junior people who used to need your services are disappearing. The remaining staff have AI doing what your service used to do. Your renewal is at risk.
If you’re a competitor to companies making these moves, they just got 30% leaner and twice as fast. While you’re debating whether to “explore AI,” they’re reorganizing their entire workforce around it.
And if you’re in a completely different industry watching this happen at PwC and Google, understand this: your industry is next. The talent movement happens first at the most sophisticated companies, then ripples outward. You have maybe 6-18 months before this pattern hits your sector.
You’re running out of time to be proactive instead of reactive.
Why You Can’t Afford to Wait: The Three Collapses
Matt’s piece captures the acceleration, but here’s the framework that specifically explains why youcan’t afford to wait:
COLLAPSE 1: Timeline Collapse
The leverage you thought you’d build over the next five years? That timeline is compressing in real time, and much faster than you think.
Epoch AI found that AI capability improvement nearly doubled around April 2024 (from 8.3 points/year to 15.5 points/year). That’s an 85% acceleration in the rate of improvement itself.
Here’s what that means for your organization: If your 18-month plan to develop three new products doesn’t consider how AI might render these offerings obsolete before you can even launch them, you’ve lost competitive advantage before you even get started.
Your competitive moat you thought would take competitors 3 years to replicate? They can do it in 8 months now with AI-assisted development. That certification program you’re building to differentiate your workforce? By the time people complete it, AI will handle those tasks better than certified humans.
The timeline compression isn’t theoretical. It’s rewriting every strategic assumption you made 6 months ago.
COLLAPSE 2: Role Collapse
Software engineers.
Product managers.
Marketers.
Analysts.
Designers.
Operations leads.
These used to be distinct career paths with distinct skill sets. They’re converging fast.
A feature that used to require a team of six (a PM to define it, a designer to mock it, engineers to build it, and QA to test it) can now be done by one person. The “squad” is becoming an individual - one who’s savvy enough to use the AI tools to perform these functions.
The implications of this are showing up in your org chart, your budget, and your calendar already.
If you’re still hiring for traditional role definitions and not equipping your current employees to develop these skills, you’re building the wrong org chart.
COLLAPSE 3: Opportunity Collapse
This is the one most leaders miss. Tailwinds used to come every few years: a new platform, a market disruption, or novel culture shift. You had time to evaluate your options, discuss the risks and rewards, gain alignment, and plan your rollout.
Not anymore.
Here are a few real-time examples to illustrate how quickly these opportunities can come and go.
Let’s take LinkedIn’s newsletter feature as an example. When LinkedIn first launched newsletters in 2021, early creators saw engagement rates 10-20x higher than regular posts. The algorithm heavily promoted newsletter content to build the feature. But that algorithmic boost lasted only about 8 weeks before the platform saturated and engagement normalized. The window to build an audience with algorithmic help closed fast.
The same pattern with YouTube Shorts. When YouTube launched Shorts to compete with TikTok, they created a $100M creator fund and pushed Shorts content aggressively in the algorithm. Early creators who jumped on it got millions of views overnight. But that promotional advantage lasted about 6 weeks before it became just another content format competing for attention.
Cultural moments move even faster. Remember the Stanley cup craze? A TikTok showing a Stanley cup surviving a car fire went viral. Within days, Stanley cups were sold out everywhere, resellers were charging 3x retail, and Target had lines around the block. Brands that moved immediately (creating Stanley-adjacent content, offering cup accessories, riding the trend) captured massive attention. But the peak was measured in days, not weeks. By the time most marketing teams got approval to create content around it, the moment had passed.
The half-life of an opportunity has collapsed. And here’s the critical difference from Timeline Collapse: it’s not that you have less time to build. It’s that by the time you see the opportunity clearly enough to get organizational buy-in, someone else has already captured it. Your decision-making speed has become the bottleneck.
These three collapses point to the same conclusion: your traditional planning cycles don’t work anymore.
What You Actually Need to Do
Although I’ve shared lots of specifics about tech and software, let me clarify that I’m not a software engineer or “technical person.”
What I am is a founder, exited CEO, and strategic advisor for executives and their teams. Someone who’s been responsible for helping companies drive billions in market share.
I also see the writing on the wall from a business perspective.
And from that perspective, here’s what I see:
You absolutely need AI training in your organization. But not the kind most companies are providing.
“Here’s how to write a prompt” is where you start, but that’s only the beginning.. What you actually need is to build the muscle across your organization to:
Spot tailwinds forming in the midst of the market chatter: which AI capabilities create opportunities for YOUR specific business model?
Interpret which tailwinds are yours to catch - Not every AI advancement matters for every company
Act before windows close - Move on 70% information instead of waiting for 95% certainty that arrives too late
This isn’t a technical skill. It’s strategic muscle memory. And you need to build it across teams, not just with individuals.
Here’s what this looks like in practice:
First, conduct a quick assessment by asking:Where are the tailwinds forming in YOUR specific industry? Not “AI in general” but which talent is moving where in your market, which capital is flowing to what, which customer behaviors are shifting. You need specificity.
Also, take a close look at your org chart. Which roles in your org are transforming versus disappearing? What does your org chart look like in 18 months? Most leadership teams are avoiding these conversations. The ones having them now have an advantage.
Finally, develop the habit of discussing potential signals and their icmplications for your company during your team meetings. Creating space for these conversations is an important step to building your team’s ability to spot what matters in the noise, interpret whether it’s yours to catch, and act before the window closes.
Here’s how to actually build this muscle with a small team:
Start with a weekly 15-minute tailwind review. Every Monday morning, have one person share a tailwind they noticed: a competitor announcement, a talent movement, a customer behavior shift. Don’t analyze it to death. Just ask: “Is this ours to catch? What would moving on it look like? What’s the window?”
Track what you see. Use a shared doc or Slack channel where team members drop potential tailwinds throughout the week. Not everything. Just things that made them pause. The act of noticing and documenting trains the muscle.
Practice making small bets quickly. Pick one tailwind per month and test it within two weeks. Not a perfect test. A fast one. The goal is building comfort with 70% information, not perfection.
Debrief what you learn. After each test, spend 10 minutes asking: What did we learn? What slowed us down? What would we do differently? This is where the muscle actually builds.
The companies winning this transition aren’t the ones with the fanciest tools. They’re the ones that built the capacity to recognize which shifts are theirs to pursue and move before those openings close.
The hardest part? You can’t read the label from inside the bottle. Leaders are often too invested in the structures they built to see how obsolete they’ve become.
The gap between what’s happening and what most organizations understand is massive. And if you’re waiting for this to become obvious before you act, you’ve already missed the window.
Tailwinds used to come every few years. Now they come daily.
That means the muscle you’re building isn’t a one-time skill. It’s a permanent shift in how you operate. The weekly tailwind review. The shared tracking. The small bets. The debriefs. These aren’t temporary practices until things “settle down.” This is the new baseline for staying competitive.
The question isn’t whether they’re coming to your industry. It’s whether you’re ready when they do.
Read Matt Shumer’s original piece: Something Big is Happening