New Year, New Rules
Navigating change and building resilience in 2025
Happy New Year! We’re on an abbreviated schedule this week, and will resume regular publishing the week of January 5th.
For the past year, we’ve been reporting on the trends and transformative leaders reshaping tomorrow, both future-casting and offering up a steady mix of context, data, clarity and expert insights to help you navigate change—and build better shock absorbers (resilience) in this time of turbulence and constant disruption.
So what’s ahead for this new year? In short, we expect much of the change we experienced in 2024 to accelerate and intensify.
For the first time since the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914), the world is facing a dramatic confluence of transformative trends. Most, if not all of them, are challenging the status quo—and are upending many of the old rules and norms, replacing them with new ones.
Demographic shifts, technological breakthroughs, the rejection of many traditional political, media and community norms and the increasing influence of artificial intelligence and climate change? They’re no longer separate realities. They’re now converging, creating new challenges and opportunities which will be reshaping how we live, work and lead.
Put simply, this is more than a moment of transformation. It’s a tipping point, and understanding how these trends collide and will reframe the future is essential.
Here’s what we see for 2025 to help you plan for what’s ahead.
Climate Change
Despite increased pledges from nations to meet net-zero goals this year, the gap between commitments and actionable results is only getting wider.
Global temperatures will likely continue to rise, and more frequent and severe climate events, such as extreme regional heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, droughts and flooding, are forecast and will likely start occurring with more severity and frequency.
In the United States, President-elect Donald Trump has promised to halt Biden-era spending on clean energy technology and electric vehicles, making it more likely that the government will become more focused on policies designed to help us adapt to climate change rather than limit what’s causing it. Some communities, for example, will likely continue to adopt more aggressive climate-resilience measures, like those in Washington, D.C., where flood management systems are being built to hold back the tidal Potomac River.
Rising sea levels and extreme weather events also will accelerate climate-induced migration, challenging infrastructure and public assistance programs in regions which are gaining or losing population—or both. Property values and insurance costs will continue to be negatively impacted in high-risk areas—reversing recent migration trends in some states, including Florida, and deflating climate change denialism—topics on which Marcia and Bradley will lead a discussion at this year’s SXSW conference in March.
Culturally, we will experience the influence of climate change on everyday life, from restaurant menus to housing costs and decisions about where we prefer to live—or to move.
Demographic Change
Countries with growing elderly populations and decreasing birth rates will become especially challenged by shortfalls in the availability of skilled labor, in the stability of consumer markets and in the capacity of public assistance programs.
Countries facing these changes will increasingly embrace automation, while others will leverage immigration to counter labor shortages. Most nations and the businesses within them will find they must also reconsider their revenue models if they become overly reliant on technology, as machines don’t buy goods and services nor pay taxes. Political and climate pressures also will intensify debates over immigration, prompting more governments to offer public support to native-born families with children, such as paid parental leave, affordable childcare and housing subsidies. The surging population of older people, worldwide, will also catalyze change in the housing, consumer and healthcare markets internationally.
And that’s not all. We will continue to closely track the emerging push by younger generations to drive social change and demand more inclusivity in corporate decision-making about the future of work and sustainability in all aspects of life. For example, the Gen Z gender gap is expected to expand, catalyzing new efforts to create a multigenerational women’s movement to expand opposition to recent federal restrictions on abortion, to shatter dominant myths that women are innately drawn to caregiving roles without compensation and to continue the fight to close the gender pay gap, now averaging 83 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Culture
In 2025, our culture of anger will continue to disrupt long-held behavioral and societal norms.
The November presidential election, buoyed and won, in part, by populist rage–which some expect might continue to lead to increased violence and social polarization this year—has affirmed Donald Trump’s political mandate to dismantle elements of the status quo and redefine rage as a rebellion against the weakened institutions of democracy and Biden-era policies favored by the Left.
In culture, rage can play a complex role, sometimes highlighting injustice and mobilizing action, while also potentially leading to destructive behaviors depending on how it is expressed and the cultural context in which it arises. For several years—before, during and after the pandemic—we have been living in a period increasingly marked by a heightened encouragement and demonstration of anger and aggression, both verbally and physically, and in this new year, we will likely continue to experience a culture distinguished by growing impatience with (and resistance to) traditional social, business, legal and workplace norms.
The recent fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—allegedly by Luigi Mangione—underscores the changing tenor of these times, and will likely continue to drum up a national tide of sympathy for the 26-year-old in the months ahead, accelerating his emergence as a cultural icon of rebellion and the catalyst of an emerging movement for health care reforms nationwide. A majority of Americans said in a December survey that insurance denials by the healthcare insurance industry bear at least some responsibility for the homicide; respondents also said the company’s gargantuan profits, which reached $371.6 billion in 2023 and became a symbol of corporate greed, also were partly responsible for the shooting. Said one sympathizer about Mangione’s growing support: “Luigi is the spark” in Americans’ anger over the nation’s healthcare system. “We are the flame.”
Technology
AI has subtly influenced us for years, powering everything from facial recognition to credit scores to political mischief and cultural commentary. But this year, a new generation of vastly more capable AI systems will be integrated far more widely into our culture, work lives and businesses— to broaden our capacity to produce and hyper-target information to influence everything from public policy to consumer spending.
This new generation of AI systems, referred to as “auto-sapiens”— also will no longer be functioning only as tools. They’re now becoming autonomous actors able to wield more influence in the decision-making of business leaders by offering new ways to increase productivity and catalyze new forms of work culture and leadership. Auto-sapiens have already begun to reshape how power works, who participates in creating new strategies and outcomes and who comes out on top. AI’s influence will expand this year as more companies enlist this new wave of auto-sapiens to help them re-set strategy.
AI also will continue to funnel the way we receive information, and increase the pressure on organizations and entire business sectors to start designing new management models and strategies to create more transparent, “humans-first” policies to ensure that human and organizational oversight can effectively manage AI’s output and cultural impact on the workplace.
We also expect to see many more organizations begin to create new communications policies and internal platforms, in order to cultivate a breadth of diverse perspectives while also combatting confirmation and other biases already surfacing in AI systems. More diverse forms of in-house communication also will be in demand to help leaders avoid over-reliance on any one company or AI interface whose goals would be to fully mediate one’s connection to the world.
Future of Work
“Return-to-office” mandates will continue, chiefly by companies locked into long, high-priced office building leases impossible to cancel or renegotiate. At the same time, other companies, to reduce churn and improve their recruitment and retention efforts, will be putting forth new rules governing reduced work weeks to improve employee well-being, work cultures and productivity—especially among new workers and older ones, given the sharp increase in Gen Z turnover and the caregiving crisis affecting increasing numbers of workers in their mid-40s and 50s who need to care for their children and support their aging parents, many of whom are living much longer.
More policies designed to better manage the hiring and tenure of workers aged 65+ —and increase the retention of the newest wave of workers—also will be rolled out more aggressively to help generate higher returns on organizations’ investment in human capital.
Research outcomes may influence broader adoption, but some organizations will continue to rethink remote and hybrid work models by work group, as well as continue their design of more inclusive and supportive workplaces and management structures to accommodate multigenerational needs and preferences—and to better address challenges like burnout and demands for greater input into work life by Gen Z workers.
As more businesses recognize the tangible benefits of diverse teams and inclusive, gender-fair, multi-generational forms of leadership, inclusion efforts may shift from surface-level initiatives to systemic changes that improve innovation and operational excellence, benefiting the bottom line.
New startups providing continuous learning programs will continue to proliferate as more workers and workplaces, alike, will need to adapt through up-skilling and re-skilling to remain competitive and stable in the recruitment and retention of the best and brightest. We also predict we’ll start to see more efforts by organizations to reduce employee churn by offering new programs focusing on mental health.
Additionally, portfolio careers may be the future of work and financial resilience for an increasing number of people opting against retirement, or those either displaced during or after the pandemic or let go during corporate downsizing efforts affecting certain industries struggling to create new models for resilience.
Economy
The United States economy will likely soar during the first half of 2025 thanks to three trends: lower interest rates, increased investment in financial markets, and “Trumphoria,” thanks to the promise of lower taxes and a potentially friendlier business environment. However, the prospects for global markets are less rosy, thanks to ongoing economic stagnation in the United Kingdom and parts of Europe and deflation in China.
The Great Wealth Transfer of $90 trillion in assets from the baby boomers to their children and grandchildren, as well as to charitable organizations, will accelerate this year unless Trump and his allies can extend his tax cuts, which are set to expire by the end of 2025. The impact of the Great Wealth Transfer could be felt sooner rather than later because baby boomers are increasingly leaning into the trend of "giving while living.” More millennials and Gen Xers will rely on “The Bank of Mom and Dad” for wealth creation, while others devoid of generational wealth may continue to expand the pandemic-era revival of a new labor movement to unionize more service businesses —beyond Starbucks— this year.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs could ignite multiple trade wars, which could cause immediate financial pain for the average American reliant on cheap goods, including energy. Prices may begin ticking up at the start of the year in anticipation of Trump’s presidency starting on January 20.
Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants and close off the border, if put into action, also could mean fewer workers and higher wages for some, increases in consumer prices and greater instability for a variety of small and medium-sized businesses across the country.
Got some predictions of your own? Comments? Please share them here!
Marcia and Brad, a great read. Thank you. As always peppered with insight, a crystal clarity and a voice that is unique in our media landscape. Best wishes for the New Year and the adventures that lie ahead.