7 trends that will change work in 2026

🔥 1. The great divide

Anthropic’s co-founder has said that people using top AI systems will live in a parallel world compared to those who don’t. We’re already seeing it. This year, it will play out in full. With a single prompt, I created a six-page AML form, something ChatGPT or Copilot simply can’t do. Expect massive gaps, both in tools and in the skills of the people working with them.

🔥 2. Finance as a new topic

Two worlds. On one side, a product photo for almost nothing. On the other, tools that cost hundreds of dollars a month. Every manager will need to add a new line to the budget: AI costs. Some things will be very cheap, but top users will spend serious money every month. Cursor alone can consume close to a thousand dollars a month. We need to be ready for that.

🔥 3. Your work is a product

Jason Fried wrote it years ago: your company is your product. Now it’s doubly true. The more you work on your systems (how you do your work), the more time you’ll have for the work itself. Thinking about your own work as a product, building internal tools and systems with AI that help the company run better and better, is often far more important than the specific outputs of that work.

🔥 4. Communication 3.0

Forget PowerPoint. Learn to communicate information differently: interactive websites, personalized reports. I spent less time building a programmatic presentation than a traditional one. And it delivers far greater value. We replaced the creation of price proposals with AI-generated web pages, or had a website built for lawyers containing all their documents, and they said they’d never seen anything like it. Those who learn to change how they communicate will gain an enormous advantage.

🔥 5. Small teams and individual contributors

One person with AI can deliver better work than an entire team. While large companies spend 6–10 hours a day in meetings about a new feature, small teams ship it in 10 days. We’re living in a golden age of creators. A study of 700 workers clearly demonstrated that an individual with AI outperforms an entire team, not just in speed, but in quality. That’s exactly why small teams and capable individuals will gain a massive edge this year.

🔥 6. The extreme importance of people

I expected AI to become autonomous much sooner. It turns out that’s not the case. You need someone who knows the work, has ideas, and understands what the result should look like. “What good looks like.” That’s the key skill. The expertise, mindset, and domain knowledge combined with AI is precisely what creates value today. That’s why investing in your own development matters. And why companies need to invest in their people.

🔥 7. Skills – documented know-how

We need to stop carrying knowledge only in our heads and learn to document it. That’s what makes AI work and deliver real value. And those skills can be hired, bought, or adopted from someone who already has them. One of my colleagues, for instance, uses his “second brain” of a million notes to define skills for Claude. Those who master this will get far better outputs from AI, and a lever that others simply won’t have.

FD