I have been in the leadership development and business acumen training business for a long time.

Long enough to remember when “web-based training” was going to change everything.

Then came eLearning. Cloud-based learning. Mobile learning. Virtual classrooms. Hybrid learning. Microlearning.

Every few years, something new would revolutionize corporate training. And most of the time, it didn't. It changed how we delivered the training, but it didn't fundamentally change what happened during the training.

The classroom became a browser. The workbook became a PDF. The instructor became a video. The breakout room became a virtual breakout room.

But the underlying model remained remarkably similar: give people content, teach them a framework, let them practice it, discuss what they learned, and hope they remember enough to use it six months later.

AI is different, and I think it is going to fundamentally break that model.

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There is an old saying in business that bad news doesn't get better with age.

I would add something to that:

Bad news usually gets more expensive with age.

In today's volatile business environment, that may be more true than ever.

Organizations are more matrixed. Teams are dispersed around the world. Employees report into multiple functions. Supply chains are interconnected. Decisions that used to happen around a conference table now happen across time zones, Teams calls, emails, Slack messages, dashboards, and project management systems.

We have more ways to communicate than ever before.

And yet, somehow, critical problems still don't get escalated.

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It is easy to blame “big bad pharma” for everything that is wrong with healthcare. It is worth remembering that prescription drugs represent only one piece of the total healthcare-cost equation.

To many, it is just as easy to blame the doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators, and thousands of other employees working inside large healthcare systems.

Healthcare is expensive. It is complicated. There are egos, inefficiencies, mistakes, long waits, confusing bills, aging facilities, staffing shortages, and dozens of other things that make healthcare providers easy targets for criticism.

Until you need them. Then it becomes a very different story. I recently had the opportunity, although “opportunity” probably isn't the word I would have chosen,  to experience the healthcare system from the other side. And it caused me to rethink something I have been teaching for decades.

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We’ve started noticing something interesting during our business simulation rounds.

Participants are increasingly using AI as they work through complex business decisions. That’s not surprising. AI has quickly become part of how many of us analyze information, explore ideas, and solve problems. What is interesting is how differently people use it.

Some participants take a screenshot of their simulation results, paste it into an AI tool, and ask: “What is happening here? What should I do next?”

Within seconds, AI can read the numbers, identify trends, summarize performance, and suggest a course of action. Useful? Absolutely.

But we’re also seeing participants use AI differently. Instead of asking AI to do the analysis, they develop their own interpretation first and then use AI almost like a business consultant to challenge assumptions, uncover relationships, and test their thinking.

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My head is still spinning from ATD in May. Everywhere you turned, there was another AI
announcement, another product launch, or another promise about how AI was going to transform learning. It was exciting, but also a little overwhelming.

A few months later, the picture is becoming clearer.

Organizations are moving beyond experimenting with AI and beginning to identify where it delivers real value. Rather than asking, “Should we use AI?” the question is becoming, “Where should we use AI first?”

As we head into the second half of 2026, here are five trends I believe will have the biggest impact on Talent Development.

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