RADICL People Predictions for 2025

Disruption is the theme for 2025. We can expect disruptive forces in government, technology, and work. Disruption can be destructive. But, it can also bring constructive change. We are experiencing the type of disruption that spurs economies, companies and people to new heights. The next year will likely be a fast and bumpy ride, but the organizations, teams and people that can anticipate, adapt to, and shape the oncoming disruption will be the ones that have accelerated impact.

These are our RADICL People Predictions for 2025

By Ken Oehler, Ph.D.

#1 Government Disrupts Policy, Power and People

What’s Going On

  • Political party disruption. The Trump administration has exhibited many of the moves of disruptive innovation strategies, capitalizing on constituent dissatisfaction and incumbent parties that have been slow to change.

  • Disruptive, non-traditional cabinet appointees. DOGE, Health, Education and Intelligence appointees will bring intense scrutiny to protracted challenges of powerful organizations.

  • Pro-business deregulation and tax policy. Deregulation that accelerates jobs and innovation and the extension/expansion of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would likely spur economic growth. Corporate taxes could be reduced from 21% to 15%.

  • Increased tariffs. Although intended to push demand to U.S. companies and workers, imposing tariffs could create uncertainty, increase operating costs and reduce businesses’ ability to make investments.

  • Wild card immigration policy. Mass deportation of 15-20M people could be catastrophic to the economy. The more likely scenario - focusing on deporting those already court-ordered to leave the U.S., and granting green cards to foreign students graduating from U.S. colleges - could be net positive.

What this Means for People

  • 850,000 government workers at risk. DOGE recommendations will not likely come until 2026, but applying a large, but more reasonable, 30% layoff target, means 850K government employees could be at risk of losing their jobs.

  • I-9 and H-1B documentation scrutiny. With increased focus on immigration, companies and foreign workers can expect heightened attention on work documentation.

  • Real wage increase. The combination of lower taxes, slowing inflation and likely increased competitiveness for U.S. workers means buying power has a good chance of increasing in 2025.

#2 Companies Shift to Growth through Disruptive Technology

What’s Going On

What this Means for People

#3 Agentic AI will Disrupt the Way Work is Done

What’s Going On

What this Means for People

#4 Skills Disruption Favors the Adaptable

What’s Going On

What this Means for People

  • Empower skills assessments. At a very basic level, people need to understand the skills they have and need - and the depth those skills in order to be employable. People can’t wait for top-down skills frameworks built for a company. AI will offer the tools to help people understand the skills they have and those they need.

  • Empower understanding personality. Even with the demand for cognitive and technology skills, many of the top skill priorities for businesses like creative thinking, curiosity, resilience, influence, motivation, empathy align directly with Big 5 personality traits. Most people lack a scientific understanding of their personality, their teammates’ personalities, and the impact on connection, productivity and team impact. AI is opening the possibility to empower people at scale with these insights.

  • Empower on-the-job learning. The best skill development comes from working with people that have the skills you need on projects that require those skills. Companies should reallocate investment toward technologies that connect people with experts and opportunities within their company or through multi-stakeholder collaboration that can help them develop.

#5 Disruption to Work Impact Comes to the Forefront

What’s Going On

  • Disruption to work impact. As stated in prediction #2, there is an alarming concern with growth for most companies. People’s ability to have work impact is at the heart of this problem. RADICL’s research shows that only 9% of employees have high levels of work impact.

  • Wrong solutions for the right problem. Employers rightfully have been concerned with loss of connection, collaboration, learning and productivity. There is ZERO correlation with days in office and these critical outcomes, so RTO and mandatory 5-days in office policies are not going to have much impact.

  • Clarity, Capability and Connection are blocked. 4 out of 10 people are completely missing the clarity, capability and connection needed for work impact. (R-squared for these drivers’ impact on work impact =0.78). Goal clarity, required skills, and trusted connection are very low for most people and tend to be more blocked for cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams, where most work impact happens.

What this Means for People

  • Clarify purpose, priorities and principles. People and teams need to get reconnected to the company purpose…and their own purpose. They need a clear set of priorities that direct actions against objectives with measurable outcomes. And they need clear guiding principles that guide decisions and how teams will interact. Without clarity and alignment on these things, people and teams will be adrift, skills will be wasted and trust will erode.

  • Build capability through people and work. People need ways to accelerate the work moments with people on real work projects that bring learning breakthroughs on in-demand skills. Without the right capability, people and teams will be unable to deliver, regardless of the right direction or relationships on the team.

  • Accelerate trusted connection. Trust is the rocket fuel that unlocks productivity and work impact for people and teams. Trusted connections are also the “flywheel” or “force-multiplier” that, in turn, impact one’s ability to gain clarity by asking tough questions, or building skill through trying, failing and learning in a safe environment. Without trust, a skilled team with clear direction will quickly derail as communication, collaboration and learning break down.

Accelerating Work Impact for Everyone

Imagine people and teams struggling with work impact. Imagine the new employee struggling to get up to speed on a distributed team…. Imagine the zombie team that is failing to make any progress or impact….Imagine the cross-functional team with internal conflict…. Ask yourself, what’s missing? You will likely answer a lack of clarity, lack of skill or lack of trusted connections…or some combination of all three. People and teams need all three elements of Clarity, Capability and Connection to achieve maximum work impact (go ahead, try and imagine having strong work impact with only 2 out of 3).

Existing programs and technology are failing to deliver work impact. Performance management is broken, goals don’t cascade up or across. Project management technology doesn’t help with the “why.” Online learning provides a light overview and quiz on skills that are soon forgotten because of no practical on-the-job use or ability to work with experts. Employee surveys don’t help teams to be more effective because they place the responsibility of finding solutions to a forced, confidential generic diagnostic against unclear objectives on the unit-manager’s shoulders. And, the XFN teams are failing to trust, communicate, or address risks because people don’t understand each others’ styles, motivations and preferences.

It’s time to try something RADICL….People now have the ability to remove blockers to Clarity, Capability and Connection with the assistance of user-friendly AI.

RADICL accelerates work impact for everyone.