The Consulting Questions That Defined 2025 (And What They Tell Us About 2026)
Executive Summary:
Client questions shifted from "what should we do?" to "how do we bring people along?"
Three themes dominated 2025: AI anxiety, change fatigue, and trust erosion
Leaders asked more "how" questions than "what" questions
The most revealing question of 2025: "Why does everyone say they want change but resist when we implement it?"
2026 will require focus on adoption capability
As our firm spent time this year on calls listening to what keeps leaders up at night, we’ve taken note of what types of questions our prospective and current clients ask. Not just what they say they need—but the anxieties underneath, the problems they can't quite articulate, and the patterns they've noticed but haven't named yet.
2025's questions fell into three distinct themes, and they tell us a lot about what organizations will need in 2026.
Theme 1: "How Do We Adopt AI Without Terrifying Our Team?"
The Questions:
"Should we be worried about AI replacing jobs?"
"How transparent should we be about which roles might change?"
"Our employees are hearing about AI layoffs in the news—what do we tell them?"
"We piloted an AI tool and no one's using it. Why?"
"How do we move faster on AI without losing people's trust?"
Market Reality:
MIT research revealed AI could technically replace 11.7% of U.S. workers—far more than earlier estimates [1]
Major companies began giving AI "workers" their own email addresses and Teams accounts, signaling a fundamental shift in how work gets structured [2]
Yet frontline workers reported companies weren't being transparent about AI integration plans [3]
The gap between AI capability and organizational readiness grew wider
What This Means:
Early in the year, leaders asked strategic questions about AI: "What's our AI roadmap?" "Which use cases should we prioritize?" "What's our competitive positioning?"
By mid-year, the questions shifted to change management: "Why aren't people using the tools?" "How do we address the fear?" "What if we're moving too fast?"
The pattern was consistent across industries. Organizations bought AI tools, piloted them successfully with a small group, then hit a wall when trying to scale. The technical piece worked. The human piece didn't.
The disconnect: Leaders assumed that if they built a compelling business case for AI, adoption would follow. Employees needed something different— honest conversations about job security, involvement in how AI would reshape their work, and transparency about what leadership did and didn't know yet.
The organizations that made progress in 2025 redesigned work with their people, not to their people.
Theme 2: "Why Does Every Initiative Feel Like It's Adding to the Pile?"
The Questions:
"How do we prioritize when everything feels urgent?"
"Can you help us figure out what to stop doing?"
"Why are our people so exhausted when we've invested in making things better?"
"Is it normal to run five transformation programs at once?"
"How do we move fast without burning everyone out?"
Market Reality:
Gallup identified "The Great Detachment" as workers increasingly disconnected from their jobs, citing unclear expectations and constant change [4]
Health insurance premiums hit record highs ($27,000 annually for families), adding financial stress on top of workplace pressure [5]
Research showed employees acknowledged benefits from some workplace changes but felt the cumulative burden wasn't worth it
What This Means:
The most honest question we heard in 2025: "We keep launching initiatives to make things better, so why does it feel like we're making things worse?"
Here's what was happening: Organizations ran AI transformation programs, leadership development initiatives, process optimization projects, and culture change efforts—all in parallel, all adding to employee workloads.
Each initiative made sense in isolation. Together, they created chaos.
Employees weren't resisting change. They were drowning in uncoordinated change. No one was looking at the cumulative impact on the people actually doing the work.
The organizations that adjusted mid-year did three things:
Paused some initiatives (not forever, just until bandwidth opened up)
Merged others (three separate "transformation programs" became one integrated change effort)
Stopped a few entirely (admitting that not everything was actually urgent)
The hardest part was overcoming leadership's fear that pausing would signal weakness or lack of commitment to improvement.
Reality check: Your people can't execute five transformations simultaneously. Choosing to do three well beats attempting five poorly.
Theme 3: "Why Doesn't Anyone Trust What We're Saying Anymore?"
The Questions:
"How do we rebuild trust after a layoff?"
"Why do employees assume the worst when we announce changes?"
"We've been transparent about our challenges, so why aren't people buying it?"
"How do we communicate when we don't have all the answers yet?"
"What do we do when our actions and our stated values don't align?"
Market Reality:
Wells Fargo employees successfully unionized in 2025—the first union drive at a major U.S. bank in decades—after losing confidence that leadership cared about job security [6]
This reflected a broader pattern: white-collar workers increasingly skeptical of corporate communication and taking collective action
40% of women aged 15-44 expressed desire to leave the U.S., quadrupling over the last decade—a signal of deep uncertainty and loss of confidence in institutions [7]
What This Means:
Trust erosion showed up differently across organizations, but the pattern was consistent: employees stopped giving leadership the benefit of the doubt.
When leaders announced changes, employees immediately asked, "What aren't they telling us?" When companies emphasized values like "people first," employees pointed to layoffs and restructurings that contradicted the messaging.
Leaders weren't failing because they didn't send enough emails or hold enough town halls. They were failing because of misalignment between what they said and what employees experienced.
Example: A company launched a high-profile commitment to diversity and inclusion, complete with town halls and updated value statements. Within months, they quietly eliminated their DEI programs and laid off the diversity team. Employees noticed. And they stopped believing future statements about values.
The organizations rebuilding trust in 2025 did something uncomfortable: they acknowledged what they didn't know, admitted when they'd made mistakes, and involved employees in decisions before announcing them.
Trust rebuilds through consistent follow-through and transparent decision-making – not just polished messaging.
What These Questions Tell Us About 2026
The shift from "what should we do?" to "how do we bring people along?" isn't reversing.
AI adoption will accelerate. Economic uncertainty will persist. Leaders will keep launching change initiatives.
Having the best strategy on paper won't determine success in 2026. Building adoption capability—the organizational muscle to implement change effectively, bring people along, and maintain trust through transition—will matter more.
That means:
Integration over proliferation
Stop launching separate initiatives in silos. Design coordinated change efforts that employees experience as coherent, not chaotic.
Transparency over messaging
Tell the truth about what you know, what you don't know, and what you're worried about. Employees can handle uncertainty better than they can handle feeling misled.
Involvement over announcement
Bring people into the design process before decisions are made, not after. Resistance drops when people help shape the change instead of receiving it as a surprise.
Sustainability over speed
Moving fast only matters if your people can sustain the pace. A slower change that sticks beats a rapid rollout that collapses.
Follow-through over promises
Your stated values only matter if they align with your decisions. Employees watch what you do, not what you say.
If your organization is navigating these questions—AI adoption, change coordination, or trust rebuilding—and you want a partner who's been in these conversations all year, our team can help. Reach out to start the conversation.
