The Christmas Special Editorial Team

Madrid, 8th December 2025

Imagine the stage is almost completely dark. One spotlight, maybe two. Our favourite standup philosopher stands perfectly still for eight full seconds. He just breathes through his nose. It’s like a man who’s just found a half-eaten kebab in his coat pocket from 2009. Then, very slowly, he begins.

Thank you… thank you for coming… to our Good Strat and LinkedIn dog and pony show.

(He lets the silence stretch until someone in the front row coughs.)

It’s called “Five Business Trends Every Company Must Prepare For in 2026 or Die”.

(Beat.)

Five.

(Beat.)

Not four.

Not six.

Five.

Because if you do four, people think you’re lazy.

If you do six, people think you’ve got some sort of… compulsive list disorder.
Five is the sweet spot. Five is what McKinsey charges you £400,000 to tell you.

Five is the number of fingers on a normal human hand. However, if you work in health and safety, it’s however many you’ve still got left after the pallet truck accident. And the title ends with the words “in 2026”.

Not “in the coming year”. Not “on the horizon”.

2026.

Specific. Authoritative.

Like a man who’s looked into the future, he’s seen the same shit as last year. However, the batteries are slightly worse.

(He produces a printed copy of the article, holds it up like it’s radioactive.)This is it. This is the article.
I printed it out. Cost me 38p at Ryman’s.

38 pence for something that will be utterly irrelevant by January the 8th. By then, the robots will finally achieve consciousness. They will decide to delete every single LinkedIn account. These accounts have ever used the phrase “let’s circle back”.

(He starts reading from the article in a flat, bureaucratic monotone.)

“AI Agents For Automated Business Processes…”

(Stops dead.)

AI agents.

Autonomous AIs.

That carry out complex multi-step tasks.

With minimal human intervention.

(Beat.)

So… robots then.

We’re just calling them “agents” now.

Like they’ve got little robot business cards.

“Hello, I’m Keith, your new AI agent. I’ve come to do your job, but in a slightly more condescending voice than you do it yourself.”

(He adopts a silky AI voice.)

“Hello Dave, I’ve noticed you’ve been reconciling invoices manually for fourteen years.

I’ve done it in 0.3 seconds.

Would you like to cry about it in the disabled toilet? Alternatively, I can book you straight onto the government’s Universal Credit portal.

(Back to normal voice, faster now.)

And it says here, in the article, in my article. These agents will free up human workers to focus on “creative, strategic and customer-facing tasks”.

(He stares at the audience.)

Creative.

Strategic.

Customer-facing.

(Beat.)

So what they’re actually saying is: “We’re going to sack Sandra from Accounts. We will give her job to a piece of code that’s haunted. It was written by a 23-year-old in San Francisco who’s never paid a gas bill in his life. Then we will make Sandra retrain as a TikTok influencer for the company. She will dance in a branded hi-vis vest. The sound goes ‘BRRR SKIBIDI DOP DOP YES YES’. She holds a cardboard sign that says ‘We Value People’.”

(He pauses, lets it land.)And then, and then, right, it says companies that build these “agentic workflows” will become “more agile”.Agile.(He says the word like he’s chewing a wasp.)

Agile.

A word that was once used to describe gazelles.

And mountain goats.

And Nina Conti’s monkey.

Now used exclusively to describe middle managers. They’ve done a two-day course in Scrum. When you ask them for a pay rise, they respond with, “Let’s park that in the parking lot.”

(He flips the page with theatrical disgust.)Next section: “AI-Enabled Products And Services”.

Apparently, in 2026, we’re going to put AI into customers’ hands.

(Beat.)

We’re going to put AI into their hands.

(He mimes handing something to the front row.)

“Here you are, madam, here’s your new AI-enabled toaster.

It makes toast, yes, but it also judges your life choices.

“‘Dave, you’ve had three slices already. Maybe ease off the carbs, you fat bastard.’”

And then, and then, right, there’s a bit about cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity as a “survival strategy”.

(He looks genuinely hurt.)

Survival strategy.

As if ransomware is the same as hiding from a tiger in the Pleistocene era.“

Quick, Kevin, the Russians have locked the spreadsheet. Everyone, into the cave, and start rubbing two sticks together. We need to wait until the blockchain comes back online!

(He starts pacing, getting louder.)

And then, right at the end, there’s a section. It is called “Redefining Leadership In The Age Of Augmented Working”.

Redefining leadership.

Redefining.

As if leadership was ever defined correctly in the first place.

As if the last definition wasn’t just “bloke who can use the phrase ‘low-hanging fruit’ without visibly dying inside”.

And it says leaders will have to manage “augmented teams” where humans and intelligent machines work side by side.

Side by side.

(He stops. Complete silence.)

Side by side.

Like a buddy cop movie.Starring you… and a piece of software that already knows you’re going to be made redundant in March.

(He leans into the mic, almost whispering.)

And the software’s the funny one.

(He straightens up.)

So there you are.

That’s my article.

That’s what I do now.

I write this every year.

Every December.

It is like a digital advent calendar. Instead of chocolate, you get despair. Instead of baby Jesus, you get a man in a fleece. He tells you that your job is about to be done by a chatbot. This chatbot pronounces “GIF” wrong.

(He holds up the printed article again.)

This cost 38p to print.

38p.

That’s more than the residual value of my entire skill set in 2026.

(He drops the article on the floor.)

Thank you. You’ve been lovely. I’m going to go home now. I will teach myself to code. In twelve months, I can be replaced by something I wrote myself while weeping forlornly into a Pot Noodle.

Goodnight.

https://goodstrat.com/2025/11/14/top-10-technology-trends-for-2026/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/11/07/the-good-data-bible-set-theory/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/11/05/energy-variable-renewables-cut-costs-long-term/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/12/02/how-agentic-ai-is-reshaping-work-and-life-balance/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/11/14/top-10-technology-trends-for-2026/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/11/02/pearls-of-ai-wisdom/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/12/04/agentur-ki/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/12/04/les-risques-de-lia-dagence-entre-autonomie-et-ethique/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/12/04/la-ia-agencial/
https://goodstrat.com/2025/12/03/an-abridged-guide-to-agentic-ai-with-a-side-of-existential-dread/