Saturday Signal: 5 Signals to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Your biggest career advantage is learning how to ask better questions of your data, especially now with the capability that AI offers.

AI can generate answers. Dashboards can show numbers. But the person who knows which questions actually matter always wins.

Ask better questions → make better decisions → rise faster.

NotebookLM - Google’s AI-powered research notebook.

Upload documents, reports, slides, or notes… and it becomes your research partner:

It’s like having an analyst who already read everything you uploaded.

💡 Weekend assignment: Upload 2–3 related PDFs. Ask it what themes connect them, you might be surprised. Or ask to create a Podcast based on that (Audio Overview), or flashcards so you can learn more about that topic.

Remember when software made business simpler?

Today, the average company runs 100+ apps—each with its own logins, data, and headaches. HR can’t find employee info. IT fights security blind spots. Finance reconciles numbers instead of planning growth.

Our State of Software Sprawl report reveals the true cost of “Software as a Disservice” (SaaD)—and how much time, money, and sanity it’s draining from your teams.

Read the full report and see how your company stacks up→

The future of work is unified. Don’t get SaaD. Get Rippling.

Stop SaaD in its tracks

The State of AI in 2025: Agents, Innovation, and Transformation from McKinsey (published Nov 2025) - Link here

A sharp, recent look at how companies are actually using AI today. Not in theory, but in real workflows. McKinsey reports that half of AI high performers plan to use AI to fundamentally transform their businesses, and most are already redesigning workflows around it, not just adding new tools on top.

It’s a quick read, packed with insights on where leaders see value, where teams are still struggling, and how AI is reshaping work across industries.

💡 Weekend skim: Scroll to the section on AI agents and workflow redesign. It is the closest signal of what organizations will prioritize in the next 12 months.

AI is transforming the world of work – are we ready for it? Financial Times

This short FT film looks at how AI is reshaping jobs, productivity, and the skills organizations now need, with real examples from companies already experimenting at scale.

It is a clear, practical view of what’s coming, not just hype.

💡 While watching: Think about your own role or team. Which parts of your work are likely to be augmented, not replaced, by AI in the next 12–24 months?

📊 AI models now consume more compute in a single day than all of humanity did in the first decade of modern AI research.

To put that into perspective:

We are not just building models, we are building industrial-scale intelligence systems.

💡 Weekend challenge: Think about one workflow in your job. If compute keeps getting cheaper, faster, and more abundant.., what part of that workflow becomes “instant” next?