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The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Successor
Why getting AI-ready now is the most critical strategic decision of this decade
Remember 2010?
Think back to 2010. The iPad had just been announced. Instagram launched that year. Most professionals still carried BlackBerry devices. Netflix was primarily a DVD-by-mail service. Uber existed only in San Francisco. Slack and Zoom didn't exist. The idea of working from home was still considered unconventional in most industries.
That was just 15 years ago. Now consider this: 2040 is closer to us today than 2010 is in our rearview mirror.
If 2010 feels like ancient history, what makes you think the workforce of 2040 will look anything like today's?
The answer is: it won't. And unlike the technology shifts between 2010 and 2025, the demographic transformation ahead is not a surprise. It's already locked in. The workers of 2040 have already been born. The birth rates have already occurred. The only question is whether your organization will be ready.
The Greatest Gift a CEO Can Give
What's the greatest gift you can give to whoever leads your organization in 2030, 2035, or 2040? It's not a strong balance sheet, though that matters. It's not a robust product pipeline, though that's valuable. It's not even a great culture, though that's essential.
The greatest gift is an organization that has already learned to thrive with AI-augmented workers—because by the time they take the helm, there simply won't be enough traditional workers available to execute any other strategy.
This isn't speculation. This is demographic mathematics, as predictable as compound interest. And the CEOs who start building AI capability today are giving their successors the only viable foundation for growth in a labor-constrained future.
Let's examine why this demographic reality is unavoidable, and why acting now—not in five years—is the defining strategic imperative of this decade.
The Demographic Reality: Don't Assume Yesterday's Labor Supply
High School Graduates: Peaking Now, Declining for Decades
The United States will produce approximately 3.9 million high school graduates in 2025. This is the peak. From here, the number declines steadily—projected to fall 13% to roughly 3.4 million by 2041.
This isn't a projection that might change with economic conditions or policy interventions. The children who will graduate high school in 2041 are already 2 years old today. The birth rates that determine class sizes through 2035 have already occurred. The demographic die is cast.
The impact will be unevenly distributed:
- 38 states will see declines in high school graduates
- 8 states will experience declines of 20% or more
- Only the South (including D.C.) will see net increases
If your business strategy assumes you'll have access to the same volume of entry-level talent in 2035 that you have today, you're planning for a world that will not exist.
Don't assume labor supply will remain constant. It won't.
College Graduates: Better Completion, Smaller Pipeline
College graduation rates have improved—from 55.4% for students entering in 1996 to 63.6% for those entering in 2017. Today, 37.7% of Americans aged 25 and older hold at least a bachelor's degree, compared to just 7.7% in 1960.
This sounds like good news. But mathematics is unforgiving: if the pool of high school graduates shrinks by 13%, even with improved college completion rates, the absolute number of college graduates entering your talent pool will decline.
Moreover, college enrollment rates have begun declining. In 2024, only 55.4% of male high school graduates enrolled in college, compared to 69.5% of females—a 14-percentage-point gap. The combination of fewer high school graduates and lower enrollment rates creates a compound effect.
Don't assume that the quality and volume of college-educated workers will remain constant. The pipeline is shrinking at both ends.
The Aging Workforce: Exit Exceeding Entry
In 1994, workers aged 55 and older represented 10% of the American workforce. By 2022, they comprised 24%—nearly one in four workers. This reflects the Baby Boom generation (76 million births between 1946-1964) reaching their peak earning years and, increasingly, retirement age.
The contrast with younger workers is stark. Since 2019, the population of prime-age workers (25-54) has barely changed—adding just 40,000 in 2022 alone. During that same period, the population aged 65 and older grew by 5 million. Approximately 10,000 baby boomers reach retirement age every single day.
This creates an inevitable mismatch: massive cohorts retiring, much smaller cohorts replacing them. The birth rate data tells the story:
- 76 million births between 1946-1964 (Baby Boom)
- 55 million births between 1965-1980 (Generation X)
- Below-replacement fertility since 2007 (continuing to present)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that labor force growth will slow dramatically through 2033, driven primarily by population aging. Prime-age workers (25-54) will see minimal growth, while the youngest age cohorts (16-24) will actually see their populations decline, with 16-17 year-olds shrinking by 0.7% annually.
Don't assume experienced workers will be readily available to backfill critical roles. The replacement cohorts are dramatically smaller.
Why This Demands Action Now, Not Later
The AI Learning Curve Takes Years, Not Months
Building AI capability in an organization isn't about deploying a few tools. It's about fundamentally reimagining workflows, training people to work alongside AI systems, identifying which tasks can be augmented or automated, rebuilding quality control processes, and establishing new performance metrics.
Organizations that start this journey in 2025 will be competent by 2028 and excellent by 2030. Those who wait until 2030 to begin—when the labor constraints become undeniable—will spend years catching up while hemorrhaging costs and market share.
Remember: by 2030, we're already 5 years into the high school graduate decline. The talent shortage will be acute. Starting then means learning to swim while drowning.
The Competition Will Be Fierce
As the demographic constraints tighten, every organization will face the same challenge: insufficient workers to execute traditional operating models. This will create intense competition on two fronts:
- Talent competition for the shrinking pool of available workers, driving labor costs up structurally
- Technology competition for AI talent and implementation capability as everyone rushes to augment productivity
Organizations that build AI capability now will have established expertise, refined processes, and cultural acceptance before the crisis hits. Those who wait will find themselves bidding against desperate competitors for both scarce human talent and scarce AI implementation expertise.
First-mover advantage isn't about technology adoption. It's about organizational learning. You're building institutional muscle memory that cannot be purchased or fast-tracked when the need becomes urgent.
Your Successor Inherits Your Choices
Picture the CEO who takes over your organization in 2035. They will inherit:
- A labor market with 10% fewer high school graduates than 2025
- A workforce where 25-30% of workers are 55+, many approaching retirement
- Structurally higher labor costs driven by supply-demand imbalances
- Competitors who have been refining AI-augmented operations for a decade
If you hand them an organization still dependent on traditional labor-intensive models, you've set them up to fail. No amount of capital or strategic vision can overcome the simple reality of insufficient workers to execute the plan.
But if you hand them an organization that has spent a decade learning to augment human workers with AI, that has refined which tasks to automate and which to enhance, that has built the cultural acceptance and technical infrastructure for AI-human collaboration—you've given them a fighting chance to thrive in a fundamentally different labor environment.
The decisions you make in 2025-2027 will determine whether your successor leads from strength or scrambles to survive.
The Choice: Lead or Follow
In 2010, few CEOs anticipated that mobile technology would fundamentally reshape customer expectations, work patterns, and competitive dynamics within five years. The iPhone existed, but most organizations hadn't yet grasped its implications.
Today, AI exists. The demographic constraints are already visible. The decline in high school graduates begins this year. The retirement wave is accelerating. Unlike the iPhone, which surprised the market, this transformation is announced years in advance.
The only variable is: will you be ready?
Getting AI-ready now isn't about chasing the latest technology trend. It's about ensuring your organization can execute its strategy in a world with 10-15% fewer entry-level workers, where experienced talent is scarce and expensive, where competitors who started early have decisive productivity advantages. Don't assume the labor supply of 2040 will resemble 2025. Don't assume quality will be available at the same levels. Don't assume you can defer this transformation and catch up later. 2040 is closer than 2010. If you think back to 2010 and marvel at how different the world was, ask yourself: what do you want the CEO of 2040 to say about the decisions you made today? The greatest gift you can give your successor is an organization that learned to thrive with less labor before they had no choice. That gift starts with decisions you make this year.
A Final Thought: This Isn't About Replacement
The conversation around AI often focuses on job displacement—which roles will be eliminated, which workers will be replaced. That framing misses the demographic reality entirely.
When high school graduates decline by 13% and experienced workers retire in unprecedented numbers, the challenge isn't too many workers—it's too few. AI isn't replacing the workforce of 2040. AI is augmenting the smaller, older, more expensive workforce that demographic mathematics has already determined will exist.
The question isn't whether AI will displace workers. The question is whether you'll have enough AI capability to compensate for the workers who simply won't be available to hire.
In a world of labor abundance, AI is a choice. In the world ahead, it's the only path to execution.
