In-Ear Insights: 2025 Year In Review

In this episode of In-Ear Insights, the Trust Insights podcast, Katie and Chris discuss the massive technological shifts driven by generative AI in 2025 and what you must plan for in 2026. You will learn which foundational frameworks ensure your organization can strategically adapt to rapid technological change. You’ll discover how to overcome the critical communication barriers and resistance emerging among teams adopting these new tools. You will understand why increasing machine intelligence makes human critical thinking and emotional skills more valuable than ever. You’ll see the unexpected primary use case of large language models and identify the key metrics you must watch in the coming year for economic impact. Watch now to prepare your strategy for navigating the AI revolution sustainably. Watch the video here: Can’t see anything? Watch it on YouTube here . Listen to the audio here: https://traffic.libsyn.com/inearinsights/tipodcast-2025-year-in-review.mp3 Download the MP3 audio here . Need help with your company’s data and analytics? Let us know! Join our free Slack group for marketers interested in analytics! [podcastsponsor] Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode. Christopher S. Penn: In this week’s *In-Ear Insights*. This is the last episode of *In-Ear Insights* for 2025. We are out with the old. We’ll be back in January for new episodes the week of January 5th. So, Katie, let’s talk about the year that was and all the crazy things that happened in the year. And so what you’re thinking about, particularly from the perspective of all things AI, all things data and analytics—how was 2025 for you? Katie Robbert: What’s funny about that is I feel like for me personally, not a lot changed. And the reason I feel like I can say that is because a lot of what I focus on is foundational, and it doesn’t really matter what fancy, shiny new technology is happening. So I really try to focus on making sure the things that I do every day can adapt to new technology. And again, of course, that’s probably the most concrete example of that is the 5P framework: Purpose, People, Process, Platform for Performance. It doesn’t matter what the technology is. This is where I’m always going to ground myself in this framework so that if AI comes along or shiny object number 2 comes along, I can adapt because it’s still about primarily, what are we doing? So asking the right questions. The things that did change were I saw more of a need this year, not in general, but just this year, for people to understand how to connect with other people. And not only in a personal sense, but in a professional sense of my team needs to adopt AI or they need to adopt this new technology. I don’t know how to reach them. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know. I’m telling them things. Nothing’s working. And I feel like the technology of today, which is generative AI, is creating more barriers to communication than it is opening up communication channels. And so that’s a lot of where my head has bee

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