Why longer working lives, AI and a changing labour market are reshaping how we should think about career decisions.
By Jana Kurtova · 3 min read
What if the track itself has changed?
Career planning used to follow a familiar pattern. You chose a direction and expected your career to develop steadily over time, taking stock every few years and adjusting course when necessary. It was straightforward enough to sketch on the back of an envelope, with one role leading naturally to the next. Over two decades in HR and talent leadership, I saw countless people build their careers on that pattern. Many now find it has stopped working, even though they’re doing nothing differently.
For some, the traditional career path still works. But for many professionals, particularly as working lives get longer and roles continue to evolve, the old assumptions about how a career should progress are becoming less reliable.
The career arc is changing
Lynda Gratton, Professor at London Business School, makes the case clearly in a Harvard Business Review article, The Predictable Executive Career Arc Is Over. She argues that the classic three-stage model of education, work and retirement no longer fits now that working lives stretch so much longer.
In a separate 2026 piece, Research: As Careers Get Longer, Midcareer Work Needs to Change, she introduced a term I like: the “pivotal 40s”. With decades of work still ahead, people can reach mid-career with real experience and achievement, yet find themselves questioning whether the way they work still suits them. The organisation may see these years as a period of stability; the person living them may feel anything but. In my experience, restlessness at this stage often gets mistaken for falling behind, but that’s rarely what’s happening. More often, the career they built no longer matches the person they are now.
It isn’t just one researcher’s view
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 comes at the same question from a different angle. It estimates, based on employers’ expectations, that 39% of workers’ core skills could change by 2030, as technological developments, including AI, continue to reshape roles and organisations. For many professionals, job transitions, reskilling and career development are becoming a regular part of working life rather than occasional events.
What this means for your career planning
When the ground shifts like this, there’s a natural temptation to look for a new map, perhaps an updated five-year plan that somehow accounts for AI, longer working lives and whatever comes next. I’d push back on that instinct.
A more detailed map isn’t very useful when the terrain itself keeps changing.
What I find more useful with clients is closer to the opposite: a less detailed plan and a much clearer sense of what to steer by.
A lot of coaching starts with goals. I start with values, helping clients get clear on what actually matters to them. That clarity isn’t fixed. It gets revisited as life changes, which is exactly why it holds up better than a five-year plan does.
What’s stayed true
If the career path you planned no longer quite fits, try asking:
What has stayed true about what matters to you, even as everything else has shifted?
Maybe it’s autonomy. Maybe it’s the work itself, or leadership, or financial security, or just having more say over how your time is spent. As a coach, I’m not here to predict the perfect next role. I’m here to help you find enough clarity to make a good decision when the future can’t be fully known. Sometimes the next step becomes clearer when you know what matters, even if you can’t yet see the whole journey.
If that’s where you are, I’d be glad to talk it through.
Jana
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