“You’ll hear people frequently say, ‘Hey, you have to have a five-year plan, like, chart out what the next five years of your life are going to look like, and then follow that path and follow that plan,” Ryan Roslansky said during a recent No One Knows What They’re Doing podcast episode. 

“And in reality, when you know technology and the labor market and everything is moving beneath you, I think having a five-year plan is a little bit foolish,” the LinkedIn CEO continued. 

Being the chief executive of one of the most popular career-focused social media and job-search platforms since 2020, Roslansky has witnessed countless career paths from users—especially in a tumultuous job market challenged by the pandemic, different administrations, layoffs, tariffs, inflation, and more. 

But one of the most recent and prominent transformations to the job market is the introduction of AI. Because technology is changing the workplace at such a rapid pace, Roslansky suggested professionals make shorter-term career goals instead of focusing on years down the road. Data from the World Economic Forum supports Roslansky’s argument the workplace is changing rapidly—and therefore people need to stay more agile about mapping their careers. Workers can expect roughly 39% of their core skills to be transformed or become obsolete by 2030, according to WEF. 

“I would much recommend people focus on maybe the next few months and a couple of things that aren’t a plan, but [rather] what do you want to learn? What type of experiences do you want to get? That’s, I think, the right mental model in this environment,” he said. 

Other career experts still subscribe to the necessity of a five-year plan, arguing “career growth doesn’t just happen by accident,” and more intensive planning helps people actually reach their goals. 

“Five-year plans also give you the flexibility to change what’s no longer relevant to your long-term goals, without derailing your progress,” talent management executive Mary McNevin told Arielle Executive. “This way, you’re always working toward what you truly want to achieve.”

But Roslansky is so dedicated to this idea he hosts his own podcast called The Path, which is focused on how professionals take on a variety of career paths that aren’t necessarily linear. 

“A lot of people just believe that there’s some linear career path that you jump on,” he said. “You know, you graduate high school and then go to a certain college and then you become a consultant and then get an MBA. People believe that’s how it happens.”

Armed with insights and data from his own company, Roslansky knows a linear education and career is not the reality for most people. In fact, a recent report from vocational and education provider TAFE Gippsland shows people, on average, go through three-to-seven career changes throughout their lifetime—and 16 job changes. 

And this trend is especially evident in Gen Z, who changes jobs, on average, every 1.1 years, according to a recent report by recruiting firm Randstad. The firm calls this “growth-hunting,” and not “job-hopping,” though, because Gen Z says they change jobs because they sense a lack of progression in their current roles.

“If you focus on those shorter steps, gaining learning, gaining experience, a lot of your career path will open up for you,” he said. “And the sooner you realize that, you can take your own career into your own hands. No one is trying to figure this out for you.”

The numbers reflect this pain, with 40% of organizations either replacing or re-implementing their IT service tools in 2025. This is a clear sign that the model is cracking and needs to be reimagined. Meanwhile, 58% of organizations say their IT team spends more than five hours each week fulfilling repetitive requests. Something has to give.

Today’s businesses are agile. Customers expect instant fixes, and artificial intelligence (AI) is redefining how work gets done. The problem? Many IT processes haven’t kept up. They’re still burdened by manual, outdated workflows that slow everyone down, with a recent report citing that 45% of organizations consider repetitive tasks as their top IT service challenge in 2025. To stay relevant, IT must evolve from a back-office function into a strategic driver of business growth.

Here are the three biggest challenges holding IT service back and how forward-thinking teams can help solve them:

1. The manual workload trap

For most IT teams, the day begins and ends with manual tasks: logging incidents, assigning tickets, documenting fixes, and updating records. These repetitive processes drain time and productivity. In fact, 90% of IT leaders say manual, repetitive work contributes to low employee morale.

The impact runs deep. Skilled analysts are pulled away from strategic work. Projects stall. Employee burnout rises. And IT ends up perceived as a cost center, not an enabler.

The fix starts with automation, but not just rule-based automation. The next generation of IT service is built on intelligence, context-aware systems that can actually understand what someone needs. For example, when an employee messages IT about a problem, the system can pick up the key details, create a ticket, and send it to the right person automatically. Instead of humans chasing data, the system does it for them.

This shift doesn’t replace people; it refocuses them. Analysts can now spend time on important work like diagnosing complex issues or improving processes, not copy-pasting tickets.

2. The employee experience gap

The modern workplace runs on collaboration platforms like Slack and Teams. Yet most IT service tools still live outside of where people actually work. Employees have to leave their workflow, open a portal, fill out forms, and wait. Often, they do this without any visibility into what happens next.

The result? Low engagement. In many companies, a large number of IT issues go unreported because the process feels too painful. In fact, 62% of employees say they avoid their service desk altogether, and 58% admit they’re living with ongoing problems that IT hasn’t been able to fix, according to a recent survey.

IT analysts feel this friction, too. The conversations that matter (troubleshooting, context gathering, updates) happen in chat threads, while the official records live in a different system. That constant switching between tabs slows everything down.

Modern IT leaders are closing this gap by bringing IT service into the collaboration layer. When employees can request help and track issues directly in the places where they collaborate and work, like Slack or Teams, context stays intact and work keeps moving. With AI agents now built into these platforms, they can simply ask for what they need in natural language, just like chatting with a colleague or a ChatGPT-style interface. The result: IT becomes an active part of daily work, not a separate system to avoid.

It’s a cultural shift as much as a technical one, aligning IT with how employees actually communicate. And it pays off: 71% IT leaders believe that AI or intelligent automation will improve employee and customer satisfaction in IT service.

3. Rigid processes in a dynamic world

If there’s one phrase that frustrates every IT leader, it’s this: “This is just how the system works.”

Traditional IT service frameworks often lock teams into fixed workflows. Need to adjust an approval process for a new compliance rule? Add a custom step for a high-priority change type? Often, it takes weeks of development or costly consultants to make even minor updates.

The irony is that IT service, meant to bring flexibility to operations, has become one of the least agile systems in the enterprise stack.

What’s changing now is the rise of low-code and adaptive workflows. Platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and other modern ITSM tools let teams design and modify processes without deep coding expertise. Instead of rigid, hard-coded systems, IT can define dynamic lifecycles where each stage has its own rules, tasks, and access controls. Approvals can adapt automatically based on risk or impact. And integrated analytics help teams see what’s working and where bottlenecks form.

Rethinking IT service for what’s next

The IT service of the future won’t just manage incidents and changes. It will orchestrate intelligent workflows across the enterprise. Employees will interact with IT the same way they use any modern app — conversationally, contextually, and instantly. IT teams will focus less on maintaining systems and more on improving outcomes.

We’re already seeing the blueprint: automation reducing manual load, Slack-first collaboration improving experiences, and flexible frameworks enabling adaptation. Together, these shifts are redefining what IT service can be, turning it from a support function into a strategic partner for every department.

The challenge isn’t technology anymore. It’s the mindset. Modern IT service isn’t about keeping the lights on. It’s about lighting the way forward.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

“North Korea’s sophistication and efficacy in laundering the proceeds from these incidents is continuing to improve,” said Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis. “The industry needs to continue ensuring that they have better security controls.”

The report was released at a time when investing in crypto has become mainstream. More people own crypto, and because crypto transactions are irreversible, individuals and exchanges are increasingly becoming targets. 

Chainalysis is a private analytics firm that aims to create transparency about the blockchain. It helps government agencies seize and disrupt illicit activity, and helps private crypto companies with compliance. The company has released the report annually since 2019. 

North Korea broke its own record of yearly money stolen in crypto, and it did so in creative ways. The country had its own citizens work as IT employees at crypto companies, where they used AI to pretend they were working from another country, like the U.S. These employees then gained access to privileged information and caused large-scale breaches. North Koreans also used a method called social engineering, where they sent emails and text messages to people with crypto. If those individuals clicked on the wrong link, the hacker could access their private wallets. 

The biggest crypto hack in history occurred in February, when Bybit, one of the largest crypto exchanges, lost $1.4 billion. The Federal Bureau of Investigation quickly declared North Korea responsible for the theft. That attack accounted for roughly 40% of the total amount of crypto heists this year. Chainalysis found that large-scale attacks dominated in 2025, as more than two thirds of stolen funds came from just three hacks. 

The report also highlights the rise of personal wallet compromises. There were 158,000 such incidents in 2025, roughly tripling since 2022. This includes high-profile physical attacks on crypto owners, often known as wrench attacks. Earlier this year, kidnappers severed the finger of the cofounder of a Paris-based crypto wallet firm, demanding a ransom. 

“If you’re online, talking about your success in crypto investments, I’d recommend not doing that,” Fierman said. “It points to you potentially having a hardware wallet and creates a physical target for you as an individual.”