2025: The Year That Ignited a $2.9 Trillion Shift in Human Capability

To my friends, colleagues, and every professional shaping the future of work—

What you do every day is the most valuable work happening in business today.

You move billions in value by doing the one thing no AI will ever do: you create the trust that lets people change together.
You turn strategy on slides into results on the bottom line.
You take fear of disruption and turn it into shared purpose.
You are why good ideas don’t die in silos.

2025 just proved it again:

The Compensation Report shows certified BRMs earn over $125K on average, MBRMs around $165K—and the gap keeps widening because organizations now pay a premium for the one capability they can’t automate or outsource: you.

Over 1,900 BRM roles opened in the UK alone this year, with the same surge from Sydney to São Paulo. Companies are investing because mature BRM capability is now the difference between surviving disruption and owning it. As Sebastian Moore noted in his spot-on “mast year” reflection, this isn’t random—it’s a deliberate global boom in roles, alignment, and maturity.

The world is finally waking up to the fact that BRM skills—collaboration, cross-silo influence, and connecting the dots no one else sees—are topping the list of must-haves for the AI era. As Jasbir Kooner points out, it’s this “cross-functional glue” that drives long-term impact amid tech acceleration, making us more critical than ever as the bridge between human ingenuity and machine scale—echoing McKinsey’s November 2025 report, where relational skills like yours outpace technical ones by 3x, unlocking a $2.9 trillion U.S. productivity boom by 2030 through human-AI “skill partnerships.”

Your energy made 2025 unforgettable: the Kansas City BRMConnect delivered breakthroughs that changed portfolios overnight (with 94% calling it the best learning event of their career); the 25-stop World Tour—from Indianapolis to Wellington, Bangalore to Nairobi—drew thousands hungry to connect locally, swap actionable playbooks, and build the single global BRM community face-to-face.

Here’s the truth we all feel but rarely say out loud:

The essence of Business Relationship Management (BRM) has outgrown the old boxes.
It is no longer confined to a single job title, a single team, or a single department.
It has become the operating model for the human side of every organization that actually delivers results.

Every capability builder, every performance accelerator, every leader who refuses to let talent waste away in silos—you’re living this work, whether your badge says “BRM” or not. Business Relationship Management is the universal capability that turns relationships into unlimited organizational energy, available to anyone: from an 18 year old in Brazil to a C-Suite veteran in New York.

AI will take the tickets, the reports, the routine.
It will never take the moment when a skeptical exec looks you in the eye and says, “Fine, I’ll try it your way,” and six months later the portfolio is green for the first time in years.

That moment belongs to you—forever.

So keep going.
Keep pushing.
Keep demanding the budget, the influence, and the respect this work has already earned ten times over.

2026 is coming fast.
AI will keep taking the easy stuff.
We will keep owning the human moments that actually move the needle.

You will never be replaced.
You will only become more valuable.

This is our time.

In relentless admiration and shared fire,
Aaron Barnes