Current studies
What we’re asking the field right now, and what we’ve just found.
Ready or Not, a national study of how organizations are training their people for AI, is now fielding — five minutes, anonymous by design, every level of AI maturity welcome. And the findings from The Currency of Credentials are published: the full report is available now.
Ready or Not
A national study of how organizations are — and aren’t — training their people for AI. Every sector, every size, every level of AI maturity. Including none.
Most organizations now have AI tools. Far fewer have a defined approach to training their people to use them, and the gap between the two is where wasted spend, unmanaged risk, and quiet frustration accumulate. No existing benchmark measures the training architecture itself. This study does.
A named purpose?
Whether the organization has named the specific problems AI is meant to address — or tools arrived ahead of any defined purpose.
Policy meets practice
Whether AI use runs through written guidance and approved workflows — or happens outside them.
Built from the real work
Where training exists, whether it draws on the organization’s own work and knowledge — or arrives as generic, off-the-shelf content.
What people actually use
Whether strategy produced playbooks, workflows, and training — or stalled at plans and pilots that never spread.
The four domains come from the C.A.L.M. AI Navigator™ framework. Any leader at a U.S.-based organization is eligible — executive, learning & development, HR, operations, or equivalent — and every situation is wanted, from a formal AI training program to having deliberately chosen not to adopt AI at all. More than one leader from the same organization is welcome.
The questionnaire takes about five minutes, with four optional open-ended questions at the end. It collects no names, email addresses, or organization names, and report requests are handled in a separate system with no connection to responses. Participants who opt in receive the full national benchmark before public release.
The Currency of Credentials
A national study of quality, relevance, and emerging practice in online certification programs — a two-sided, cross-sector look at how these programs actually perform, from the organizations that build them and the people who earn them.
By one 2025 national count, more than 1.8 million credentials circulate across 134,000+ providers: certifications, certificates, microcredentials, badges, and internal programs, often indistinguishable from the outside. Quality is largely self-reported and cross-program benchmarks are scarce. This study asked both sides the same questions and compared the answers.
How programs are built
How organizations design, deliver, assess, and govern their credential programs — and what they believe makes them work.
How they’re experienced
How the people who earn credentials experienced the preparation, the assessment, and the real-world value of what they earned.
Where the two diverge
Where provider intent and learner experience align — and where they pull apart. That divergence is the study’s primary contribution.
What it measured
Four domains, asked of both sides.
Does it match the work?
Whether the credential reflects what the field actually needs — and whether the market recognizes it.
Competence or completion?
Whether the program measures demonstrated competence or simply documents finishing — the distinction the market keeps blurring.
Governed or improvised?
How providers govern AI in content and assessment — and how learners used it to prepare.
What it’s worth
What the credential does for the organization that issues it and the person who earns it.
Participation was voluntary and confidential. Responses are reported in aggregate only; no person or organization is identified without explicit permission.
A commissioned study with Facti Machina.
In the first quarter of 2027 we field a study commissioned by Facti Machina, a financial research systems firm. Commissioned work is scoped with the client and owned by them, which makes it a different animal from the studies we initiate and publish ourselves — the distinction is set out in how we research.
Scope, participant criteria, and publication terms will be posted here as they are settled.
Who it’s for
Built for the people who have to decide.
The findings are written for the people holding the decision, not for an academic audience — short enough to read, specific enough to act on, and honest about what the data does and doesn’t support.
Two ways in
Read one study. Shape the next.
The findings from The Currency of Credentials are available now. Ready or Not is fielding — five minutes, anonymous, and participants who opt in receive the national benchmark before anyone else.
Want this run on your own program? A matched study can be commissioned directly — see research engagements, or how we research.