As 2025 draws to a close, one question echoes across boardrooms and government offices alike: what should we do next year? What strategy should we follow? What bets should we place? And how do we win in a world that feels increasingly unstable, accelerated and uncertain?
For many leaders, this has been the year of everything AI. Artificial intelligence moved from the periphery to the centre of decision-making, quietly rewiring how work gets done across business and government. White-collar productivity jumped by an estimated 20 to 40 per cent in roles that adopted AI properly, not because people worked harder, but because routine thinking disappeared.
Tasks that once took days now take minutes. Strategy decks that previously required weeks of analyst time can now be outlined in an afternoon. Financial models that took teams days to build can be stress-tested in hours. In many functions, one person can now do the work of a small team. Hiring slowed across large organisations in 2025, yet output did not, because AI absorbed incremental work.
However, for all this progress, leaders feel less certain than before as strategy itself is changing.
The frameworks that guided leaders for decades were built for a world where information was scarce, slow and unevenly distributed. That world no longer exists. Today, leaders operate in an environment of radical abundance: of data, analysis, scenarios and options, arriving faster than organisations can process them.
At its simplest, strategy has always been about two enduring questions: where to play and how to win. It is about building a competitive edge, a moat that allows an organisation, a government or a nation to outperform others over time.
For most of history, strategy was inseparable from knowledge. Ever since Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War around 2,500 years ago, it revolved around knowing the terrain, understanding the adversary and anticipating intent. Those who knew more, earlier and better were more likely to prevail. Entire industries emerged to help leaders close information gaps and reduce uncertainty.
That constraint has now vanished as AI democratises access to information, analysis and even strategic frameworks. Market intelligence, legal drafts, financial reasoning and competitor analysis are no longer elite capabilities. Simply put, knowing more today is cheaper than ever, and will get cheaper and more available by the day.
This has created a paradox. Strategy is becoming harder, not easier. The challenge leaders face today is no longer a lack of data or knowledge. It is an excess of both, without synthesis. According to a recent global survey of chief executives by PwC, a consulting firm, more than 70 per cent of them believe AI will significantly change how their organisation creates value over the next three years, yet fewer than half express confidence in their long-term strategic direction.
More information does not seem to have produced more clarity, and the reason is structural. When everyone has access to similar insights, advantage shifts away from analysis and towards judgment. Strategy has never been about information alone. At its core, it is about choice: what to focus on, what to ignore, what to pursue now, what to defer and, critically, what not to do. In an AI-saturated environment, making those choices has become more demanding.
This is happening as the external environment grows more volatile. As we move into 2026, leaders face a convergence of structural shifts: a rebalancing of global economic power, persistent geopolitical fragmentation, accelerating technological change and rapidly evolving consumer behaviour, particularly among Gen Z. Loyalty is thinner. Trust is conditional. Purpose and authenticity matter more than legacy. In this context, traditional playbooks built on linear planning, static roadmaps and incremental optimisation are increasingly misaligned with reality.
The irony is clear. As machines become better at managing information and execution, the premium on human capabilities is rising. Insight, intuition, judgment, creativity and sense-making are becoming the true sources of strategic value.
Insight is recognising what matters when everything is visible. Intuition is deciding when data points in multiple directions. Judgment is knowing when to trust the model and when to override it. These are not soft skills. They are hard strategic assets, and they cannot be automated.
As 2026 approaches, rethinking strategy is no longer optional. The question leaders must confront is not whether they have enough data, knowledge, or analysis firepower, but whether they still have the capacity to decide, fast, act decisively, with agility, and know when to move fast, or quit. The age of AI needs more speed, less haste.
This is the great paradox of our time as we enter 2026: the more intelligent our machines become, the more human strategy must be. In the years ahead, advantage will belong not to those who know the most, but to those who can choose wisely and act decisively.
