C-Suite Priorities for 2026: From AI Experiments to Enterprise Execution

Workforce, Culture, and AI: 5 Non-Negotiables for C-Suite Leaders Heading into 2026

As 2025 winds down, a cluster of heavyweight reports on people, strategy, and technology is sending a clear message to C-Suite leaders:

the gap between aspiration and execution is widening.

Recent research from Deloitte, McKinsey, MIT, the Talent Strategy Group, and others points to the same fault lines: AI investments that are not delivering value, workforce plans that cannot keep up with uncertainty, leadership pipelines that are underpowered, and cultures that struggle to convert “transformation” rhetoric into behavior change. 

For C-Suite and executive leadership teams, these findings translate into a sharpened agenda for 2026. Here’s what the latest evidence says—and what it means for your strategy, culture, and talent priorities.

Workforce planning is moving from headcount to “many futures”

Deloitte’s recent report, “Reinventing workforce planning for an AI-powered, uncertain world,” argues that traditional workforce planning—annual, HR-owned, and spreadsheet-driven—is no longer fit for purpose. Instead, leading organizations are treating workforce planning as a core strategic capability and a differentiator. 

A few key shifts stand out:

• From static plans to scenario portfolios. Rather than a single demand forecast, high-performing organizations are planning for multiple futures, linking talent scenarios directly to strategic bets and macro-uncertainty.

• From HR project to C-Suite discipline. The report emphasizes that effective workforce planning is cross-functional: finance, strategy, operations, CHRO, and business unit leaders are in the room, treating workforce as seriously as capital allocation. 

• From jobs to skills and capabilities. The focus is moving from simply filling roles to understanding critical skills, where they sit today, how fast they are becoming obsolete, and how to redeploy or reskill at speed.

In parallel, other Deloitte workforce-planning pieces highlight six workforce strategies for planning in an unpredictable environment—ranging from building dynamic skills taxonomies to democratizing workforce data for line leaders. 

Implication for the C-Suite in 2026:

Workforce planning can’t be delegated. C-Suite leaders need a single, integrated view of demand, supply, and skills risk, reviewed as routinely as financial forecasts. That includes:

• A board-level conversation about where human capability is the true constraint on growth.

• Explicit choices on where you’ll build, buy, borrow, or automate capabilities.

• Clear accountability between CFO, CHRO, and line leaders for closing skills gaps over a 12–24 month horizon.

AI is everywhere—value is not

Two major 2025 reports—McKinsey’s “The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation” and MIT’s “The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025”—paint a sobering picture for executive leadership.

McKinsey finds that almost all organizations now use AI in at least one function, and the majority use it in multiple areas. AI agents—systems that can plan and execute multi-step workflows—are gaining traction, with about 23% of respondents scaling at least one agentic AI system somewhere in their enterprise. Yet, only around one-third of organizations report that AI programs are scaled across the business, and enterprise-wide value remains patchy. 

MIT’s research is even more blunt. The “GenAI Divide” study concludes that roughly 95% of generative AI pilots fail to deliver measurable business impact, despite tens of billions of dollars in enterprise spend. The core issues aren’t algorithms or infrastructure—they’re integration, change management, and lack of learning loops that connect AI experiments to real workflows and P&L outcomes. 

Together, these reports suggest three crucial shifts for C-suite leadership:

1. From experimentation to transformation. The executive conversation must move from “How many pilots do we have?” to “Where is AI materially changing margin, growth, risk, or customer experience?”

2. From tech-led to business-owned AI. Successful organizations put business leaders—not only CIO/CTO—at the center of AI value cases, with clear owners for outcomes, not just tools.

3. From isolated use cases to redesigned operating models. The organizations in the top AI performance cohort treat AI as a catalyst to redesign processes, roles, and decision rights, not as a bolt-on productivity feature. 

Implication for the C-Suite in 2026:

Executive teams should treat AI as a strategy and operating-model agenda, not a technology project. That means:

• Setting hard value targets (e.g., % of EBIT or revenue growth attributable to AI initiatives).

• Establishing a cross-functional AI steering group chaired by a business leader.

• Defining where AI will augment leadership, decision-making, and customer experience—and where it won’t.
  

High-potential talent management is widespread—but under-powered

The 2025 Potential Report from the Talent Strategy Group is one of the largest studies to date on how organizations identify and manage high-potential leaders, based on input from more than 300 companies worldwide. 

The headline: most organizations now run some form of potential assessment, but the quality and impact of those practices vary dramatically.

Key findings include:

• Near-universal adoption, uneven maturity. Most surveyed companies assess leadership potential; those that don’t typically plan to start. But many still rely on traditional tools (simple grids, subjective ratings) with limited investment in assessor capability. 

• Limited communication and transparency. Organizations often avoid clear communication with “high-potential” and “non-high-potential” employees, limiting the motivational impact and leaving career paths opaque.

• Weak link to development and deployment. In many cases, potential assessments are not strongly tied to targeted development experiences, stretch roles, or succession plans.

For C-Suite leaders, the risk is straightforward: you may have the form of a leadership pipeline process without the substance needed to support your growth strategy.

Implication for the C-suite in 2026:

Executive leaders should ask harder questions about their talent systems:

• Are our “high-potential” definitions and criteria clearly linked to our future strategy, not yesterday’s success profile?

• Do our most promising leaders actually get differentiated experiences, exposure, and investment?

• Is there a clear, board-visible view of succession readiness for mission-critical roles?

HR, culture, and engagement are now hard business levers—not “soft” issues

A different lens comes from Quantum Workplace’s 2025 HR Trends Report, which outlines seven “people strategies” that will either drive or derail business growth. The report highlights three lenses: business impact, HR readiness, and HR’s decision-making power in the organization. 

Among the trends:

• HR tech must earn its place. Organizations are flooded with tools, but the report stresses that HR technology must be judged on its ability to move real business metrics—not just produce dashboards.

• Transformation depends on employee belief. Strategy and change programs only stick when employees believe in the direction and in leadership credibility—an increasingly scarce asset after years of disruption. 

• Influence and storytelling matter. HR and people leaders must sharpen their influence, connecting culture and engagement initiatives directly to business outcomes.

Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends echoes this, framing the central executive challenge as balancing deep tensions: control vs. empowerment, stability vs. agility, and automation vs. augmentation. The most successful leaders, the research suggests, are those who can turn these tensions into productive energy, not pick one side of the trade-off. 

Implication for the C-Suite in 2026:

Culture, engagement, and leadership behavior should sit on the main dashboard, not in the appendix. That includes:

• Treating trust, belief, and psychological safety as measurable performance enablers.

• Expecting your CHRO to bring data-backed narratives that link people metrics to revenue, margin, innovation, and risk.

• Ensuring that HR, finance, and strategy are aligned on where people investments will create the most enterprise value.

The 2026 agenda: Five priorities for C-Suite and executive leadership

Synthesizing these reports, five C-Suite priorities for 2026 come into focus:

1. Install a “many-futures” workforce planning discipline.

   Treat workforce and skills planning as a standing C-Suite process. Align it tightly with strategy, capital allocation, and your AI roadmap.

2. Shift AI from pilots to P&L.

   Set explicit financial and operational targets for AI. Reduce the number of pilots; increase the number of end-to-end, scaled solutions owned by business leaders, with clear accountabilities.

3. Upgrade your leadership pipeline for the AI-enabled enterprise.

   Revisit your definition of “high potential” through the lens of 2026 and beyond: adaptability, learning agility, digital and AI fluency, ethical judgment, and the ability to lead across ecosystems.

4. Make culture and belief part of your core performance system.

   Measure employee belief in strategy and leadership, and treat declines as seriously as you would a drop in NPS or margin. Ensure your executive leadership behaviors are aligned with the culture you say you want.

5. Strengthen the C-Suite “people spine”.

   Elevate the partnership between CEO, CHRO, CFO, and CTO/CIO. The organizations that thrive in 2026 will be those where technology, talent, and strategy are designed together, not in silos.

For C-Suite leaders, the message from 2025’s research is clear: the fundamentals haven’t changed, but the stakes have. Strategy, culture, and talent are still your levers—but without disciplined workforce planning, integrated AI execution, and a robust leadership pipeline, those levers won’t move the organization far enough or fast enough.

Now is the moment to turn insight into action—and to make sure your executive leadership team enters 2026 aligned on where value will really be created.

Sources and further reading

• Deloitte Insights – Reinventing workforce planning for an AI-powered, uncertain world (Oct 28, 2025) 

• Deloitte Insights – Six workforce strategies to plan for a future you can’t predict and related workforce planning content (Nov 3, 2025) 

• McKinsey / QuantumBlack – The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation (Nov 5, 2025) 

• MIT Project NANDA – The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 (July 2025, widely reported Aug–Oct 2025) 

• Talent Strategy Group – 2025 Potential Report (Aug 13, 2025) 

• Quantum Workplace – 2025 HR Trends Report: 7 people strategies that will drive (or derail) business growth 

• Deloitte – 2025 Global Human Capital Trends: Turning tensions into triumphs 

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