Leading through uncertainty in the age of AI

Your next move: Build AI foundations. Our work with organisations confirms mounting evidence that isolated, tactical AI projects often don’t deliver measurable value. Tangible returns come from enterprise-scale deployment consistent with company business strategy. This, in turn, demands strong AI foundations, including a technology environment that enables AI integration, a clearly defined road map for AI initiatives, formalised Responsible AI and risk processes, and an organisational culture that enables AI adoption.

Data from this year’s survey shows that companies in the vanguard—the one in eight achieving both additional revenues and lower costs from AI—are furthest ahead in building these foundations. They’re also applying AI more extensively across different areas of the business. For example, 44% of those in the vanguard have applied AI to their products, services, and experiences, compared to only 17% for other companies. (Throughout this report, our analysis is adjusted for sector, company size, geography, and other extraneous factors.)

Your next move: Reinvent to outperform. Data from this year’s survey shows a strong association among a higher percentage of revenue coming from new sectors, bigger profit margins, and greater CEO confidence in company growth prospects. In other words, playing an active role in industry reconfiguration is paying off. Companies that want to seize the moment should look inwards at their own capabilities as well as outwards for opportunities. When it comes to deal-making, for example, PwC research has found that acquisitions are more likely to add value if the focus is on acquiring complementary capabilities, as opposed to strengthening market power or acquiring customers.

Beyond smart deal-making, playing across sector boundaries requires collaborating at scale with new ecosystem partners, which is a skill many companies need to hone. Collaboration at scale may also require investment in core systems. Consider the example of an industrial manufacturer we know that has embarked on a major upgrade of its data environment and systems to enable interoperation with new value chain partners across the mobility ecosystem.

Your next move: Follow capital flows. Our survey paints a picture of globalisation in transition—not in retreat. Although this view is incomplete (our data doesn’t capture the scale of planned company investments or speak to long-term capital deployment by banks and other financial institutions), it underscores how new value pools are emerging as the global economy reconfigures. We recommend that companies consider tracking global investment flows as a core consideration of their strategic planning process, if they don’t already do so. CEOs should also look at the big picture of their own cross-border activities to spot opportunities they may be missing.

Your next move: Calibrate your concerns. Uncertainty is always present. The question facing CEOs is how to avoid becoming frozen in a world where dynamism pays. Data from this year’s survey shows that companies planning to make major acquisitions and other large investments—despite the uncertain environment—are growing faster and enjoying higher profit margins.

A second key question facing leaders is whether their perceptions and plans are based on current and relevant intelligence. As we’ve found in previous editions of PwC’s Global CEO Survey, it can be striking how threat perceptions can vary greatly even among countries in close proximity. For example, more than a third (34%) of CEOs in Germany say their company is highly or extremely exposed to cyber risks in the year ahead. That figure compares to only 16% among UK CEOs, even though companies there continue to experience regular, high-profile cyberattacks. Moving into 2026, CEOs everywhere should take the opportunity to revisit their assumptions and calibrate with peers across borders.

Your next move: Build innovation capability. CEOs need to guard against what management writer Steve Blank calls innovation theatre—activities that resemble innovation but produce no tangible value. The practices we asked about in this year’s survey aren’t a foolproof recipe for innovation success. But they’re a good starting point for frank discussions among CEOs, their top teams, and boards about whether innovation is more than a rhetorical priority. This year’s survey data shows that companies employing a critical mass of innovation practices are achieving not only a higher percentage of sales from new products and services (as you might expect) but also faster overall revenue growth and higher profit margins. 

Your next move: Integrate climate change into decision-making. A byproduct of new sustainability reporting requirements is the expanded stores of sustainability data now available to many companies that can be fed into decision-making processes. With better data at hand, these companies have an opportunity to move from a risk management mindset to active value creation. While every company has a unique set of sustainability factors that influence its ability to create value, our experience working with organisations points to five interconnected topics that drive value creation for most: physical climate risk, regulation, energy strategy, supply chains, and tax credits and incentives.

In addition, our survey data shows companies with defined processes for bringing climate-related risks and opportunities into decisions are faster to market and more agile when it comes to adapting to changing demand or supply conditions, whether these changes are caused by climate events or other factors.

Your next move: Make trust a boardroom topic. Although it’s impossible to fully inoculate a company against losses of stakeholder trust, many CEOs could do more to anticipate and proactively address potential areas of vulnerability. As our analysis demonstrates, trust isn’t an intangible soft topic. Value is at stake. This means trust should be prioritised as a boardroom topic and considered across three interlocking dimensions: operational trust (built on efficient, resilient operations), accountability trust (resting on high-quality reporting and communications), and digital trust (based on systems and processes that protect sensitive data, maintain secure operations, and enable organisations to use digital tools responsibly and ethically).

As this implies, companies can build and preserve stakeholder trust through deliberate investments in data, processes, and controls. To take one digital trust example, PwC research shows that robust Responsible AI programmes build trust and create value by reducing the frequency of adverse AI-related incidents and helping companies recover faster if such an event occurs.

Your next move: Reinvent your calendar. It’s impossible to generalise about the ideal allocation of CEO time across horizons. In crisis situations, for example, leaders may need to devote their full attention to the here and now. But many (perhaps most) CEOs we know struggle with “the tyranny of the urgent” that leads them to spend too much time looking through their proverbial microscope when they know they should be focusing more attention on the long-term viability of the business.

Indeed, counterintuitively, CEOs who say the company’s mid- to long-term viability is one of the most pressing questions they face also say they spend more time than others on activities associated with time horizons of less than a year. If these leaders are serious about reinvention, they may need to reinvent how they invest their time.