What 100 CXOs wish they could say about their organisations

See the world as it is, not as you planned it  

Strategic sensitivity is the ability to perceive and interpret complex situations as they unfold – sensing and making sense in real time. It means paying intense attention to the outside world rather than relying on plans and forecasts. It requires real-time information from many sources, alertness to the unexpected, and the discipline to believe what we see, not see what we believe. 

AI dramatically expands how much intelligence organisations can absorb, but interpretation matters as much as information. To embrace this dimension fully, organisations need to be good at both sensing in the frontline and sensemaking on the back of inputs. Sensemaking requires wide-lens thinking, open dialogue, and a strategy process that reaches beyond the CEO and inner circle. 

Key accelerators: 

• Expand your external sensing: Use AI to continuously monitor signals across the competitive landscape. Combine this always-on capability with executives actively being in conversation with a broad range of external stakeholders.  

• Democratise strategic intelligence: Make intelligence accessible throughout the organisation, not just at the top, and invest in building strategic choice making capability at all levels of the organisation.

• Foster courageous conversations: Enable cross-functional sense-making conversations about weak signals that invite diverse perspectives, dissent, and sharing of first-hand human experiences.  

Case example: A client organisation wanted to accelerate strategy execution by sharing strategic information more broadly. Rather than sending around a PowerPoint deck, they developed an AI-powered chat interface, which allowed people to not only search for, but also interact with the strategy. This effectively enabled strategy-aligned decision-making across the organisation.

Free resources to move to where they matter 

Resource fluidity is the capacity to rapidly reconfigure business systems and redeploy assets (e.g., funding, talent, knowledge). In many organisations, moving substantial resources across functions or regions is cumbersome and slow due to budget processes, conflicting agendas, and KPIs. Lean cultures are optimised for full utilisation and leave no room for reserves, but unallocated resources are the simplest way to preserve strategic agility. Slack is not a sign of inefficiency; it is a strategic buffer. 

Hence, resource allocation should be an ongoing process. Yet, in most companies, allocation patterns repeat year after year, reflecting internal power dynamics more than strategic priorities. Beyond budgeting flexibility, resources must actually move. Common management disciplines, shared operating systems, and consistent people practices reduce the friction that keeps resources stuck. 

Key accelerators: 

• Create resource expansiveness: Build slack into budgets and reallocate continuously as conditions change. Use AI to identify where resources are creating value versus trapped in legacy commitments – and deploy agentic AI to expand the resource pool itself. 
• Build plug-and-play processes: Have common processes, systems, and ways of working across the organisation to make mobility easier. Ensure people feel cared for when transferring between units. 
• Organise in a multidimensional structure: Replace the pyramid with a spiderweb – a structure where authority shifts to wherever the strategic priority demands it, and matrix relationships are the norm rather than the exception. 

Case example: A client organisation wanted to create more freedom and flexibility for exploration into new areas. They introduced low-cost slack resources into the system by training cadres of specialised AI agents – ready to be mobilised as opportunity (and curiosity) strikes. Thoughtfulness is, of course, always required when evaluating when to leverage agentic AI versus humans, weighing both the nature of the work and corporate responsibility.

Stop chasing consensus and start building commitment  

Leadership unity is the top team's ability to make bold, fast decisions together without being paralysed by politics or consensus-seeking. Some decisions are painful – e.g., exiting a core business or reallocating resources away from what made the company successful. They require a team that can disagree openly, then commit fully. Unity depends on psychological safety and interdependency – conditions where leaders contribute freely without constantly proving themselves. Shared purpose can act as an important tiebreaker in hard decisions and a compass beyond the C-suite. 

Key accelerators: 

• Real conversation over reporting: Use meeting time for enterprise-wide strategic dialogue, not business unit updates. AI can surface assumptions, synthesise perspectives, and highlight tensions. 
• Build personal trust and shared purpose: Invest in building relational ties between executives, allowing them to get to know each other’s values, motives, and concerns. Trust is the foundation for genuine collective decision-making and commitment. 
• Align incentives: Design rewards and performance criteria that balance collective success with individual accountability.

Case example: One senior leadership team in a large global energy company was preparing for a major transformation and invested deliberately in optimising their team dynamics. They gathered for two leadership offsites of 2-3 days time and focused on building trust and psychological safety through assessment insights, shared experiences and real courageous conversations. Their collaboration strengthened and became the foundation for leading the transformation as a unified team.