In its State of Organizations 2026 report, McKinsey highlights how AI, economic uncertainty, geopolitical fragmentation, evolving employee expectations, and competitive pressures are reshaping the way organizations create value.
For entrepreneurs, CEOs, and C-level executives, this has one clear implication: being fast is no longer enough.
The real competitive advantage in the years ahead will not come from doing more, but from making better choices about what truly deserves attention, energy, and resources.
1. The problem is not a lack of time. It is a lack of clarity.
Many leaders today are not held back by a lack of tools.
They are held back by excess: too much information, too many urgent matters, too many meetings, and too many decisions to make in too little time.
A packed schedule may create the impression of productivity, but it does not guarantee that the company is moving in the right direction.
The right question is not: “How much am I doing?”
The right question is: “Is what I am doing improving the quality of my decisions?”
The connection between leadership quality and business performance is tangible. According to the Organizational Health Index, healthier organizations generate approximately three times the long-term total shareholder returns of less healthy organizations.
The factors that contribute to this strength include leaders’ ability to set priorities, delegate responsibilities, and make clear decisions.
For a leader, therefore, clarity is not an abstract quality. It is a strategic asset.
3. Strategic pauses have become a performance tool.
AI can summarize data, generate scenarios, prepare documents, and automate processes, but it cannot determine what truly matters to a company.
It cannot independently define an ambition, take responsibility for a difficult choice, or determine which decision is consistent with the organization’s culture, its people, and its current circumstances.
As McKinsey emphasizes, deeply human capabilities remain essential in the age of AI: providing direction, understanding context, setting priorities, and taking responsibility for decisions.
AI can generate answers.
The leader must ask the right questions and decide how to use those answers.
3. La pausa strategica è diventata uno strumento di performance.
For years, we associated performance with constant action. Today, part of performance comes from knowing when and how to pause.
Pausing does not mean slowing down.
It means temporarily stepping away from day-to-day operations to gain a clearer view of the decisions shaping the business.
It means asking yourself:
“Am I reacting, or am I choosing?”
“Am I making decisions alone, or am I testing my thinking?”
“Am I using new data within outdated frameworks?”
“What mistake could I avoid by speaking with someone who has already faced it?”
Even managing one’s schedule becomes a strategic choice, aimed at protecting the time required for the activities that only the leader can perform: interpreting the context, addressing trade-offs, setting priorities, and deciding where resources should be focused.
In a world where everything is accelerating, the most effective leader will not necessarily be the one who works the hardest, but the one who creates better space to think, engage with others, and make decisions.
Because the most important decisions rarely improve when they remain confined to one person’s mind.
They need to be challenged through different perspectives, real-world experience, and peers who have no vested interests but have faced similar challenges.
This is the value of a Peer Advisory Board: a confidential, structured environment where entrepreneurs, CEOs, and C-level executives can step away from day-to-day operations, engage with non-competing business leaders, and turn peer dialogue into greater decision-making clarity.
Because the most urgent challenge facing one leader has often already been faced, mishandled, corrected, or overcome by another.
Would you like to join a REX Peer Advisory Board?
Complete the Request for Information form below or contact us at rex.emea@rexcommunity.com.
Log in