The Executive September Reset: Priorities for Leaders and Businesses in H2 2026

4 minute read.

For senior leaders, September has always functioned as a kind of second January when the pace of business returns, priorities sharpen and the final stretch of the year comes into view. Here we consider two consequential questions executives should be asking right now: what do I need to further strengthen my leadership and, what does my organisation need to do differently to deliver the strategy?

Read the summary below or download the free full report here.

The first half of 2026 has provided plenty of evidence. AI has moved rapidly from experimentation towards production. Geopolitical uncertainty is becoming an operating condition rather than an exceptional disruption. Boards are demanding greater evidence of transformation and execution. And for executives considering their next career move, the leadership market is becoming more selective about the experience it values.

For executives considering transition: how to prepare for a more selective leadership market

In 2026, the traditional September reset matters for executives considering a transition more than ever because the leadership market has changed immeasurably in a matter of months.

The UK labour market remains subdued. Vacancies fell to around 707,000 in the three months to July, their lowest level outside the pandemic period since 2014.

For an executive considering a transition, this is not a market to sit out until conditions improve. The opportunity is to become much clearer about the problem a board would hire you to solve.

The first H1 trend to consider is executive hiring becoming more selective, not simply tighter.

Boards continue to use external appointments but are increasingly discriminating about the experience they buy. External CFO hiring hit a global high for the first quarter of 2026, at 47% of appointments, and boards recruiting externally are increasingly choosing candidates who have already held the title elsewhere: 42% of newly appointed CFOs in Q1 2026 had prior public-company CFO experience against a historical average of 35%.

“Experienced commercial leader” is no longer a compelling proposition. “I have led two international restructurings, rebuilt an underperforming operating model and taken a business through an acquisition” is much more useful to a board facing one of those situations.

The second lesson is that when boards do go outside, they are increasingly paying for directly relevant experience rather than for outside perspective alone. Anyone preparing for a leadership transition should therefore define their market by the business problems they can credibly solve, rather than by their current or previous job title.

Resetting Business Strategies

Aside from the geopolitical and wider economic concerns which we examine in our regular quarterly executive outlooks, arguably the biggest developments over H1 2026, which should now be snapping into focus and into action across all sectors, were:

• The shift of AI, and especially agentic AI, from pilot to production
• Leadership capability and change-readiness as the real transformation bottleneck

By mid-2026, leading organisations are building towards having agentic AI systems running in full production and making or directly influencing operational decisions across supply chains, HR processes and strategic planning.

The key strategic question has now moved on to whether organisations have the governance, oversight and accountability structures to manage what is already running.

External auditors reviewing AI systems have repeatedly found meaningful gaps between what boards believe is running and what actually is, with evidence that a portion of deployed systems may not be formally registered, owned or governed at all.

Almost three-quarters of boards have only moderate or limited AI expertise, according to KPMG’s Global AI Pulse Survey. So, the first priority of the autumn board cycle should therefore be a detailed audit of what AI is running in the organisation across every function, who owns the governance of each system, and what the oversight framework looks like.

Leadership capability is becoming the transformation bottleneck

The next question is more fundamental: does the organisation have the leadership capability and change-readiness to turn these technologies and strategic ambitions into results?

Any company can buy the tech, but transformation programmes will only deliver value with leaders who can translate strategic intent into organisational action.

That requires a different kind of leadership capability: the ability to make difficult decisions with incomplete information, redesign operating models, and maintain accountability when the organisation is under pressure. That makes change-readiness a strategic capability, not an HR initiative.

Boards and executive teams should therefore be asking: do we have the leadership capability required to deliver the strategy we have approved? The organisations that answer these questions honestly will be better placed to convert AI investment, operating-model change and strategic ambition into measurable outcomes. Those that do not risk accumulating transformation programmes without transformation.

Read the download to see what leadership capabilities will matter most in H2 2026.

3-minute read

Amid tumultuous geopolitical issues, fluctuating energy prices, inflation worries and AI disruption causing a human workforce crisis, the UK is facing more upheaval and uncertainty with its seventh Prime Minister in a decade. What does it all mean for executives seeking transition, progression or just trying to stay ahead of the ever-changing landscape?

This quarter’s Rialto Executive Outlook examines what the economic trends and data really mean – and how senior leadership can best respond and prepare.

Redundancies are rising, visible vacancies sit at a five-year low and Andy Burnham’s arrival as Prime Minister has added political uncertainty to an already complex landscape. Yet Q3 hiring intentions are the strongest in two years. The UK’s Net Employment Outlook of 37 (ManpowerGroup) places it fourth in the world. The contradiction is the story: organisations are eliminating roles AI can automate while urgently seeking executives who can lead that transformation. Structural change is sharpest at the top.

Where the market is moving

Growth is real but concentrated. Defence, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare technology and green energy are generating the strongest executive demand. Technology and Information leads sector hiring intentions at NEO 46. The fastest-growing titles are Chief AI Officer, Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Transformation Officer.

70 to 80% of senior appointments are still made without a public vacancy. The hidden market is active. Interim placements rose 29% year-on-year globally in 2025 and the supply-demand balance for interim leadership is among the most favourable in five years.

What boards actually want

AI literacy that is specific. Generic claims about embracing AI are dismissed. Boards want to know which tools you have used, what decisions they changed and what guardrails you put in place.

A transformation narrative that travels. The ability to communicate complex change credibly across board, investor, employee and regulator audiences is the capability search partners most frequently cite as the differentiating factor.

Commercial judgement beyond one function. Executives who can read the full P&L and speak to capital allocation consistently outperform those who cannot.

Sector versatility. Executives who can credibly cross from legacy to growth sectors, with a clear articulation of what transfers, are moving faster and achieving better terms.

What this means for your positioning

• AI-literate candidates are achieving materially better terms than peers with equivalent functional experience. If AI is a gap, close it before your next search conversation.
• Search firms are assessing AI and transformation capability before presenting shortlists. Your profile is reviewed before any approach is made. Have specific examples ready.
• The executive who appears in search firm networks before a role exists has a structural advantage. Build those relationships now, not when you need them.
• NED fees on FTSE 350 boards run from £40,000 to £70,000 per year. For executives in transition, a NED or advisory appointment maintains visibility and drives the network activity behind most senior appointments.
• Burnham’s agenda on water, energy, transport, housing and infrastructure is still forming. Boards in those sectors need to be mapping exposure now rather than waiting for the detail.

Five actions for executives in Q3 2026

1. Audit your AI literacy against board expectations.
2. Develop a transformation narrative that goes beyond your function.
3. Build visibility in the hidden market before you need it.
4. Consider interim, advisory and NED routes alongside permanent roles.
5. Position around growth sectors rather than legacy sectors.

Read the full Rialto Q3 2026 UK Executive Outlook below, the Rialto Q3 global outlook here or get in touch for a free initial consultation on your career strategy.

2 minute read

AI is now deployed in at least one function in 88% of organisations. Yet 56% of CEOs report capturing neither revenue nor cost savings from it.   The gap between AI deployment and business value is rarely caused by the technology itself. It is more often the result of a missing strategic framework that links AI investment to business priorities, measurable outcomes and executive accountability.

Crucially, this is not a middle-management execution issue. It sits at the top of organisations, where strategic direction, prioritisation and ownership of outcomes are set. In many cases, AI is being deployed without the level of executive clarity required to convert activity into value.

This challenge is now showing up at the leadership level. In an exclusive Rialto survey of professional clients, supported by feedback from our strategy consultants and executive career coaches, the single biggest capability gap threatening executive relevance was said to be the inability to connect AI to commercial strategy. Forty-four per cent of respondents named it as their primary concern.  Nothing else came close.

What AI strategy actually means

Strategy, in this context, is not a slide deck or a digital transformation roadmap. It is the answer to four specific questions that every board should be asking at a minimum and every C-suite executive should be able to answer clearly:

1. What commercial problem is AI solving, and for whom?
2. Which measurable outcomes define success, and over what timeframe?
3. Who is accountable for delivery, and how is that accountability embedded in leadership reviews?
4. What governance structure ensures that AI decisions are made with appropriate oversight?

Through its work with senior leadership teams, Rialto has consistently observed that organisations unable to answer these four questions often struggle to convert well-intentioned AI experimentation into a defined route to measurable business value.

Once these foundations are established, organisations are better positioned to address the practical challenges of implementation, including managing governance, accelerating decision-making and cross-functional collaboration.

The question for any executive reading this is whether their ability to align AI with commercial objectives, set measurable outcomes and govern for results is visible to the people who make decisions about leadership, succession and future organisational capability. In a market increasingly shifting from experience-based to skills-based evaluation, boards are asking not only what leaders have achieved, but whether they possess the capabilities required for the next phase of growth and transformation. Demonstrable AI leadership capability is rapidly becoming one of those differentiators.

Download the full insight, including FAQs below.

Why Leadership Transitions Are Harder Than They Look

4 minute read

Many successful executives are promoted for technical excellence, commercial results and operational delivery but the transition to an executive leadership role requires an entirely different mindset, capability set and level of self-awareness.

Many successful executives are promoted for technical excellence, commercial results and operational delivery.

They are the people who manage complexity, win clients, drive growth and consistently deliver results. It is therefore understandable that organisations look to these individuals when building their leadership pipeline.

The assumption is simple: if someone can perform at that level, surely they can lead others who do the same.

It is a reasonable assumption — and it is frequently wrong.

The skills that create a high-performing specialist are not always the same skills required for executive leadership.

The executives most vulnerable during this transition are rarely the mediocre performers. They are often the high performers: the specialists and experts who have spent years perfecting the capabilities that built their reputation, only to find that some of those same capabilities can become obstacles to continuing growth.

The challenge is not a lack of ability.

It is recognising that success at one level does not automatically prepare someone for success at the next.

The Promotion Paradox: When Performance Stops Being Enough

A transition into executive leadership requires a fundamental shift.  A highly capable functional leader may excel within their area of expertise but find that moving into a broader executive role requires a different level of strategic influence, enterprise thinking and leadership capability.

The best technical expert may not yet be equipped for the wider commercial demands of executive leadership.  For example, a finance leader who has excelled operationally may need to develop a different approach to strategic influence.  A successful sales leader may need to move from personal delivery to creating the conditions where others can succeed.

The issue is rarely intelligence, ambition or commitment.  The challenge is that promotion is often granted based on past performance, with an assumption that the individual will naturally grow into the role.  Some do but many do not.

The very qualities organisations reward — technical mastery, personal drive, high standards and proven delivery — can become limitations at executive level if they are not consciously examined and adapted.

The Leadership Behaviours That Hold High Performers Back

The most common challenge is continuing to operate in the way that created previous success.  High performers are often used to solving problems themselves. They are fast, reliable and capable of finding solutions quickly.

However, at executive level, success depends less on personal contribution and more on building capability in others.  When leaders continue to solve every problem themselves, they unintentionally limit their team’s development and reduce their own   capacity to focus on strategy.  Closely linked to this is the pull towards operational detail. Execution matters, but executive leadership requires the ability to step back, scan the horizon and create direction for the organisation.

High performers can also struggle with accepting that others may approach work differently. The standards that built their own success can unintentionally create dependency, where teams perform well but remain reliant on the leader’s involvement.

The transition requires moving from being the person who delivers the answer to the person who creates the environment where better answers emerge.

The Real Challenge: A Shift in Leadership Identity

The move from high performer to executive leader is not simply about learning new skills.  It requires a renegotiation of professional identity.

Leaders must shift:

• From individual delivery to collective success.
• From expertise to judgement.
• From control to trust.
• From operational execution to strategic influence.

Delegation becomes critical.  Executives must become comfortable allowing others to lead areas they previously owned themselves. This can feel uncomfortable, particularly for individuals whose reputation has been built on personal excellence.

Influence also becomes increasingly important.  At executive level, outcomes depend less on formal authority and more on trust, alignment and the ability to influence across the organisation.

Perhaps the greatest adjustment is learning to operate with ambiguity.  The further leaders progress, the fewer clear answers exist. Time horizons lengthen, complexity increases and decisions must often be made without complete information.

Executive leadership requires judgement, perspective and the confidence to navigate uncertainty.

The Role of Executive Coaching in Leadership Transition

Formal leadership programmes provide valuable knowledge and frameworks, but successful executive transitions also require deeper reflection and behavioural change.

Executive coaching creates the space for leaders to understand how they are experienced by others, identify behaviours that may no longer serve them and develop the self-awareness needed to operate effectively at a higher level.

The most successful leaders are those willing to seek objective challenge before problems emerge.  They recognise that reaching executive level is not the end of development. It is the point where continued growth becomes even more important.

Becoming a True Executive Leader

The transition from high performer to executive leader is one of the most significant inflection points in a career.  The leaders who successfully make this shift are not necessarily those with the strongest track records. They are those with the self-awareness to recognise what they need to leave behind, the willingness to develop new behaviours and the ability to create impact through others.

Executive success is no longer measured by what one person can achieve.  It is measured by the capability they build, the decisions they make and the lasting impact they create through their teams.

Download the full insight below.

The Leadership Tensions at the Heart of AI Transformation

Ask most senior leaders whether they feel on top of the AI transformation agenda and the honest answer is likely to be no. The scale of what is being asked is unlike anything in their experience. It is not one capability gap, but several converging at once. Each urgent, none clearly prioritised.

That is the difficulty with how AI transformation is often framed. The conversation tends to produce a list: AI fluency, governance, workforce redesign, commercial translation, systems thinking, speed, ethics. The implicit message is that all of it matters and all of it is needed now. For many executives, that feels less like clarity and more like overload.

The more useful question is not just what matters, but what matters most, and in what order.

Across leadership teams, a pattern is emerging. The organisations struggling to convert AI ambition into results are not those lacking investment or intent, but those unable to prioritise the tensions that sit at the heart of transformation. Two in particular stand out, because they consistently expose the gap between confidence and readiness.

Speed vs Governance:

Boards asked what they want from their leadership in an AI-augmented organisation are highly likely to prioritise speed, telling leadership to move faster; decide with less information; deploy ahead of competitors. In a market where AI capability is evolving faster than strategy cycles, the instinct to prioritise pace is understandable.

Investment patterns reflect this urgency.  Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise report, drawing on over 3,000 senior leaders across 24 countries, found that 84% of organisations increased their AI budgets last year, with the dominant talent strategy being the acceleration of AI fluency across the workforce.

What the same data also shows is that the investment is not converting. Only one in four organisations have moved 40% or more of their AI pilots into production. Just 20% report high preparedness on talent. Revenue growth from AI remains an aspiration for 74% of organisations against a reality for just 20%. Fewer than half are making significant adjustments to their talent strategies, and more than a third are using AI at surface level with little or no change to existing processes.

It means money is going in, transformation is not coming out.

Moving quickly is not the same as moving effectively. The gap between the two is where executive reputations are currently being made or damaged.

This is where governance re-enters the conversation, however, often too late and misunderstood. The term itself still carries unhelpful connotations: compliance, overheads, constraint. As a result, it is frequently deprioritised in favour of visible momentum.

The evidence, however, points in the opposite direction. Organisations where senior leadership actively shapes AI governance consistently realise greater value than those that delegate it. Governance is not a brake on speed; it is the condition under which speed becomes safe, scalable, and defensible.

The regulatory environment has made this explicit. Frameworks such as the EU AI Act, alongside existing regimes like the UK’s Senior Managers and Certification Regime, are formalising accountability for AI outcomes. This is no longer abstract. If systems fail, whether through bias, data exposure, or flawed decision-making, the organisation is liable, and leadership is accountable. “The model did it” is not a defence that regulators or courts will accept.

Recent cases have reinforced this reality.

In February 2024, Air Canada was found liable after its AI chatbot gave a grieving customer incorrect information about bereavement fares. The airline argued the chatbot was a separate legal entity responsible for its own actions. The tribunal rejected this entirely. The case has since been cited across multiple jurisdictions as the moment the accountability gap in AI deployment became legally indefensible.

Contrast this with Robinhood’s approach to its AI-powered financial crimes investigation system, which built validation agents checking every output, full audit logs for regulatory explainability, and human oversight at every decision point. The result was a 20% efficiency gain in investigative workflows and a system that regulators can audit and leadership can defend.

The widely cited ruling by the airline chatbot providing incorrect customer information made clear that organisations cannot distance themselves from the actions of their AI systems. By contrast, organisations embedding oversight, auditability and human validation into AI decision-making are demonstrating that governance and performance are not in conflict, they are mutually reinforcing.

The leadership challenge, then, is not choosing between speed and governance. It is recognising that without governance, speed is fragile and often undermining.

Workforce restructuring vs responsibility.

If the speed-versus-governance dynamic is the most visible leadership tension in AI transformation, the workforce question is another that demands urgent and considered attention.  However, it is sometimes overlooked in the rush to drive efficiency savings through automation.

The economic logic for using AI to redesign operating models is clear. Automation, consolidation, and more AI-enabled roles can materially improve efficiency. On paper, the case is straightforward.  In practice, this is where financially rational decisions become leadership risks.

Organisations too often focus on those whose roles are removed or redefined, neglecting to mitigate the impact on those who remain. Organisations that restructure without a credible people narrative do not simply lose the people who leave, they can lose the confidence of those who remain.  With that, they may lose discretionary effort, institutional knowledge and the informal networks that transformation depends on.

The efficiency gain may be delivered, but the capability to build on it is often diminished.

This is where many transformation programmes quietly underperform. The structural change is achieved, but the conditions required for sustained performance are weakened in the process.

The capability required here is not empathy as a soft skill, it’s the ability to make difficult structural decisions with clarity and pace while maintaining the conditions under which high-performing people choose to stay and contribute. That combination is rarer than boards generally acknowledge and its absence is one of the less visible but more consequential reasons AI transformation programmes underdeliver.

There is a further dimension that receives less attention at board-level. The executives being asked to lead workforce redesign are themselves operating in an environment of considerable personal uncertainty. The roles being automated, consolidated or redefined are not exclusively below them in the hierarchy. For some, the capabilities that built their careers are among those the market is beginning to discount. This is a dynamic Rialto sees consistently in its work with senior leaders in transition – the difficulty of driving change with conviction when the ground beneath your own position is also shifting. Navigating it requires a degree of psychological clarity that technical upskilling alone does not provide.

This is not a reason to slow the pace of change. It is a reason to be deliberate about which leaders are positioned to drive it and what support the organisation is providing to those who are not yet there.

What This Means for Executive Leadership

The tension between speed and governance is often framed as a trade-off: move fast or govern well; compete or comply. Similarly, workforce transformation is framed as a structural exercise: redesign the model and execute.

The organisations that are translating AI investment into sustained value are not those choosing one side of these tensions. They are those whose leadership teams are resolving them, treating governance as an enabler of speed and workforce decisions as both structural and human challenges that must be addressed simultaneously.

PwC’s 2025 Responsible AI research found that 60% of executives said governance boosts ROI and efficiency while 55% reported improved customer experience and innovation as a direct result of responsible AI practices. Yet nearly half acknowledged that turning those principles into operational reality remained a challenge. The value of governance is appreciated, but many organisations are falling short when it comes to embedding it across functions and departments.

The organisations building resilience, innovation and enduring growth into their business models through AI transformation are those that understand which elements are load-bearing right now and need direct attention.

For most, that includes governance, workforce credibility and accountability for how restructuring decisions are made and experienced.

This is also where a more grounded view of executive readiness is needed. In ongoing work with senior leaders, and through current research into executive AI relevance, a consistent picture is emerging: confidence in certain areas, genuine gaps in others and a broader recognition that the demands are arriving faster than preparation.

The leadership task is to distinguish between what is urgent, what is foundational and where the risks of inaction are compounding in ways that are not yet visible on the surface.

A More Focused Question

For executives navigating this evolving landscape, the immediate question is whether they are prioritising the right tensions and addressing them in the right order.

The organisations that will look back on this period as a point of competitive advantage are unlikely to be those that moved fastest in isolation. They will be those where leadership teams made structural decisions at pace, embedded governance early and managed workforce transition without eroding the human foundations of performance.

One of the consistent challenges at executive level is the absence of an external reference point: a clear view of how peers are interpreting the same pressures, where they are placing emphasis, and where confidence diverges from actual readiness.

This is precisely the focus of current Rialto research into executive AI relevance. Through ongoing work with senior leaders, and a structured survey designed to capture how leadership teams are prioritising capability, risk, and investment, we are seeing an increasingly clear picture of where organisations are actually placing weight, and where the most material gaps sit.

The survey will provide a dataset which is missing in the current market. Findings will be shared in aggregated form with contributors, offering a more grounded view of how peers are navigating these same tensions, how they perceive and manage priorities. It will enable leaders to gain a clearer picture of how they fit into the broader landscape, both in terms of their own professional development and their organisational readiness.

For most, AI transformation is not constrained by awareness or ambition.  It is constrained by effective prioritisation in the face of the overwhelming pace of change and competing challenges.

At the centre of it all, the difference between progress and underperformance increasingly comes down to a single capability: the ability to decide what matters most and act on it first.

The survey remains open for a limited time and takes just five minutes. More details can be found here: Executive Relevance in the Age of AI.

When and How to Navigate Strategic Career Changes

For most senior leaders, an executive career pivot is seldom top of their radar. They might be pushed by a redundancy, a restructuring or the slow realisation that the organisation they have given ten years to is no longer the one they joined. By that point, options are typically narrower, and career options are considered under pressure, which can restrict salary negotiations and change the narrative from intention to escape.

While the thought of restarting in an entirely new industry or making an executive career pivot can appear daunting, the risks of failing to acknowledge a rapidly changing market are higher. A planned pivot can also reignite motivation, purpose and satisfaction in ways that staying put cannot.

This matters especially to anyone working in a sector or function undergoing structural, not cyclical, contraction. With the unpredictable advances of AI, all senior leaders should be scanning the near horizon for signs of decline in their own sphere while laying the foundations for a career pivot, as often the time and actions required for this can be underestimated.

This insight considers which leaders need to be moving urgently, which should be building a mid-term plan now and how the transition can be executed in a way that preserves rather than abandons the authority built over a career.

The rewards, the challenges and the cost of staying

A well-executed pivot, made at the right time, can boost careers in several ways: driving salary growth rather than compression, maintaining upward trajectory and reinforcing the psychological security that comes from operating in a market where your skills remain in demand.

However, sector credibility does not transfer automatically. A Chief Commercial Officer who has built their reputation in physical retail will not be viewed as equivalent in B2B fintech on day one. Regulatory frameworks differ, commercial models and vocabulary differ, and the pace and style of decision-making in growth sectors often contrasts sharply with that of large, established organisations. Without at least baseline fluency in the target sector, executives risk a step down in both seniority and compensation. Equally, a pivot that appears reactive rather than intentional weakens the narrative before conversations have even begun.

Against this, the cost of staying continues to compound. According to the CIPD, employer hiring intentions in early 2026 remain at an unparalleled low while the supply of permanent candidates has been growing for three consecutive years. In a softening market, executives in contracting sectors face increasing competition for a shrinking pool of senior roles from peers who have stayed for the same reasons.

A global survey of C-suite executives found that nine out of ten leaders report workforce overcapacity of up to 20% in legacy roles, alongside shortages in AI-critical skills. The executive who waits is accumulating experience that the market is progressively devaluing.

Industries in Decline: Where Executives Should Consider Moving Now

Traditional retail. According to the Centre for Retail Research, the sector shed close to 400,000 jobs in just two years across 2024 and 2025, with 17,349 store closures recorded in 2025 alone. Retail sales volumes still stand more than 2% below pre-pandemic levels, and business rate relief has been abolished entirely from April 2026. Online retail accounts for around a quarter of UK sales and consumer habits shifted structurally during the pandemic in ways that have not reversed. For senior executives who remain in traditional high street retail, the window for a proactive pivot is genuinely narrow.

Legacy financial services. Restructuring is more advanced than many inside it acknowledge. More than 5,000 UK bank branches have closed since 2015, with 432 closures in 2025 alone. Finance job postings dropped 38% in 2025, with AI replacing roles in compliance, reporting and customer service. Salary acceleration is now concentrated almost entirely in professionals who combine finance expertise with digital, automation and risk control capabilities, while traditional operations roles that lack tech capability are experiencing stagnant or declining pay. Decline is most pronounced in branch network management, traditional wealth management and middle-office processing. COOs and CCOs have more transferable authority and more time; branch and processing leaders have less of both.

Legacy media and print. Print circulation has fallen continuously for two decades and the advertising model that sustained broadcast has been structurally disrupted. Executives in traditional media face a specific challenge: the skills they have built – editorial judgement, audience understanding, content commissioning at scale – are genuinely valuable in content-driven technology businesses and brand strategy. But the sector identity requires active management in any pivot narrative.

Sectors in mid-term structural decline: plan now, move by choice

Traditional professional services. Management consulting, legal services and accountancy firms built on time-and-materials billing are not in immediate crisis, but the writing is on the wall. PwC identifies finance, HR, IT and internal audit as areas where AI agents are ripe for automating complex, high-value workflows. The runway is longer than in retail or legacy banking, but it is finite.

Parts of the HR and marketing functions. Chief HR Officers are at a fork: the function weakens as onboarding, learning and screening are automated, or it evolves toward strategic workforce ownership and accountability for human-AI collaboration. Those who have built their careers primarily around operational delivery are at medium-term risk but can reposition within receptive organisations in growth sectors. Marketing directors whose value rests on execution rather than brand strategy or commercial leadership face the same trajectory.

The career growth sectors: where executive demand is running ahead of supply

Fintech. The UK fintech market is estimated at $21.4 billion in 2026, growing toward $43.9 billion by 2031 at a 15.4% annual rate. Lloyds’ Financial Institutions Sentiment Survey, published in September 2025, found that 59% of institutions now see measurable productivity gains from AI, up from 32% a year earlier, with over half planning to increase AI investment in 2026 and nearly half having already established dedicated AI teams. The sector attracted $3.6 billion of UK investment in 2025, second only to the US, and continues to draw executive talent because it is one of the few financial markets actively building rather than rationalising. What it cannot easily manufacture is executives who understand regulated environments, manage complex stakeholder relationships and carry the commercial credibility that the sector requires. That is precisely what two decades in legacy financial services produces.

Sustainability and the green economy. Latest date from the ONS estimates there were 652,100 full-time equivalent employees in UK green jobs in 2024, up 27.8% since 2015. Financial services recorded the highest year-on-year growth in green hires in 2025, up 16.3%, and more than half of green hires now sit in non-green job titles, reflecting how functions such as operations, finance and commercial leadership are being greened rather than replaced. Eighty per cent of sustainability employers plan to hire in the next twelve months and 75% are prepared to hire someone who does not possess all the required skills, intending to upskill them instead.

AI-enabled services and AI governance. LinkedIn data shows AI has already created 1.3 million new roles globally, and the surge in Head of AI positions across the UK reflects a decisive move toward embedded AI strategy and leadership. AI Engineer topped LinkedIn’s 2025 UK Jobs on the Rise list, while more than half of the fastest-growing UK roles did not exist 25 years ago. Executives who can govern AI deployments – who understand accountability, liability and the regulatory frameworks being built around them – command structural premiums that pure technical roles do not.

When to reframe and when to reskill

One of the most common and costly mistakes executives make when planning a career pivot is treating reframing and reskilling as the same thing. Confusing them leads either to unnecessary investment in new credentials, or to relying on narrative alone where real capability gaps exist.

Reframing is required when the underlying capability already exists but its relevance to the new sector is not visible to the hiring market. A retail CCO with twenty years of complex multi-stakeholder commercial experience does not need to learn those skills again in fintech. They need to reframe that experience in the vocabulary of the new context, making the connection explicit and demonstrating why it matters.

Reskilling, in contrast, is required when genuine gaps exist that reframing cannot close. A commercial leader moving into sustainability needs knowledge of frameworks such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and TCFD. Entry into AI governance demands an understanding of accountability, liability, and emerging regulation. These are not superficial gaps and hiring managers in these fields will identify their absence quickly.

Neither path requires going back to university. Targeted programmes such as Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute’s sustainable finance credentials and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment all offer targeted routes. For AI governance, structured programmes at London Business School, INSEAD and several UK universities move a CV from interesting to credible.

Forward-facing companies are looking for leaders with that rare sweet spot of relevant experience, transferable credentials and evidence of prior expertise – or at least active interest – and personal investment in the context, not a generalist who has acquired a certificate or a reputed executive from a FTSE company who lacks, or is unable to demonstrate, such qualities and insight into what matters now.

Deciding on an Executive move: Under pressure, and with time

In both scenarios, developing a coherent, credible narrative is crucial. An executive who can articulate precisely why they are moving, what they have built and what it translates into in the new context will consistently outperform one with a stronger CV but a vague or reactive story.

Under pressure, the priority is to identify and protect transferable authority. Map the three or four capabilities that are genuinely sector-fluid that the target sector demonstrably values. Be visible in the right networks before the formal job search begins. Overall, UK job postings remain 19% below pre-pandemic levels, but demand persists in technology systems and solutions, software development and civil engineering. The executive who targets specific pockets of genuine demand is better placed than one searching broadly. This may require a dispassionate external perspective from a coach or mentor who understands what the market is currently seeking.

With more time, the core strategy is to build genuine presence in the target sector before making any formal move. Take advisory or non-executive roles in relevant organisations or develop a visible point of view through writing, speaking or participation in relevant forums. The most effective networking is built around genuine intellectual engagement with the questions the sector is working through, not simply a presence within it.

How to audit transferable authority ready for an Executive Pivot

Before beginning any serious pivot, separate what you have done from what capability that demonstrates, then test whether that capability has a market in the target sector. For example, a retail CEO who has managed 200 stores and grown market share from 8% to 12% has also built the capability to hold large, complex commercial relationships under cost pressure. Properly articulated, that is exactly what a scale-up technology business needs from its leadership.

The audit has three stages: list significant achievements; translate each into the underlying capability it demonstrates; test whether that capability is valued in the target sector and in what vocabulary. The gap between stages two and three is the reframing task. Genuine absences are the reskilling task. LinkedIn research shows that 56% of UK professionals are open to a role in a new industry, yet 20% worry they lack the skills needed for the future. Self-assessment of transferability is notoriously unreliable. An external perspective from a coach or adviser who understands both the source and destination sectors closes that gap faster and more reliably than internal reflection alone.

Future of Executive Careers: Trends Shaping Career Pivots to 2030

The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that while 92 million roles may be displaced by 2030, 170 million new roles will be created, a net gain of 78 million, with demand concentrating in technology, sustainability, care and human-centred services.

The executives who will command premium compensation in the years ahead are not necessarily the most experienced, or even the most skilled. They are the ones who read the structural signals early, moved with intention rather than under duress, and arrived in growth sectors with a coherent account of what they had built and why it mattered in the new context.

That window remains open but it narrows with each quarter spent waiting for conditions to improve in sectors where they will not. The evidence is consistent: planned pivots preserve authority and trajectory; reactive ones compress both. The market rewards positioning, not hesitation.

The question for every senior leader in a sector facing structural rather than cyclical change is not whether a transition will eventually be required. It is whether, when that moment arrives, they will be choosing from a position of strength or scrambling from one of constraint.

The executives of tomorrow are making that choice today.

3 minute read

As Q2 2026 begins, the UK and European executive landscape has shifted materially. What initially appeared to be a gradual return to stability – with easing inflation, modest growth and an anticipated path towards interest rate cuts – has been disrupted by renewed geopolitical conflict in the Middle East.

The implications for business confidence, executive hiring and organisational strategy are already being felt. Combined with ongoing AI-driven transformation, executives are operating in an increasingly selective and fast-changing market where adaptability and measurable impact have become critical.

UK Economic Outlook: Confidence Under Pressure

The UK economy grew by 1.4% across 2025, its strongest performance since the pandemic, but recent forecasts point to slower growth ahead. Rising energy costs, persistent inflation and reduced business confidence are creating a more cautious environment for investment and hiring.

Higher employment costs, including increases in National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage, are adding further pressure on organisations already managing constrained budgets.

As Richard Chiumento, Director at Rialto, explains:

“The structural reset we have been tracking has been overtaken by an acute shock on top of a chronic one. Organisations that were managing cautiously through a tight fiscal environment now face renewed inflation, constrained monetary policy and further compression of confidence. Leaders need to move faster, not slower.”

Executive Hiring Continues to Tighten

The executive market has become increasingly competitive.

Vacancies continue to decline across most sectors while unemployment has risen to its highest level since 2021. Businesses are delaying permanent hiring decisions, focusing investment on leadership that can deliver immediate commercial impact, transformation and operational efficiency.

This is no longer simply a cyclical slowdown. Organisations are becoming far more selective, placing greater emphasis on demonstrable results, adaptability and strategic leadership.

AI Capability Has Become a Leadership Requirement

One trend continues to outperform the wider market.

While overall UK job postings remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels, demand for AI-related skills continues to grow rapidly. Increasingly, organisations expect executives, not just technical teams, to understand how AI should be implemented, governed and translated into measurable business value.

Boards are asking leaders to demonstrate expertise in AI governance, risk management, productivity and value realisation. AI competence is no longer viewed as a specialist capability; it is becoming a core leadership expectation.

Where Executive Demand Remains Strong

Despite broader market caution, several sectors continue to invest in senior leadership.

Engineering remains resilient, supported by infrastructure investment, defence spending and the energy transition. Financial services continue to seek executives with expertise in regulatory change, risk management and cost transformation, while cybersecurity, digital infrastructure and private equity-backed businesses remain active in the executive market.

Across Europe, demand is also increasing for leaders with cross-border regulatory expertise, AI governance capability and experience navigating increasingly complex compliance requirements, including sustainability reporting obligations.

Executive Compensation: Rewarding Measurable Impact

Organisations are also changing how they reward executive talent.

Rather than relying solely on higher base salaries, many employers are increasing the use of performance-related incentives, equity participation and long-term reward structures. Executive compensation is becoming more closely linked to measurable outcomes such as transformation delivery, revenue growth, cost optimisation and value creation.

For senior leaders, evidence of impact is becoming just as important as experience.

How Executives Can Stay Competitive

The executives who will succeed in today’s market are those who recognise that current conditions represent a structural shift rather than a temporary disruption.

Four priorities increasingly differentiate successful leaders:

• Translate market uncertainty into clear strategic decisions.
• Prioritise the initiatives that create the greatest commercial value.
• Demonstrate disciplined, outcome-focused AI leadership.
• Evidence impact through measurable business results rather than broad experience alone.

As organisations navigate continued economic uncertainty, the executives who combine strategic judgement, commercial discipline and AI capability will be best positioned to create value and remain competitive.

Looking Ahead

Economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability and AI-driven transformation are reshaping executive leadership expectations across the UK and Europe.

The executives who thrive will not simply respond to change, they will anticipate it, guide organisations through complexity and demonstrate clear, measurable impact. In an increasingly selective market, strategic leadership, digital fluency and the ability to translate uncertainty into confident decision-making have become the defining characteristics of executive success.

“Harnessing machine learning can be transformational, but for it to be successful, enterprises need leadership from the top. This means understanding that when AI changes one part of the business, other parts must also change.” Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI

Brynjolfsson is one of the world’s most cited economists on technology and productivity, a Stanford professor who has spent three decades studying what separates the few organisations that extract real value from transformative technology – which we will call the 6% club – from those that do not. He finds it an organisational issue: failure to consider the structural, governance and cultural changes needed to lead through AI transformation inevitably leads to under-achievement and disillusion.

Eighty-eight per cent of organisations globally now use AI in at least one business function, yet only around 6% qualify as genuine AI high performers – businesses attributing more than 5% of EBIT directly to AI and reporting significant value across the enterprise. The remaining 94% are somewhere between enthusiastic experimenter and quietly disillusioned pilot operator. Most have the tools. Very few have the results.

What the 6% are actually doing

These high performers do not have access to better technology. What distinguishes them is organisational. McKinsey found that high performers are 3.6 times more likely to be pursuing transformational, enterprise-level change through AI and nearly three times more likely to have fundamentally redesigned their workflows in the process. Bolting AI onto existing processes is a false economy that leads to wasted resources, lost opportunities and competitive drag. The 6% rebuild those processes around what AI can actually do.

They are also three times more likely to have senior leaders who actively own and champion AI, genuinely modelling its use and driving its integration into strategic decision-making. This is the strongest single predictor of enterprise-level AI impact in the data. When senior leadership treats AI as a technology upgrade, the organisation stalls. When they treat it as a strategic shift that requires them personally to change how they work, the organisation moves.

The high performers apply the same capital discipline to AI investment as they would to a major acquisition: clear strategy aligned with organisational objectives, defined milestones and criteria for adjusting or closing underperforming initiatives. They manage AI investment across three horizons: foundational infrastructure (two to four year payback), near-term productivity (six to twelve months) and longer-term transformation (ongoing). They do not allow short-term return pressure to collapse everything into the second horizon at the expense of the first and third.

The Kyndryl Readiness Report, drawing on 3,700 senior leaders, found that 61% of CEOs now face intensified pressure to demonstrate AI returns compared with the prior year, while 53% of investors expect positive returns within six months or less. Responding to that pressure by sacrificing infrastructure and transformation investment to feed short-term results is one of the primary reasons organisations get trapped in pilot purgatory. Honest, clear communication from the outset – managing expectations, helping stakeholders understand realistic timescales and reimagining how success is measured – is itself a leadership responsibility. Equally, so is recognising when to kill a pilot that is not working, and to explain why.

The governance gap

Two-thirds of organisations remain in experimentation or piloting phase, lacking the operating model maturity to convert deployment into value. The most common single failure is the absence of clearly named executive ownership for AI outcomes across product, legal, risk and compliance. When nobody is explicitly accountable for what AI is doing across the organisation – which McKinsey found to be the norm – innovation slows, risk accumulates and resources are wasted.

Most organisations view governance as a constraint. The 6% experience it as a competitive advantage: the mechanism that builds stakeholder trust, enables faster decision-making within defined boundaries and provides the audit trail that allows boards to demonstrate responsible operation to regulators, investors and customers.

Regional AI regulatory frameworks add further complexity. The EU AI Act is now in phased application, with penalties reaching 7% of global annual turnover for high-risk non-compliance. The UK places the burden of interpretation directly on boards, making personal executive accountability the operative principle. In the US, enforcement is arriving through litigation rather than legislation, making documentation, testing and explainability the primary risk mitigation tools. Working across different regions demands flexible compliance models, but across all three regimes AI governance is a board-level responsibility and the expectation that it can be delegated to IT or legal functions is no longer sustainable.

What boards and leadership teams must actually do

Moving from the 94% to the 6% requires coordinated evolution across five interconnected dimensions. Here are five questions your board should be able to answer:

Who in your organisation is accountable if your AI produces a wrong outcome? In most organisations, nobody can answer that. Executive accountability means designating named individuals responsible for AI outcomes across every relevant function – product, legal, risk, compliance and people – with those owners demonstrating AI literacy in capital allocation decisions.

Are you asking how AI could transform how this work is done, or just how to make existing processes faster? Workflow redesign is the single most powerful lever in the McKinsey data. High performers decompose roles into task sets, identify which activities are best automated, which augmented and which require human judgement, and rebuild performance metrics around value delivered rather than activity completed. (See our previous insight, Redefining Work in an Human/Machine Era.)

Is your AI training a one-off event or embedded into how people work every day? McKinsey’s data shows that high performers embed at least 81 hours of annual AI training per employee into operations. Sixty-three per cent of employers globally identify capability gaps as their primary barrier to AI scaling, yet most continue to look externally for capabilities that reskilling could develop internally at lower cost and with less disruption.

Have you defined what failure looks like before you start? Capital discipline with kill-switch criteria means defining in advance, at the point of approving any AI initiative, when a pilot gets shut down rather than scaled. The organisations accumulating the most expensive AI failures are those that never established what insufficient progress looked like.

Can you explain to every stakeholder – employees, customers, regulators, investors – exactly how AI is influencing decisions that affect them? Stakeholder trust architecture is an operational requirement, not a PR exercise. In an environment where 51% of organisations report AI-related incidents, eroded trust is difficult to rebuild. High performers are more than twice as likely to have defined human-in-the-loop validation processes – 65% versus 23%.

Measuring returns beyond the financial

McKinsey found that function-level returns in software engineering, manufacturing and IT regularly reach 10-20% cost reductions, with marketing and product development seeing revenue uplift above 10% in leading deployments. But the ROI conversation in most boardrooms is still too narrow. Organisations measuring only financial return are missing both the value and the risk.

Two thirds of organisations in McKinsey’s survey report AI-driven improvements in innovation capacity, while 45% report improved customer satisfaction and 36% see strengthened competitive differentiation. These are leading indicators of future financial performance. Organisations tracking only EBIT impact miss the earlier signals that tell them whether their AI investment is building the capabilities that will compound into revenue.

Stakeholder trust is measurable and its erosion is one of the most expensive and least discussed AI risks. Customer trust in AI-mediated decisions, employee confidence in the organisation’s approach to workforce impact and investor trust in governance quality all affect the cost of capital, talent retention and customer lifetime value in ways that do not appear in short-term financial metrics. Regulatory standing carries an implicit financial value that almost no organisation currently quantifies, and boards that require AI investment proposals to include a regulatory exposure assessment alongside the financial case are making a sound capital allocation decision, not an over-cautious one.

Leadership seeking to help their organisations break into the top 6% can learn much from the earlier pioneers — both what to do, and what not to do.

JPMorgan Chase: lessons learned in an $18 billion experiment

JPMorgan Chase is the most thoroughly documented example of an organisation in the 6%. Its AI programme has more than 450 live use cases delivering between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in annual value. More than 200,000 employees use its proprietary LLM Suite platform daily and AI-attributed benefits have grown 30-40% year-on-year. AI coding assistants have lifted developer productivity by 10-20% across a technology workforce of 63,000, its Coach AI advisory tool contributed to a 20% increase in gross sales in asset and wealth management between 2023 and 2024, while fraud prevention and operational efficiencies saved a further $1.5 billion.

What explains it? Not the technology. JPMorgan uses many of the same foundation models available to every competitor. What distinguishes the bank is its governance architecture: a firmwide Chief Data Officer mandate aligning data platforms with model risk management, legal and security functions across every business line; rigorous ROI measurement at the individual initiative level; and a board-level treatment of AI as a core operating function. As JPMorgan’s own Chief Analytics Officer put it: “There is a value gap between what the technology is capable of and the ability to fully capture that in an enterprise.” Their answer to that gap has been structural and the returns reflect it.

The bank also acknowledges the risks candidly: recouping the $18 billion investment will take time, and the technology comes at human cost, with a projected 10% reduction in operations headcount. Organisations carry an ethical and societal responsibility to mitigate those potentially significant losses.

MD Anderson Cancer Center: a $62 million structural failure

In 2012, MD Anderson partnered with IBM to build an AI clinical decision support tool for oncologists. The goal was to democratise world-class cancer care, giving any oncologist anywhere access to the diagnostic intelligence of one of the world’s leading cancer institutions. Five years and $62 million later, the contract expired before the system had been used on a single real patient. Inquests found the failure organisational rather than technological: the system was incompatible with existing platforms, scope had ballooned, the original six-month delivery timeline had been extended twelve times and no one with clear authority had been accountable for keeping the project within workable boundaries. It failed where JPMorgan succeeded – in governance, data foundation, accountability and the integration of human and technical design.

The window is narrowing

The gap between the 6% and the 94% continues to widen because AI advantage compounds. The organisations that have redesigned their workflows, built their people’s capabilities and embedded governance into their operating models are iterating faster and learning more with every cycle. Their data gets richer, their models improve and the distance between them and the organisations still running disconnected pilots increases.

The structural work needed – governance architecture, operating model redesign, talent investment, cross-functional accountability – is neither glamorous nor fast. The 6% understood this earlier than most. They made different choices, at the leadership level, about what kind of organisation they were building. That, ultimately, is the only gap that matters.

This insight is edited from a section of the first Rialto AI Business Leaders Circle Strategic Briefing of 2026, a biannual benefit of membership, which also includes the opportunity to help shape the future of AI in UK business with a seat at the table of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for AI (APPG AI) alongside MPs and other leading figures across government, academia and investment.

You can find out more about joining here

Navigating the Structural Reset

As we enter 2026, Rialto analysts examine the evolving executive landscape across UK and European markets. The data confirms we are not experiencing a cyclical downturn but a fundamental recalibration of executive value. Traditional management hierarchies are being compressed, generalist roles are disappearing and leaders are expected to demonstrate immediate impact in constrained environments.

This quarter’s insight examines UK and EU broader economic forecasts to support organisational planning and decisions, executive market dynamics and the capabilities driving demand in an increasingly selective hiring landscape.

It finds some resilience, pockets of dynamic growth and room for cautious optimism amid continuing uncertainty, the near-constant flow of global shocks and GenAI-driven disruption.

UK Economic Outlook: Modest Growth, Fiscal Constraint

The UK economy grew 0.3% in November 2025, marginally higher than economist predications and rebounding from a 0.1% contraction in October. For the three months to November, GDP increased just 0.1%, with services up 0.2%, construction down 1.1%, and production declining 0.1%. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts GDP growth of 1.4% for 2026, down from 1.9% projected in March, reflecting weaker productivity expectations. KPMG’s outlook is more cautious, projecting 1.0% growth, while the Treasury’s survey of independent forecasters averages 1.1% for 2026.

Inflation is easing toward the Bank of England’s 2% target. The Consumer Price Index rose by 3.2% in the year to November 2025. KPMG expects inflation to return to target by April 2026, supported by measures announced in the Autumn Budget, including energy bill reforms projected to save households £150. The base rate currently sits at 3.75%, with market pricing indicating further cuts to 3.25% by year-end, though the pace of reduction is slowing as the Bank approaches neutral policy settings.

Fiscal space remains severely constrained. Debt servicing now consumes approximately 10% of government spending, the highest proportion since the 1980s. Public sector hiring contracted 3.2% year-on-year, and procurement budgets for external consultancy and interim leadership have been reduced across Whitehall. The OBR’s November forecast confirmed the government faces limited room for stimulus, with the tax-to-GDP ratio projected to reach 37.7% by 2027-28, a post-war high.

Sectoral Performance: Retail Under Pressure, Manufacturing Stabilises

Retail: The retail sector enters 2026 facing acute margin pressure. Retail sales volumes rose 0.6% in the three months to November 2025, with clothing stores and computer retailers performing strongly, but the sector confronts mounting costs. The British Retail Consortium estimates that increases to National Insurance contributions (from 13.8% to 15.0%) and the National Living Wage will cost the sector £5 billion annually. PwC’s Retail Outlook notes that 81% of retailers plan to increase prices to offset these challenges, squeezing consumer demand. Executive hiring in retail has softened accordingly, with demand concentrated in transformation roles focused on cost optimisation and omnichannel integration. Executives in consumer-facing sectors must demonstrate cost discipline or face obsolescence.

Manufacturing: UK manufacturing showed tentative recovery in December 2025. The S&P Global UK Manufacturing PMI rose to 50.6, the highest reading in 15 months. However, the expansion was driven primarily by inventory building and backlog clearance rather than sustained demand growth. Manufacturing employment declined for the 14th consecutive month. Export orders contracted for the 47th consecutive month in December, reflecting weak global demand and continued impact from US tariffs.

The sector’s recovery remains fragile, dependent on domestic demand and vulnerable to external shocks. Executive demand in manufacturing is concentrated in operational turnaround roles, supply chain resilience and automation deployment.

Construction: Construction output fell 1.1% September to November, the largest quarterly decline since March 2023. However, infrastructure remains resilient, with output reaching £9.93 billion in Q3 2025, up 4.2% from Q2. Roads and electricity infrastructure drove growth, up 30.2% and 28.2% respectively, supported by government commitments to energy transition and public infrastructure. Executive demand in infrastructure and renewable energy projects command premiums for project delivery leaders, while residential and commercial segments face headwinds.

Financial Services

Financial services enters 2026 in strategic recalibration. Higher-for-longer interest rates support net interest margins, but credit conditions tighten and loan growth slows. Capital markets activity remains selective, with restructuring and private credit robust while IPOs. Regulatory pressure on capital adequacy, consumer duty and operational resilience increases costs sector-wide.

Executive demand softens in growth roles but remains resilient for risk, regulatory change, cost transformation and balance sheet optimisation. Credibility with regulators and execution discipline now outweigh expansion narratives.

Technology

Technology shows renewed revenue momentum but persistent hiring caution. Enterprise spending on AI, cloud optimisation and cybersecurity remains strong, while discretionary transformation budgets tighten. Investment shifts from broad growth to targeted productivity improvements.

Executive demand concentrates in roles bridging technology and commercial outcomes: AI governance, platform rationalisation, data architecture and value realisation. Boards increasingly prioritise executives who can industrialise AI over pure innovation leadership.

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Healthcare faces sustained structural pressure. Public systems struggle with workforce shortages, aging populations and constrained funding. Private healthcare and life sciences navigate higher financing costs and elongated investment cycles. Pharmaceutical pipelines remain active.

Executive hiring targets leaders in workforce transformation, operational performance and regulatory navigation. Digital health attracts interest but adoption varies. Executives translating innovation into scalable, compliant, cost-effective models command premiums.

Energy and Utilities

Energy shows strong investment momentum but rising execution risk. Grid infrastructure, renewables and energy security attract capital, but project delivery constraints – planning delays, skills shortages, supply chain bottlenecks – are constraining the sector.

Leaders with proven large-scale programme delivery, stakeholder management and regulatory navigation are in highest demand. Boards prioritise managing political, community and commercial complexity while maintaining delivery discipline above technical expertise.

Private Equity

Private equity operates in a disciplined, execution-led cycle phase. Deal volumes remain below peak, constrained by valuation gaps and financing costs, but activity recovers in sectors with clear cash flow visibility. Value creation shifts decisively from financial engineering to operational improvement.

Executive demand within portfolio companies remains strong but selective. Operating partners, interim CEOs and functional leaders with restructuring, integration or rapid performance improvement are valued while executives can expect to be placed under unprecedented levels of scrutiny.

The Executive Market: Capability Currency Replaces Headcount

The UK unemployment rate reached 5.1% in the three months to October 2025, the highest since March 2021. Total unemployment rose by 158,000 from the previous quarter to 1.83 million. Employment fell by 16,000 to 34.23 million, marking the second consecutive quarterly decline. The employment rate dropped 0.3 percentage points to 74.9%.

Vacancies fell to 717,000 in September to November 2025, down 9.6% annually and now below pre-pandemic levels. The ratio of unemployed people per vacancy rose to 2.5. The steepest drops in executive hiring occurred in generalist COO and commercial director positions.

Yet this tells only half the story. While overall volumes contract, the nature of available roles has shifted. Three trends dominate:

A Surge in Interim Executive Placements: Companies increasingly seek rapid restructuring capability over institutional knowledge, turning to interim executives who can quickly evaluate financial controls and implement transformation initiatives.

AI-Driven Organisational Flattening: According to Gartner’s 2025 workforce predictions, 20% of organisations will use AI to flatten their structures, eliminating more than half of current middle management positions by 2026. This represents elimination of coordinative roles which are being displaced by autonomous agents and workflow systems.

Adaptability as the Critical Hiring Filter: The most significant shift in executive assessment is the prioritisation of learning agility and technology fluency over traditional credentials. Research from executive search firms indicates that emotional intelligence and adaptability now rank as top predictors of leadership success, particularly during periods of change. This technological transformation demands executives who can rapidly absorb, deploy and govern emerging technologies. Multiple 2025 recruitment reports confirm that boards increasingly favour candidates demonstrating AI fluency, change management abilities and cross-disciplinary thinking over those with purely sector-specific experience.

This represents a fundamental revaluation of executive currency. Tenure and domain expertise, once premium assets, are now basic requirements at best and liabilities at worst if they signal rigidity.

Bright Spots: Where Demand Persists

Despite broader contraction, specific niches show robust executive demand:

Energy Transition and Infrastructure: The UK’s commitment to 50GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 continues to drive hiring in engineering and project leadership.

Governance, Compliance, and Sustainability: The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive entered full enforcement in January 2026, affecting approximately 50,000 companies. Demand for Chief Sustainability Officers and compliance-focused finance executives has surged accordingly, as reported by PwC’s CSRD Readiness Survey.

Digital Infrastructure and Cybersecurity: The UK’s National Cyber Strategy and increased investment in sovereign cloud infrastructure have created sustained demand for CISOs and technology risk executives.

Compensation:

Executive pay growth is cooling but becoming more sophisticated. Annual growth of regular pay excluding bonuses was 4.6% in the three months to September 2025, the lowest since April 2022. KPMG’s Report on Jobs for January 2026 reported that recruitment activity weakened in December as permanent placements fell at the sharpest rate since August, while candidate availability surged amid redundancies. However, starting salary inflation reached a seven-month high as employers competed for specialised talent.

Nominal salary increases for C-suite roles averaged 3.1% in 2025, barely outpacing inflation, but total compensation packages are evolving rapidly. Signing bonuses have increased in frequency, offsetting compressed base salaries.

Flexibility remains a negotiation point, with many FTSE 350 firms requiring executives on-site three or more days per week.

European Context:

The Eurozone is projected to expand by approximately 1.2% in 2026, with significant regional variation. Germany’s manufacturing output declined 2.1% year-on-year in Q4 2025, with automotive and chemicals sectors shedding senior roles. However, Germany’s €10 billion “Sovereign AI” initiative is creating concentrated demand in biotech, quantum computing and autonomous systems. Spain’s unemployment rate has fallen to 11.2%, its lowest in 15 years. According to Indeed’s European Job Postings Tracker, executive vacancies in Spain and Italy remain 53% and 46% above pre-pandemic levels, respectively, concentrated in professional services and construction tied to EU recovery funds. The EU’s data localisation regulations and proliferation of national AI governance frameworks are creating compliance complexity that favours executives with cross-border expertise.

What Executives Should Watch and Do

Articulate Value Creation, Not Activity: In a low-growth environment, boards scrutinise return on investment with forensic intensity. Executives must demonstrate measurable impact: revenue defended, costs extracted, processes redesigned. The ability to tell a compelling value story, quantified and evidence-based, separates those who secure roles from those who circulate CVs indefinitely.

Develop AI Governance Fluency: By 2026, AI literacy is no longer a technology function competency but a baseline executive requirement. Leaders must be conversant in ethical deployment, bias mitigation and regulatory frameworks. The EU AI Act, now in force, imposes obligations on executive leadership for high-risk AI systems. Boards are asking pointed questions about algorithmic accountability and executives without credible answers may find themselves passed over.

Navigate Trade and Regulatory Complexity: With UK trade disrupted by US tariffs and EU regulatory fragmentation intensifying, executives who can demonstrate facility with cross-border operations, supply chain reconfiguration and tariff mitigation strategies are commanding premiums. This competency extends beyond traditional international roles to any leader managing supplier relationships or market access.

Cultivate Continuous Development: The most successful executives treat their own capabilities as a continuous project. Whether through structured coaching, peer advisory networks or targeted upskilling in emerging domains, the goal is sustained relevance. Organisations now expect executives to demonstrate recent learning, not simply cite past achievements.

The outlook for Q1 2026 is one of selective opportunity within structural constraint. While macroeconomic growth remains modest, the market for top-tier leadership is exceptionally dynamic. Generalist executives face headwinds; specialists with demonstrable impact in constrained environments are in short supply.

This is not a market to wait out. The executives who will thrive are those who recognise that 2026 represents a structural reset, not a cyclical pause, and who take decisive action to align their capabilities, narratives, and networks with the new reality of value-led growth.

For Q1, 2026, insights on the US, Asia and Middle Eastern markets click here

A Seasonal Leadership Reflection for 2026

Hands up who’s exhausted and ready for a pause. For many leaders, this year has demanded sustained resilience. The supercharged evolution of AI has been enough to test even the most technologically confident among us, while regulatory pressure and a persistently slow hiring market have made this something of an annus difficilis for those carrying organisational responsibility, to misquote our late Queen.

As we look ahead to 2026, leadership is increasingly defined not just by decision-making, but by how leaders hold uncertainty, distribute accountability and sustain performance through ongoing disruption.

With that in mind, we invite you to ease into the festive wind-down with our Christmas-themed leadership quiz. It is intentionally light-hearted!

Answer instinctively and tally which letter you choose most often. You may gain a useful insight into how you lead, only with less trauma than the spectral visitations and personal upheaval that accompanied Scrooge’s famous leadership transformation.

Take the Christmas Leadership Quiz

1. Which Christmas film best reflects how you lead?
   A) It’s a Wonderful Life – (focused on purpose, values, legacy)
   B) Home Alone – (like its lead character, quick-witted, decisive, self-reliant)
   C) The Holiday – (It’s all about managing other people’s needs and expectations)
   D) Die Hard – (Dealing with multiple threats and taking charge to avoid disaster)
2. You’re hosting Christmas dinner. What’s your style?
   A) Planned, tested, calm
   B) You take charge and improvise
   C) Everyone brings something
   D) Big vision, lots happening
3. Which Christmas retailer do you most admire?
   A) John Lewis – trust and emotional connection
   B) Amazon – speed and execution
   C) M&S – consistency, quality and care
   D) A small independent – creativity and agility
4. A key decision you made this year didn’t land. You:
   A) Reflected openly and adjusted course
   B) Fixed it quietly and move on
   C) Talked it through with the team
   D) Reframed it as “part of the plan”
5. Your reaction to Last Christmas on the radio:
   A) Traditions matter
   B) Enough already
   C) It connects people
   D) Incredible durability but could do with remastering for the current age
6. It’s 20 December and a problem appears. You:
   A) Check it aligns with core principles
   B) Solve it yourself
   C) Pull the right people together
   D) Absorb it along with everything else
7. Your team’s energy in mid-December is best described as:
   A) Tired but committed
   B) Running on adrenaline
   C) Supporting one another
   D) Stretched thin
8. Someone offers to help with a complex task. You:
   A) Welcome the support
   B) Decline – it’s quicker if you do it
   C) Accept and share ownership
   D) Thank them, but keep control
9. Which festive phrase sounds most like you?
   A) “Let’s do this properly”
   B) “I’ll just sort it”
   C) “Let’s work it out together”
   D) “We’ll make it work somehow”
10. If your leadership were a Christmas item, it would be:
    A) A star – guiding and consistent
    B) A lone reindeer – strong but overworked
    C) A bustling table groaning with food collaboratively prepared
    D) Fairy lights – bright, but easily tangled

Your Leadership Style Explained

Mostly As – The Purpose-Led Anchor

You provide stability, direction and a clear sense of what matters. In uncertain conditions, people look to you for reassurance and moral clarity. The risk is that consistency hardens into rigidity. As 2026 brings further volatility, regulation and AI-driven change, your opportunity is to hold purpose steady while allowing strategy, structure and ways of working to evolve around it.

Mostly Bs – The Lone Solver

You are decisive, capable and reliable under pressure. When things are urgent or ambiguous, you step in and get things moving. The risk is isolation. Struggling to ask for help or admit when something hasn’t worked quietly limits learning, increases personal strain and teaches teams to defer rather than contribute. In 2026, your leadership impact will grow fastest if you practise sharing uncertainty earlier and modelling that asking for help is a strength, not a failure.

Mostly Cs – The People-First Leader

You lead through trust, collaboration and shared ownership. Teams feel safe, engaged and supported, which builds resilience over time. The risk is drift. In fast-moving environments, a strong desire for inclusion can slow decisions or blur accountability. As the pace of change accelerates in 2026, your challenge will be to pair empathy with clarity, making timely calls while keeping people with you.

Mostly Ds – The Complexity Carrier

You are comfortable holding ambiguity, competing priorities and constant change. You keep things moving when others feel overwhelmed. The risk is overload. Absorbing too much can normalise pressure, mask structural problems and quietly erode performance. In 2026, the step-change will come from simplifying boldly, naming trade-offs clearly and designing systems that reduce dependence on your personal capacity.

Leading Forward: Reflection, Renewal and Readiness for 2026

Christmas has a habit of revealing truths. The leaders who will progress fastest into the New Year will be those who notice their patterns and habits, take time to reflect honestly and consider what might need to change, whether within themselves or the organisational culture and systems they lead.

This moment of pause matters. Rest and reflect are not indulgences; they are strategic enablers.  Also, eat drink and be merry. Fun, connection and recovery act as biological and psychological reset mechanisms for the bran and body, restoring the capacity for focus, learning and resilience.  Warmth and belonging provide emotional renewal, something no strategy deck can replace.

Or, as Dr Seuss phrased it so beautifully in How the Grinch Stole Christmas:

“Maybe Christmas”, he thought, “doesn’t come from a store”.

“Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.”

With very best wishes for the season from all at Rialto.