McKinsey’s Global Tech Agenda 2026 gets right
I keep seeing the same misunderstanding about the CIO role. Many organisations still talk about IT as if it were a back-office function that needs to be stable and cost-efficient. That baseline still matters. Nobody celebrates a visionary roadmap when payroll fails, when the ERP collapses at quarter close, or when security posture is weak. But McKinsey’s Global Tech Agenda 2026 describes a shift that matches what many of us live: the CIO role is moving upstream into enterprise strategy, and the gap is widening between companies that translate technology into business value and those that treat it as a cost to contain.
What I appreciate in the McKinsey piece is that it is grounded in a survey and clear definitions. It is based on responses from 632 technology and business leaders across 69 countries and 24 industries, fielded late 2025. That matters because the conclusions reflect how executives describe their own organisations, not a theoretical ideal.
A first point is already measurable. McKinsey reports that nearly two-thirds of top-performing companies say their technology leaders are “very involved” in shaping business strategy, compared with 52 percent in other organisations. That difference is not cosmetic. It changes which problems IT is asked to solve, how early IT is involved, and how much room the CIO has to shape decisions rather than react to them. McKinsey also defines top performers explicitly. In their survey, these are companies that achieved at least 10 percent average growth in both revenue and EBIT over the past three years. So the argument is not only that tech is becoming more strategic, but that organisations with stronger profitable growth tend to involve tech leadership more deeply in shaping the direction of the enterprise.
The second point is where the “business strategist” requirement becomes real in practice. Strategy is no longer treated as an annual cycle followed by a year of execution. McKinsey reports that 29 percent of respondents say business and technology cocreate strategic plans throughout the year, nearly double what was reported in the previous survey. Among top performers, nearly half say this iterative cocreation is happening. That changes the planning rhythm. It becomes less annual, more continuous, with decisions revisited as conditions evolve.
I recognise the organisational consequences behind that. When technology is genuinely part of strategy, architecture decisions start being discussed as business decisions. Data becomes a growth asset rather than an IT deliverable. Roadmaps become negotiations about outcomes, not lists of projects.
McKinsey then connects this to operating model, not only governance. They describe product and platform operating models as mechanisms that align delivery with strategy and support an “intelligence layer” across data, AI models, and decision systems. They also quantify adoption. Nearly one in ten top-performing companies report having fully adopted product and platform models across all teams, more than four times the rate of other organisations. Nearly half of top performers say at least half their teams now operate this way. The wording is less important than the signal. High performers are changing how they work, not only what they buy.
That immediately becomes a leadership issue. Product and platform models require shared ownership between business and tech. They demand faster decision-making, clearer accountability, and talent capable of working across functions. McKinsey notes that top performers hire technology executives at nearly twice the rate of others, 37 percent versus 19 percent. They also hire more financial managers to strengthen ROI discipline on technology investment. This is organisational design, not a communication exercise.
AI is the other strong signal in the report, and it is not framed as an optional topic. McKinsey reports that AI has overtaken cybersecurity and infrastructure modernisation as the top area of investment over the next two years. Half of all companies identify AI as a priority investment, and among top performers that rises to 54 percent. AI is increasingly treated as a core capability, not a side initiative.
Budget numbers add another dimension. McKinsey notes that AI is straining budgets, and yet many organisations plan to invest through the pressure. Half of respondents plan to increase technology budgets by more than 4 percent in 2026 versus 2025. Among top performers, 28 percent plan increases above 10 percent, compared with 3 percent of other organisations. The difference is stark. Higher performers appear more willing to fund technology ambition at scale, even in a constrained environment.
The report is also clear on friction points. A quarter of top performers say they lack the data foundations needed to scale agentic AI securely and reliably. Across the whole sample, roughly a third cite AI talent gaps and integration challenges with existing systems. Change management becomes a visible constraint too. Nearly a quarter of top performers cite it as a core challenge, versus 15 percent of other companies. Those are very practical blockers, and they match what many organisations experience once they move beyond pilots.
That is where the CIO’s role expands. Scaling AI is not mainly a tool deployment topic. It affects workflows, decision rights, measurement, and risk exposure. A CIO who treats AI as a rollout will struggle. A CIO who treats it as an operating model shift has a chance of turning investment into measurable outcomes.
Talent strategy in the McKinsey report is equally blunt. They describe a widening maturity gap. Top performers use three levers together: insourcing, reskilling, and targeted hiring. They make a distinction that matters: outsourcing can buy capacity, but insourcing builds capability. Nearly half of top performers plan to increase insourcing, compared with 37 percent of other organisations. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of non-top performers expect to increase outsourcing of lower-demand work. It may relieve short-term pressure, but it does not build long-term transformation strength.
This explains why I cannot treat strategy as a document refreshed once a year. McKinsey argues for continuous business-tech cocreation and more frequent strategic reviews as a minimum. It means linking technology priorities to business objectives in a way that survives scrutiny, including financial scrutiny. It means treating operating model as part of the strategy, not as an afterthought delegated to delivery teams.
Four imperatives: put technology at the center of strategy, cocreate continuously, use AI to drive innovation, and rewire the business around AI. I read it less as advice and more as a description of what high-performing companies are already doing: technology leadership that helps design the enterprise, not only run the IT estate.
One takeaway stays with me. The CIO role is being judged through outcomes. Not by how sophisticated our tools are, and not by how well we manage tickets. Outcomes that show up in growth, margin, resilience, and speed. Organisations that keep treating IT as a back-office function will still spend heavily, because everyone does. The difference is whether that spend becomes advantage.
