Deloitte’s Global Technology Leadership Study has tracked the steady expansion of tech C-suite roles over the past decade. We’ve watched technology leaders evolve from operational stewards to enterprise strategists, shaping strategy, leading transformation, and driving growth.
This year’s study, drawing on responses from more than 660 technology leaders globally (see methodology), reinforces that trajectory while revealing an inflection point. As artificial intelligence rises to the top of CEO2 and board priorities,3 technology leaders are increasingly centering their agendas and measures of success around AI, even as their mandate expands beyond it. At the same time, they’re being asked to deliver more while being constrained by the structures they’re meant to transform. The expectation is to embed AI across the enterprise—often within legacy environments and without proportional increases in funding or support—while sustaining everything they already own.4
Despite the pressure, tech leaders are not retreating. More than 7 in 10 respondents to our 2026 survey feel inspired or determined about the future of their role. They recognize that AI introduces complexity but also creates an opportunity to step forward as architects of enterprise advantage.
As AI accelerates expectations, tech leaders may need to fundamentally change how they operate. The future is unlikely to be built on structures and approaches designed for the past. Success increasingly appears to require both deep technical expertise and the ability to drive outcomes across the enterprise—translating technology vision into value5 while maintaining fluency in architecture, AI, cybersecurity, risk, and emerging technologies.6 Enterprise leadership alone may no longer be sufficient, and technical depth is becoming harder to treat as optional. The emerging mandate is both. READ MORE
By Anjali Shaikh, Steve Pratt, Lou DiLorenzo Jr., Diana Kearns-Manolatos, Fay Chen
Source: deloitte.com
Speaking at the HR World Summit in Porto, Qadeer explained that AI had shifted the role of HR, calling for the profession to move from “stewards of corporate culture to activators of pace and performance”.
The legend of John Henry — the Black steel-driver who raced a steam-powered drill during the Industrial Revolution and won, only to die from the effort — has long been read as a tragedy of human pride versus machine efficiency. But Jayson Council and Dax-Devlon Ross, two strategists who have spent decades at the intersection of equity work, organizational transformation, and cross-sector leadership, want to reframe it entirely.
The CEO role has never been easy. But the pressures facing today’s chief executives—activism, AI disruption, geopolitical volatility, stakeholder scrutiny, and accelerated expectations for results—are changing not only what CEOs must do, but how boards must think about CEO succession.
