–by Jaya Pathak
- AI Governance:
Get It Under Control or Don’t Scale It By 2026, the prize doesn’t go to the company running the most experiments. It goes to the one that can deploy AI without triggering a lawsuit, a PR disaster, or a breach of contract. The winning strategy isn’t to slow down; it’s to move with “controlled speed”—shipping innovation only when it has the right monitoring and decision rules bolted on.
The European Union AI Act is the first comprehensive AI law in the world and is introducing various a structured process in order to balance innovation of its safety. In 2025, everyday general purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT or other image generators were required to submit their transparency reports, risk assessments and clear labelling of AI output in order to prevent deception.
Real-world check: A consumer lender using AI to sort documents might think it’s just a back-office upgrade. That changes the moment a partner asks for proof of training data, bias testing, and human oversight. The firms that win will have a “model dossier” ready to go: clear purpose, data history, drift warnings, and a named human responsible for the output.
- Cyber Risk
It is Just “Business Risk” Now Cybersecurity is no longer a tech topic for the end of the board meeting. It is a balance-sheet threat that stops you from shipping goods, sending bills, or keeping contracts.
NIST acknowledged this shift by adding a sixth pillar- “Govern”-to its Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. This emphasizes that leadership owns the risk. In 2096, insurance companies and auditors we’ll lean towards this standard and pin down exactly what we are counting as reasonable security encompassing no more vague promises and will set just clear benchmarks for cyber defences.
The leadership test: Can you put a dollar figure on the revenue lost from a two-week outage? Can you point to the specific controls that lower that number? If you can’t, you aren’t governing security; you’re just hoping your IT team has it covered.
Example: A manufacturer might find its biggest weak point isn’t ransomware on a laptop, but a single integration with a shipping partner that, if broken, halts all deliveries. The fix isn’t software; it’s better vendor contracts and a rehearsed plan B.
- Capital Discipline
It beats Growth at all costs in 2026; leaders are relearning an old lesson: your strategy is only as good as your financing. When money is cheap, you can hide sloppy operations. When credit tightens, only the companies with disciplined cash management stay bankable.
The Federal Reserve’s July 2025 survey reviews that banks are making loans tougher to get whereas businesses are showing least interest in borrowing. This tough combination is laying all the groundwork for challenging 2026 ahead. Financial optionality is now a competitive weapon.
What to change:
- Forecasts are for decisions, not slides. A 13-week cash view should dictate when you buy inventory or hire staff.
- Plan for the bad days. Set clear triggers. If X happens, we immediately delay capital spending or raise prices.
- Price for the cost of money. A contract with low margins and slow payment terms isn’t revenue; it’s a loan you are giving to your customer.
- Two software firms might grow at the same speed. One is safe because they get paid upfront. The other, offering “net-90” terms to be nice, will eventually find out that customer goodwill doesn’t pay the payroll.
- Tariffs
They are a Design Problem, Not Just Politics Stop treating tariffs like political weather you can’t control. Treat them as an operational design challenge. The real cost is sudden price jumps and distraction of renegotiating deals not just the tax itself.
Lock down three things:
- Unit economics on demand: Know your landed cost and margin floor by channel, instantly.
- Real supplier options: Not just a name on a list, but an alternative supplier with tooling and quality checks already done.
- Pricing rules: Know exactly who has the authority to add a surcharge and how to explain it to the client.
Example: A retailer importing packaging can protect margins not by cutting costs, but by redesigning the box to use less tariff-heavy material per unit. That’s not accounting; that’s engineering your way out of exposure.
- Managing Output
Workforce is a mixture with full time staff, contractors as well as AI tools. “Headcount” is now a useless metric. You need to measure throughput and quality.
Smart firms are building a “skills ledger” rather than a list of job titles. They map out which tasks get automated, which need a human review, and which are strictly human-led for legal or brand reasons. Management routines have to change, too—less time micromanaging inputs, more time grading the output.
Example: Take the example of a consulting firm. Now imagine lawyers, accountants and advisors and staffs will spend hours digging up data, writing reports and formatting basics. Tools such as chat bots cannot prepare the first draft within a minute encompassing all the facts and summaries. And no one loses jobs. It will allow the senior staff to focus on client strategy and negotiation which will actually justify their high fee.
FAQs
- Which trend comes first?
Follow the bottleneck. If cash is tight, fix your forecasting and collections first. If your product relies on regulated AI, get your governance sorted before you try to grow.
- How do I make AI safer without killing speed?
Standardize the paperwork. You will have to ensure that every model has an owner and checks are built into the development process.
- How do I know if our cyber security is “good enough”?
When you can quantify exactly what an outage costs you, show a rehearsed plan to handle it, and prove your governance matches the risk you are taking.
- How do tariffs change strategy?
They force you to act faster on pricing and to design products that deliver the same value with less exposure to imported costs per unit.
- How do I manage productivity with AI in the mix?
Stop watching the clock. Set clear quality standards for the output and redesign workflows so humans focus on judgment calls while machines handle the repetitive prep work.
