People are the driving force of organizations
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Uncertainty and volatility dominate today’s business environment, creating a challenging backdrop for leaders looking to grow their organizations. Yet while PwC’s 29th Global CEO Survey highlighted that CEOs “see a world beset by challenges”, they are also looking toward “multiyear opportunities” and reinvention.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely seen as a potential driver of business growth, but it requires a high level of investment while the likely returns are not always clear. So, which other levers can leaders deploy to deliver results in 2026 and beyond?
1. Empower your people
For most organizations, people are their driving force. But research by information provider Gallup has found that only 20% of global employees are engaged with their work, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.
How can leaders improve employee engagement to drive better outcomes for their organizations? According to Helen Beedham, organizational expert and author of People Glue, it’s setting people free that paves the way for individual and business success.
“In an increasingly uncertain and competitive world, agility is fundamental for uncovering innovative ideas, new processes and better ways of serving customers,” she says. “It’s the freedom to explore that gives your teams the opportunity and desire to unearth the unexpected and come up with creative ideas and solutions.”
Too many constraints and boundaries can quickly alienate employees. Instead, Beedham advises giving people increased autonomy to use their judgment within day-to-day decisions. She also says it’s important to give them the freedom to grow their skills in ways that motivate them through formal and informal opportunities. They must have the ability to express themselves and their opinion, and be heard, while doing work feels that feel meaningful. Expectations should be clear.
Beedham argues that increased freedom supports engagement and retention, driving business growth and boosting the bottom line.
2. Lead across functions
Modern organizations don’t struggle to grow because of a lack of ideas. They struggle to grow because those ideas sit in silos, says Edward Rowe, governance expert and author of The Standard Model for Business.
Most leaders are trained to operate deeply within a single function, but growth rarely emerges from within one function alone. It comes from the intersection of product, commercial, operations, capital and risk. “The issue is not capability, it’s perspective.,” Rowe suggests. “Leaders are optimized for functional excellence, not for understanding the enterprise as a system.”
A key driver of performance and opportunities in the current business climate is being able to connect the dots between functions and create space for effective collaboration across the organization. According to the O.C. Tanner Global Culture Report 2023, when generalists are empowered to apply their breadth, companies see 114% higher revenue growth.
“Growth is a cross-functional outcome,” notes Rowe. “It requires alignment across the whole system, not just optimization within individual parts. When leaders spend time understanding how every function operates and how those functions shift in importance as their business grows, they are better equipped to spot new markets, manage risk and scale effectively.”
3. Harness user insights for product development
If you want to drive sustainable business growth in the current environment, you must keep the user at the center of your product development, argues Sally Kemkers, co-founder of Untapped Innovation and co-author of Untapping Innovation.
“Bringing users into the process isn’t just about qualifying products and ideas,” Kemkers says. She encourages bringing in consumers early so teams can identify unmet needs and test with users before products become expensive failures, reducing the risk of late-stage rework and improving long-term return on investment.
Deep qualitative research techniques and observing user behaviors in their day-to-day environments as they interact with products are vital ways to gain insights into users so you can assess their habits and feelings. Kemkers also stresses this process should not end once a product has been developed. “Developing a technically superior product is no longer enough to secure success,” she says. “R&D teams need to cultivate the ability to tell the story behind their science, so consumers know why the product was made for them.”
The ability to extract consumer insights, test prototypes, and craft compelling product narratives must be embedded across teams, according to Kemkers. She adds: “With this shared understanding, companies are better positioned to create products that are both technically robust and commercially meaningful, essential in a competitive marketplace.”
4. Lean into traditional marketing
After the first fully AI-generated ad appeared in the NBA finals in June 2025, conversations grew around the potential to drive businesses forward using cost-saving AI marketing campaigns. But Pat Murphy, founder and CEO of global advertising consultancy MurphyCobb Associates, argues that traditional marketing remains an integral driver of business growth.
“In a world where there’s growing fatigue from the constant barrage of AI slop, it’s well-established marketing methods that can still really cut through to consumers,” he says.
TV remains the most effective means of brand building, with the medium accounting for 54.7% of total advertising-generated profit. “Great TV ads never went away – they have always been so powerful for storytelling and forging emotional, human connections between brands and consumers in a way that you don’t get through other media,” Murphy explains.
A similar argument can be made for radio. Research finds that campaigns that allocate 25% of total media spend to audio deliver the strongest uplift, with an overall campaign return on investment that is 9% higher than campaigns without audio in the mix.
“As machines become more powerful, the human qualities behind great work become more valuable, not less,” Murphy concludes. “Leaders cannot neglect the meaningful engagement and connection traditional marketing can drive, which will really make your brand stand out.”
There’s more to business growth than AI
Today AI is dominating so many boardroom conversations it is easy to forget that AI technologies are not the only driver of business growth. In fact, growth can come from a range of drivers including people, leadership approaches, product development and marketing. By investing in these different drivers, leaders can generate positive outcomes for their organizations and set them on course for long-term sustainable success.