Margarita Núñez Canal
At the start of 2026, something feels different in boardrooms. The spreadsheets are still there, but leadership teams are increasingly looking up from them, scanning the wider map. Tariffs are back in the conversation. Supply chains tied to AI and critical technologies are under scrutiny. Political tensions are no longer background noise; they are shaping cost structures, investment timelines and reputational exposure.
Global growth may be forecast as moderate, yet few executives describe the climate as stable. What many are experiencing is not crisis, but reconfiguration. Competitive dynamics are being rewritten by geostrategic rivalry, regulatory shifts and technological acceleration. In this new ‘age of competition’, predictability itself has become a scarce resource.
Against this backdrop, the expectations placed on business are evolving. Companies are no longer assessed solely on performance metrics, but on how they behave under pressure: how they communicate, how they govern technology, how they respond when commercial logic collides with ethical tension. The line between operational decision and reputational consequence has grown thinner.
Artificial intelligence intensifies this reality. Adoption is accelerating rapidly, but so is scrutiny. The promise of efficiency sits alongside unanswered questions about oversight, accountability and unintended risk. Cybersecurity, too, continues to demonstrate that the most sophisticated systems remain vulnerable if judgment and culture do not keep pace. Speed, without governance, is fragile.
All of this leads to a deeper question: what kind of leadership actually works in a turbulent economy?
For years, organizations have invested heavily in technical expertise and digital capability. Those remain essential. But increasingly, attention is turning to a different set of capabilities often labeled ‘power skills’. Power skills are the capabilities that allow strategy to survive uncertainty. They shape how leaders interpret ambiguity, balance competing priorities and maintain coherence when signals conflict.
These are not cosmetic traits. They influence how decisions are made when information is incomplete, when regulatory landscapes are shifting, and when every strategic move carries commercial, political and social implications at once. They determine whether organizations merely react to headlines or build consistent responses that earn trust.
This shift also challenges the MBA. Executive education that truly adds value is the kind that trains the ‘decision muscle’, not the kind that simply refreshes content. In a world where volatility is structural rather than episodic, leaders need more than updated frameworks; they need disciplined judgment, ethical clarity and the capacity to sustain cooperation in environments that often reward confrontation.
The full article will be published in CEO Magazine’s MBA ranking edition next month and explores why power skills are emerging as a strategic asset rather than a soft add-on, how geopolitical and technological pressures are redefining what responsible growth looks like, and what this means for the next wave of executive development.
In an economy on high alert, the decisive advantage may not lie in having more information but in knowing how to act on it.
Margarita Núñez Canal is Senior Lecturer in Business Organization and Academic Director at Nebrija Business & Technology School.
