✍️ Editor’s Note — Power Didn’t Disappear. It Moved.

Over the past two months, we’ve talked about leverage and visibility.

But visibility alone doesn’t guarantee influence.

To understand what 2026 demands of strategists, researchers and insight leaders, we need to look at something bigger:

Where is power actually moving?

AI hasn’t flattened organisations.

It has redistributed influence.

And the shift is subtle.

📈 Market Signal — Influence Is Moving to the Integrators

The major consulting firms are already documenting this shift.

Research from McKinsey into corporate transformations found that 70% of successful transformation programmes prioritised cross-functional teams early, compared with only around 20% of unsuccessful ones.

The same body of work shows that cross-functional transformations outperform single-function initiatives by 30–40% in terms of value delivered.

And yet collaboration remains difficult.

McKinsey also reports that three out of four cross-functional teams underperform on key metrics, largely because organisations struggle to align expertise across functions.

The implication is important.

The scarce capability isn’t intelligence or technical skill.

It’s integration.

Power is increasingly concentrating around people who can:

• connect insight to commercial decisions
• translate between technical and non-technical teams
• reduce friction between functions

In a world of abundant information, alignment becomes the real bottleneck.

🗣 Frontline — “I’m Not the Expert. I’m the Bridge.”

A strategy director at a global brand described their evolving role like this:

“I’m not the person who knows the most about AI, and I’m not the commercial lead either. But I’m the one who makes the two talk to each other. That’s where the influence is now.”

This is becoming a familiar pattern.

The most valuable people in many organisations are no longer the deepest specialists.

They are the connectors — the people who can move ideas across boundaries.

🔧 Sharp Skill — Influence Without Ownership

March’s Sharp Skill is uncomfortable but increasingly essential:

Influence without formal authority.

In cross-functional environments, few people own the full problem.

But influence often belongs to the person who can:

1. Frame the problem before it becomes political
2. Make trade-offs visible across teams
3. Sequence work so others can move confidently

When organisations struggle to align functions, the people who reduce that friction become disproportionately influential.

🌟 Case in Point — The Translator Advantage

One insight lead we spoke to didn’t increase their influence by becoming more technical.

Instead, they positioned themselves between data science and marketing.

They translated modelling outputs into commercial decisions.

They surfaced trade-offs between experimentation and brand risk.

They didn’t own the budget.

They didn’t own the roadmap.

But they owned the narrative that connected them.

In a year of AI experimentation, that narrative ownership became decisive.

✂️ Closing Thought

Information is no longer scarce.

Alignment is.

And power tends to follow scarcity.

The strategist of 2020 controlled insight. The strategist of 2026 connects insight, technology and decisions.

That’s where the influence now lives.