11 Q UA RT E R _ 0 2 _ 2 0 2 6 - - - - - 4. Building the tech and AI muscle of your senior business leaders should be a top priority. We don’t have a single success story where senior business leaders were not in the driver’s seat. IT leaders can support the transformation, of course, but it’s business leaders who need to drive it. At leading companies, they actively own the tech agenda—from defining how the business will be reimagined with technology to steering solution development to ensuring value delivery. These leaders, usually one or three levels below the CEO, combine deep business domain expertise with technology, data, and AI know-how that makes them formidable business transformers. They are conceptualizing, building, and running AI systems that power key aspects of the business. Are your senior business leaders tech- and AI-capable? 5. Every tech and AI transformation is a people transformation. Leading companies increase their tech talent capability and density by following what we call the “30–70 shifts”: more than 70 percent of tal ent should be in-house, more than 70 percent of them should be “doer” engineers who build great software-based solutions, and more than 70 per cent of them should perform at higher skill levels (that is, competent or expert). This produces small, highly skilled teams that outperform large armies of lower-skilled staff. On the business side, leaders evolve into domain and solution owners, accountable for outcomes and leading cross-functional agile teams. Leading compa nies have largely completed this transition, which results in higher talent density and much tighter business ownership. As AI agents take on more of the coordination, execution, and routine decision-making work, human roles shift up the value stack. Engineers spend less time on routine coding tasks and more time designing architecture, workflows, constraints, and quality controls. Business and solution leaders focus less on task management and more on setting objectives, defining success metrics, and making trade-offs. The result is fewer people doing higher-leverage work, with clearer accountability and faster learning loops. Have you progressed enough on your people transformation? The fully revised second edition of the bestselling Rewired is a practical playbook showing how companies can effectively apply Al to solve real business problems, at scale. It addresses the profound implications of Al-driven trans formations for CEOs, executive teams, and boards. This story has been excerpted from Rewired: How Leading Companies Win with Technology and AI , by Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, and Robert Levin, with Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky, with per mission from the publisher, Wiley. Copyright © 2026 by McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved. The fully revised second edition of the bestselling Rewired is a practical playbook showing how companies can effectively apply Al to solve real business problems, at scale. It addresses the profound implications of Al-driven trans- formations for CEOs, executive teams, and boards. This story has been excerpted from Rewired: How Leading Companies Win with Technology and AI , by Eric Lamarre, Kate Smaje, and Robert Levin, with Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky, with per- mission from the publisher, Wiley. Copyright © 2026 by McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved.