The CIO Professional Network, the private CIO, CISO, and CTO community for The National CIO Review, convened their first Roundtable discussion of the new year with a grounded conversation on what CIOs are truly prioritizing for 2026. The session brought members together for an open dialogue on goals, constraints, and the realities shaping technology leadership in the year ahead.
Participants did not treat 2026 as a clean slate, noting that most CIOs are carrying forward complex, multi-year initiatives while facing new pressures around AI governance, resilience, capacity, and talent.
What emerged was a list of practical ideologies of how leaders are balancing commitments with execution, and clarity with uncertainty.
Why It Matters: For CIOs, planning for 2026 requires discipline more than ambition. Budgets remain constrained, teams are stretched, and expectations continue to rise. At the same time, boards and executive leaders are pressing for progress on security posture, and AI use. This Roundtable reinforced that leadership effectiveness will be determined by focus, sequencing, and communication more so than the volume of initiatives underway.
- Resolutions Are About Tradeoffs, Not Wish Lists: The discussion was framed by emphasizing that instead of aspirational goal-setting, resolutions are now exercises in prioritization and restraint. Most organizations already have more initiatives than delivery capacity, and the real leadership work is deciding what not to pursue. Members noted that unresolved tradeoffs inevitably surface later as missed deadlines, quality issues, or team burnout. For 2026, CIOs are treating resolutions as commitments to a smaller number of outcomes, aligning leadership teams around shared expectations and explicitly acknowledging what will be deferred.
- Capacity Planning Is Now a Leadership Responsibility: It was highlighted that execution challenges rarely stem from a lack of strategy or desire. Instead, they arise when organizations overcommit without reconciling true delivery capacity. CIOs are being asked to drive security improvements and AI adoption simultaneously, often with flat or shrinking resources. The group emphasized that honest capacity planning has become a core leadership responsibility over a project management exercise. This includes making sequencing visible, setting realistic timelines, and being transparent with stakeholders when tradeoffs are required to protect teams and outcomes.
- Resilience Has Moved to the Top of the Agenda: Several attendees led on how disaster recovery and business continuity have shifted to board-level priorities. Recent incidents in the news have exposed gaps in assumptions around recovery time objectives and third-party dependencies. Members shared that 2026 planning increasingly includes revisiting DR strategies, testing failover scenarios, and clarifying accountability across IT, security, and the business. The clear takeaway was that resilience has become is a visible leadership commitment that must be reinforced through planning, testing, and communication.
- AI Adoption Is Moving Faster Than Governance: Concerns were raised about continued untracked AI use across teams. Discussion explored how AI tools are appearing outside formal approval processes, which is creating exposure around data handling and compliance. The group contributed anecdotes of measured organizational approaches by focusing on training and policy before broad deployment, agreeing that early guardrails and education help prevent downstream risk and confusion.
- Modernization Depends on Readiness Beyond Technology: Emphasis was placed on the fact that large-scale initiatives, such as ERP or core platform modernization, often stall when organizations underestimate the organizational change required. Data discipline and decision rights frequently become the true bottlenecks. Leaders shared that slowing down early to reset expectations and clarify ownership can significantly reduce rework later. The sentiment remained that modernization in 2026 is as much about preparing the organization to change as it is about selecting the right technology.
- People Challenges Are Now the Hardest Part: The group spoke to the growing impact of fatigue, resistance, and skill gaps across teams. Members acknowledged that compensation constraints, learning curves, and continuous change are affecting morale and retention. The group agreed that people challenges now outweigh technical ones in many initiatives. CIOs must invest more time in communication, expectation-setting, and support, while still holding teams accountable to evolving standards. In 2026, effective people leadership is inseparable from technology leadership.
- Align Expectations Early and Revisit Them Often: Across the discussion, participants returned to the importance of continuous alignment with executive peers and business leaders. Priorities shift throughout the year with changing assumptions giving way to new pressures. CIOs who proactively revisit timelines and success criteria are better positioned to maintain trust and avoid friction when plans inevitably evolve. Regular alignment conversations help move the CIO role away from reactive problem-solving and towards collaboration.
