Pace, focus and the discipline of choice
There’s a lot to keep an eye on in 2026. How can leaders make the right choices with the best outcomes for them and their institutions?
By Hannah Holmes, Dean of Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
“Leaders are increasingly aware that momentum in one area can generate fragility elsewhere.”
“People, rather than strategy or funding, are becoming the binding constraint on progress.”
“Business schools are increasingly expected to articulate how their activity contributes to the economic, professional and social ecosystems of the regions.”
At the start of 2026, business school leaders find themselves in a familiar but intensified position. The forces reshaping higher education are not new, but their cumulative impact is becoming harder to ignore. Digital technologies are embedded rather than emerging.
Expectations from students, employers and society continue to expand. At the same time, institutional capacity, financial headroom and workforce resilience are under sustained pressure.
As a result, leadership attention in 2026 is less focused on identifying the next major initiative and more on interpreting signals from the system. Senior leaders are watching carefully for where momentum is productive, where it creates fragility, and where focus and restraint are required to sustain quality and credibility. Several themes stand out as area leaders are actively looking out for this year.
What leaders are watching in 2026
Across institutions, a common set of signals is shaping leadership judgement:
- Whether the pace of technological change is strengthening capability or stretching people beyond sustainable limits.
- How far institutional portfolios remain coherent as new programmes, formats and partnerships accumulate.
- Whether staff capacity and confidence are emerging as the primary constraint on progress.
- How curriculum reform is balancing relevance with depth and quality.
- Where expectations around place, partnership and contribution are sharpening.
- How inclusion is being judged through outcomes rather than access alone.
- Whether pace itself is becoming a strategic decision rather than an assumed good.
These are not abstract concerns. They directly inform decisions about investment, sequencing and prioritisation. Each reflects a deeper question leaders are grappling with in 2026: how to keep institutions moving forward at speed, without undermining the very capabilities that make progress possible.
Pace as a strategic variable
One of the most striking shifts at the start of 2026 is how leaders are thinking about pace. Speed is no longer treated as an unqualified virtue. Instead, leaders are increasingly aware that momentum in one area can generate fragility elsewhere.
This does not mean slowing down. Competitive, regulatory and technological pressures still demand movement. What has changed is the recognition that pace must be governed. Leaders are paying close attention to where acceleration builds capability and where it erodes trust, confidence or quality.
In practice, this means making explicit choices. Some initiatives are deliberately fast-tracked because they unlock long-term benefit or address immediate risk. Others are sequenced more slowly to allow learning, adaptation and consolidation. The leaders who appear most effective in 2026 are those who can explain these choices clearly, rather than defaulting to constant motion across the board.
The absorption gap between innovation and capacity
Leaders are closely watching a signal linked to pace with growing concern: the widening gap between technological possibility and institutional absorption. Artificial intelligence, learning analytics and automation are now routine features of teaching platforms, research processes and administrative systems. The question in 2026 is not whether these tools exist, but whether they are being integrated in ways that genuinely improve practice.
Many leaders are noticing that staff experience digital change as cumulative rather than strategic. New systems are layered onto existing ones, often without sufficient time to adapt or retire older practices. The risk is not technological failure, but erosion of professional confidence and clarity.
For senior leaders, this has sharpened attention on capability building. Investment decisions are increasingly judged not only on functionality, but on whether institutions have the time, skills and support structures to use new tools well. The signal leaders are watching is whether innovation is creating coherence or complexity.
From responsiveness to institutional coherence
Another area of heightened attention in 2026 is institutional coherence. For much of the past decade, responsiveness to market signals has been rewarded. New programmes, formats and partnerships were often seen as evidence of relevance and agility.
Leaders are now more alert to the costs of this approach. As portfolios expand, the risk of fragmentation grows. Students, staff and external partners can struggle to understand what an institution stands for and how different activities connect.
In response, leaders are increasingly prioritising coherence over accumulation. They are asking whether institutional activity aligns with a clear purpose and whether growth in one area creates unintended pressure in another. The ability to articulate why certain opportunities are pursued and others declined is becoming a marker of leadership credibility.
People as a binding constraint
Perhaps the most consequential signal leaders are watching in 2026 is the extent to which people, rather than strategy or funding, are becoming the binding constraint on progress.
Workforce fatigue, recruitment challenges and thinning layers of middle leadership are shaping what institutions can realistically deliver.
In this context, care for people is not framed as a value statement, but as a condition for institutional effectiveness. Leaders are paying attention to early indicators of overload: declining willingness to experiment, reduced trust in central initiatives, or a sense that change is happening faster than it can be meaningfully absorbed.
These signals inform decisions about pacing, prioritisation and focus. Institutions that ignore them risk undermining their own capacity to innovate, regardless of how compelling their strategies appear on paper.
Curriculum reform and the risk of overload
Curriculum is another area where leaders are watching closely in 2026. Pressure to address emerging skills, digital capability, sustainability and ethics continues to intensify. The danger leaders see is not irrelevance, but overcrowding.
Programmes that attempt to respond to every signal risk becoming collections of content rather than coherent learning journeys. Research on learning design consistently shows that depth, sequencing and reinforcement matter more than coverage.
As a result, leaders are increasingly focused on identifying a small number of core capabilities that define their graduates and ensuring these are intentionally developed across programmes. Restraint in curriculum reform is being reframed as a commitment to quality rather than a lack of ambition.
Focus, specialisation and collaboration
Focus is emerging as a recurring theme across leadership conversations in 2026. There is growing recognition that institutions cannot excel in all areas simultaneously. Expectations of specialisation and collaboration are becoming more explicit, with institutions encouraged to build on strengths rather than default to uniform provision.
For business schools, this raises difficult but necessary questions about where to invest, where to partner and where to step back. Leaders are watching for signals that indicate whether activity aligns with institutional capability and purpose, or whether it is driven by short-term opportunity.
This focus also has a spatial dimension. Business schools are increasingly expected to articulate how their activity contributes to the economic, professional and social ecosystems of the regions and cities in which they are based, alongside their global engagement. Leaders are therefore balancing international reach with regional depth, recognising that legitimacy and impact increasingly depend on both.
Inclusion judged through outcomes
Inclusion remains a central concern in 2026, but the way it is assessed is shifting. Access alone is no longer seen as sufficient. Attention is turning towards progression, belonging and long-term outcomes for both students and staff.
Senior leaders are watching for evidence that institutional systems genuinely support diverse learners and colleagues once they are part of the organisation. Assessment practices, support structures and informal norms are coming under closer scrutiny.
The signal here is subtle but important. Inclusion is increasingly understood as a design challenge embedded in everyday practice, rather than a standalone initiative. Leaders who miss this shift risk investing energy in visible commitments that do not translate into durable change.
Leading by reading the system
Taken together, these signals suggest that leadership in 2026 is less about bold declarations and more about disciplined interpretation. Senior leaders are spending more time reading their institutions as complex systems, identifying where coherence is weakening, where capacity is stretched and where pace needs to be governed more deliberately.
The most consequential decisions are often subtractive rather than additive. What to stop, what to simplify and what to stabilise are as important as what to launch next.
In this environment, effective leadership is likely to be judged not by how much change is initiated, but by whether institutions remain intelligible, trusted and capable of progress over time. For many senior leaders at the start of 2026, that is precisely what they are looking out for.
Professor Hannah Holmes is dean of the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School and deputy faculty pro-vice chancellor within the faculty of business and law at MMU. Holmes is a senior fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Academy) and chair of the Economic Review’s editorial board. She holds several external board and trustee positions, including at the Prospere Learning Trust and on MMU’s board of governors.