DAVOS 2026: A Spirit of Dialogue needs a delivery system
Davos 2026 put dialogue back at the center. This perspective is not a recap, but a delivery lens on what the theme implies for leaders who need decisions, not just alignment.
The question behind this piece
The World Economic Forum brings leaders together in Davos each year for a week of meetings, deals, and big themes. 2026 was unusually consequential: sharper geopolitical competition, trade and tariff escalation, and tighter constraints on capital, energy, and infrastructure. A Spirit of Dialogue fits the moment. But dialogue is not the outcome. The outcome will be determined by whether leaders convert what they heard into clear choices, accountable owners, and execution that holds.
Why this matters now
The last 12 to 24 months have made planning harder in three ways.
First, geopolitical and trade conditions can shift assumptions in days, not quarters. The operating requirement is no longer a single “best plan.” It is a primary plan with credible options and explicit triggers.
Second, AI has moved from a software conversation to an infrastructure conversation. Leaders still talk about productivity, but the binding constraints are practical: data access, compute, energy, security, talent, and adoption in real workflows. The question has shifted from “should we adopt?” to “can we execute at scale, safely, and with credibility?”
Third, macro constraints are back. Capital is more selective, scrutiny is higher, and large programs face lower tolerance for overruns. The cost of indecision rises, and so does the cost of weak governance.
Dialogue without decision rights is diplomacy, not delivery.
Our perspective
A Spirit of Dialogue is not a mood. It is a management system. If you want dialogue to translate into outcomes, three disciplines matter.
I. Translate themes into decisions, not talking points
Davos-level themes are broad by design. Your leadership team’s job is to convert them into a short list of decisions that are unavoidable in the near term. Examples:
- Which partners, corridors, or markets get priority if trade friction rises?
- Which AI use cases move from pilot to production, and which get stopped?
- Which operational constraints become binding (energy, capacity, permitting, supply chain)?
- What will we stop funding to protect the few bets that matter?
If decisions are not named, owned, and time-bound, dialogue becomes performance theater.
II. Build a dialogue portfolio, not a single bet
In a fragmented world, reliance on one corridor, one regulator, or one counterparty becomes structural risk. Treat dialogue like a portfolio: a small number of high-conviction partnerships, plus credible options you can activate quickly. Portfolio thinking is how you avoid panic when assumptions break.
III. Put governance around the messy middle
Most strategies fail in the handoff between agreeing and shipping. The antidote is not more meetings. It is clear ownership, decision rights, cadence, and visible logs of decisions and risks.
A practical starting point is a one-page Dialogue-to-Delivery spine:
- Decision and Delivery Agenda: 5–8 decisions, each with an owner and a date.
- Assumption register: what must stay true, and early warning indicators.
- Milestones and metrics: near-term milestones with weekly trackable measures.
- Risk and dependency map: what can block execution (trade, energy, regulation, vendors).
- Operating cadence: weekly exec review, monthly reset, quarterly reallocation.
In 2026, resilience is a portfolio, not a posture.
What we offer and how we can help:
Strathen Group can run a structured one-day workshop, Dialogue-to-Delivery, to translate Davos 2026 themes into a Decision and Delivery Agenda aligned to your mandate.
We run a decision-led day in three blocks:
- Signal triage: separate what matters from noise, grounded in your mandate, constraints, and exposure.
- Implications and choices: translate themes into a short list of unavoidable decisions, with explicit tradeoffs.
- Delivery design: assign owners and dates, define assumptions and triggers, and set a lightweight weekly governance cadence.
What you leave with
An Executive Decision Pack, including:
- A Signal Map tailored to your operating context and constraints.
- A Decision and Delivery Agenda with owners, dates, and dependencies.
- An Assumption Register with early warning indicators and triggers.
- A Delivery Cadence Pack (decision log, risk log, KPI set, weekly review format).
If this would be useful for your organization's mandate, let's connect.
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Top image: Impressions from the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 19 January.
Image credit: World Economic Forum / Chris Heeney, via UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (Flickr), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized for web.
