Key Challenges for CEOs in Poland in 2026

Key challenges for CEOs in Poland in 2026 revolve around five connected areas: profitability, growth, AI, talent, and risk. For leadership teams, these are no longer separate topics. They now shape one operating agenda.

Polish CEOs are trying to protect margins while still building room for expansion. At the same time, they are making decisions under stronger market, technology, and geopolitical pressure than a year ago. The latest NAJ/IESF findings for Poland show that the top priorities include cost management and profitability, market expansion, digital transformation and AI, talent acquisition and retention, and geopolitical and economic risk management.

Why the CEO agenda in Poland looks different in 2026

The biggest shift is that strategy and execution now move together. A CEO can no longer separate financial performance from technology, people, and resilience.

Until recently, many companies could transform in stages. First, they optimized costs. Then, they pushed commercial growth. Only later did they modernize operations and management systems. Today, that sequence is harder to maintain.

The Polish CEO dataset shows a clear balance between financial discipline and growth ambitions. On one side, cost management and profitability remain the most frequently mentioned strategic priority. On the other, market expansion, AI, and talent are also high on the list.

That changes the nature of leadership. A CEO is no longer managing only the budget or only the strategy. Instead, the role is about managing the company’s ability to execute under constant pressure and changing conditions.

Therefore, any serious discussion about the CEO agenda in Poland in 2026 should start with sequencing. Not every challenge must be solved at once. However, leadership teams need to know which issue is slowing growth or weakening performance right now.

Which priorities dominate executive decision-making

Margin protection, growth, and execution capacity are now at the center of the CEO agenda. AI is becoming a management tool, not just a technology initiative.

In the Polish research sample, the highest-ranked priorities were cost management and profitability, market expansion and international growth, digital transformation and AI, talent acquisition and retention, and geopolitical and economic risk management. This is a pragmatic structure. It suggests that CEOs are not looking for fashionable concepts. They are looking for control, visibility, and sustainable growth.

In practice, the agenda often looks like this:

• Profitability: the company must protect margins, simplify operations, and control fixed costs.
• Growth: the organization wants to enter new markets or grow its share in existing ones.
• AI and digital capability: leadership expects better productivity, stronger data quality, and faster decisions.
• Talent: without strong leaders in critical roles, strategy does not translate into execution.
• Risk: the business must respond to regulatory shifts, economic uncertainty, and supply chain exposure.

That is why key challenges for CEOs in Poland in 2026 cannot be reduced to one issue. In reality, executives must balance several tensions at the same time. They need to save and invest, accelerate and reduce risk, adopt AI and keep teams engaged.

Sector differences also matter. In manufacturing, operational efficiency, supply chain stability, and margin protection are especially visible. In technology and IT, scaling, innovation, and access to critical capabilities take on greater weight. In service sectors, customer experience, process efficiency, and team quality often become more important.

Where companies lose execution speed most often

The problem is rarely the strategy itself. More often, the breakdown happens between board-level decisions and organizational action.

The first barrier is a mismatch between ambition and capacity. Leadership teams plan growth, but the business still lacks the people, processes, or data needed to sustain it. As a result, the strategy looks convincing in presentations but weaker in operations.

The second obstacle is leadership depth. When the right leaders are missing, even a strong strategy loses momentum. This is especially true for roles that combine commercial responsibility, operational ownership, and change leadership. That helps explain why talent acquisition and retention remain so high on the Polish CEO agenda.

A third source of delay is an overloaded transformation portfolio. Companies launch multiple initiatives in parallel, yet they do not assign one clear owner for the outcome. In that situation, each function may perform reasonably well on its own terms, but the business still fails to move at the right speed.

A fourth trap appears around AI adoption. Some organizations invest in tools, but they do not change how decisions are made. Technology alone will not create momentum if managers still work with fragmented data, unclear accountability, and inconsistent KPIs.

That is why leadership teams should return to a few simple questions. Which roles are critical to execution? Where is margin erosion actually happening? Which decisions will have the greatest impact over the next quarter? Only then does transformation become operational rather than symbolic.

Related internal resources that expand this topic include Challenges for CEOs in 2025, Executive Search Poland.

What CEOs should do in the next 90 days

The strongest companies do not try to fix everything at once. They start with a few decisions that unlock execution.

A practical 90-day plan usually includes four steps.

Set one shared priority for the leadership team

First, the board should define one core outcome for the quarter. It may be margin recovery, sales growth, implementation speed, or stabilization of a critical function. What matters is that the leadership team understands that priority in exactly the same way.

Map the roles that are critical to strategy execution

Next, the company should identify which roles truly hold the business together. In one case, that may be the COO. In another, it may be a Plant Manager, CFO, or transformation leader. Without this map, it is difficult to make talent decisions that support delivery.

Separate what is important from what is merely urgent

The next step is to reduce the number of parallel initiatives. If everything is strategic, nothing is truly strategic. Therefore, companies need to focus on the projects that directly affect performance or resilience.

Build a simple decision and risk review rhythm

Finally, the organization needs a short and regular management rhythm based on data. This matters even more when cost pressure and geopolitical exposure are rising. In practice, key challenges for CEOs in Poland in 2026 demand fewer declarations and more clarity around decisions, owners, and deadlines.

“In 2026, the biggest challenge for CEOs in Poland is not choosing between profitability, growth, technology, or talent. It is leading all four at the same time without losing execution speed.”

Ewa Adamczyk, Dorota Wróblewska, Krzysztof Adamczyk

Want to better understand which roles and decisions will matter most for strategy execution in 2026?

NAJ supports companies in assessing leadership priorities, mapping the market, and planning critical hires. This article is primarily meant to help structure the topic and show where execution risks most often emerge today.

Author: Ewa Adamczyk, Dorota Wróblewska, Krzysztof Adamczyk

FAQ

What matters most for CEOs in Poland today

The central task is to balance performance with the company’s ability to keep growing. In other words, businesses need to protect margins, invest selectively, and strengthen leadership capacity at the same time.

Is AI already a board-level priority

Yes. AI is increasingly treated as part of productivity, decision quality, and operating control rather than as a standalone IT topic. The Polish CEO data also confirms its growing importance.

Why is talent still such a high priority

Because strategy slows down without the right leaders in place. A company may have capital, demand, and a strong plan, but without capable people in critical roles, execution weakens.

Which risks should boards monitor most closely

In most cases, the answer is a mix of cost pressure, regulation, geopolitical uncertainty, and operational exposure. The goal is not only to identify risks, but also to build the ability to respond quickly.

Published: 2026-05-02 | Updated: 2026-05-02