South African businesses are operating in a period of structural change.
By Richard Perez, founding director of the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika at the University of Cape Town
In his State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a R1-trillion public infrastructure investment over three years, alongside independent transmission projects that will open the electricity grid to private investment, and expanded public-private partnerships across ports and rail.
These developments signal progress, but their impact will unfold over time rather than all at once.
As implementation begins, the operating environment will continue to evolve. Specialised commercial courts are being established to streamline tender disputes, Eskom’s restructuring task team is expected to report on phased timelines, and regulatory changes are enabling greater private participation in energy and infrastructure.
Infrastructure and regulatory reform do not create instant certainty. For business leaders, the strategic question is not how to wait for stability, but how to build organisations capable of adapting as conditions take shape.
In 2026, advantage will belong not to those with the most detailed forecasts, but to those able to learn and adjust as the landscape evolves.
Seeing Problems Differently
The organisations gaining ground this year share a common trait: they treat disruption as information, not failure. When consumer behaviour shifts or regulations change, they do not interpret it as a breakdown in planning. They treat it as a signal to ask better questions.
This requires comfort with ambiguity as progress is not linear, and solutions are provisional. Leaders who navigate complexity well accept that they are working with incomplete data and that clarity often emerges through action rather than analysis.
In volatile environments, waiting for certainty becomes the highest-risk strategy of all.
Listening Creates Better Strategy
Strong strategy now begins with proximity. Organisations that engage directly with customers, employees, and communities move from abstract planning to grounded decision-making. They replace assumptions with evidence.
A financial services provider can spend months refining a new offering in a boardroom or it can test it with 100 customers over six weeks, learning what resonates and adapting it in real time. The second approach reduces risk, accelerates insight and builds trust by showing responsiveness.
In South Africa, where markets are diverse and conditions uneven, widening who is in the room is not simply inclusive practice; it is competitive advantage. The broader the perspective, the more resilient the strategy.
Action Frees Ideas
The gap between organisations that stagnate and those that progress is often measured in speed. In 2026, ideas cannot be trapped inside slide decks and steering committees.
Making ideas tangible – through pilots, prototypes, or small experiments – turns possibility into momentum. Iteration manages risk by allowing organisations to learn faster than their competitors.
A logistics company facing port congestion and rail disruption can treat volatility as operational failure, or it can use it as a catalyst to redesign customer experience: testing real-time tracking, two-hour delivery windows, and proactive rescheduling. What competitors frame as apology becomes differentiation, turning constraint into creative fuel.
Leadership Sets the Pace
This, however, does not scale without leadership behaviour changing first. When executives interrogate their own assumptions, stay curious about what they do not know, and pivot visibly in response to new information, adaptability becomes cultural rather than performative.
Leaders who treat learning as part of their role signal that changing direction is not weakness. It is competence. That signal gives their teams permission to experiment, reflect, and move.
The Opportunity Ahead
South Africa’s economic context in 2026 will remain unpredictable. Organisations that continue to plan for stability will find themselves perpetually behind reality. Those who design for complexity will discover opportunities that rigid models cannot see.
The question is no longer whether leaders can predict what is coming. It is whether they are building organisations capable of learning, adapting, and responding regardless of what unfolds.
Curiosity, reflection, collaboration, and a bias toward action are not new ideas. But in a year defined by disruption, they will separate organisations that merely endure from those that outperform.