At the beginning of the year, many forecasts shared a common assumption. Supply chains would stabilize. Capital markets would become more predictable. Infrastructure constraints would ease. Policy environments would clarify. Organizations could shift their focus from disruption management back to growth.

That assumption is under real pressure. EY's 2026 Global Economic Outlook framed the current environment as a supply shock world: global growth is slowing as geopolitical tensions, tariffs, and supply-side disruptions raise costs and increase economic fragmentation. Higher energy prices, persistent inflation pressures, and elevated uncertainty are creating a more challenging environment than headline growth alone would suggest. The report identifies AI adoption, productivity gains, and strategic resilience as the primary sources of opportunity, but only for organizations prepared to adapt to a changing landscape. Recovery, in the sense of returning to prior conditions, is not the strongest frame. Adaptation is.

The Constraints Didn't Disappear. They Evolved.

The challenges confronting organizations today are not the same ones they faced in 2022 or 2023. But they haven't disappeared. They have evolved into something more structural.

For many energy-intensive projects, power availability has become a planning variable rather than a utility assumption. Water access is influencing site selection decisions that weren't previously water-constrained. Permitting timelines remain uncertain across energy, infrastructure, and industrial sectors. Infrastructure development continues to struggle to keep pace with demand growth. Regulatory obligations are diverging across jurisdictions rather than converging toward a unified framework.

McKinsey's State of Organizations 2026 identified intensifying economic disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty as one of three tectonic forces reshaping how organizations operate. The report's central finding on this point: organizations need to adapt swiftly yet sustainably to cope, and in an uncertain world, sustained performance and value creation are the priority, ahead of short-term gains. That framing matters because it acknowledges what many executive teams have been reluctant to say explicitly: the disruption isn't a phase that ends. It's the condition that planning has to account for.

Capital Is Still Moving, Just Under Different Conditions

One reason the recovery narrative persists is that investment activity remains strong in many sectors. Energy infrastructure. Manufacturing. Data centers. Grid modernization. Industrial facilities. Capital is still flowing, and in some categories flowing at record levels.

But capital deployment is increasingly being shaped by execution realities rather than financial ambition alone. Projects are moving forward under a different set of conditions than many organizations anticipated when they committed the capital. Interconnection timelines are longer. Permitting processes are more contested. Equipment lead times have extended. Labor availability varies significantly by region and skill category.

McKinsey's Global Economics Intelligence noted that private sector adaptability has been a meaningful factor in offsetting trade policy disruptions, alongside fiscal and monetary support. That's an important distinction. Capital availability is not the variable separating organizations that are executing from those that are stalling. Adaptability is. The organizations moving capital effectively in 2026 are the ones that have adjusted how they evaluate and sequence projects, not just how much they're willing to spend.

Adaptation Is the Competitive Differentiator in H2

The organizations likely to outperform in the second half are not necessarily the ones making the largest investments. They are the ones adapting most effectively to the conditions that exist, rather than the conditions they expected.

What that looks like in practice:

  • Revisiting planning assumptions that were written before Q2's signals arrived.
  • Reassessing project portfolios against current infrastructure constraints rather than projected ones.
  • Stress-testing timelines against realistic permitting and interconnection scenarios.
  • Evaluating infrastructure access earlier in the investment process.
  • Building flexibility into capital structures that were designed for a more predictable environment.

None of those are dramatic strategic pivots. They are adjustments to the planning and evaluation process that reflect what Q2 actually revealed. Higher long-term interest rates, elevated funding costs, shifting commodity prices, and currency volatility reinforce the need for disciplined balance-sheet management, adaptive hedging strategies, and flexible capital planning. The organizations that have made those adjustments are better positioned for what the second half will actually look like.

The Real Question Entering H2

The central question for the second half is not whether recovery has arrived. It has not fully arrived, at least not in the sense of a return to the operating conditions many companies expected. The question is whether organizations have updated their operating models to reflect the conditions now shaping growth, investment, and execution.

That question has a practical answer. Look at the assumptions embedded in the second-half plan. If those assumptions were written before Q2's signals on power availability, permitting, capital deployment, regulatory fragmentation, and infrastructure constraints became clear, they may need updating. Not rebuilding. Updating. The plan doesn't have to start over. The assumptions beneath it do.

The companies that make those updates now will enter 2027 with a clearer picture of what they can actually execute and what they need to restructure. The ones waiting for a return to previous conditions may spend the next six months preparing for an environment that doesn't come back. That's not pessimism about the second half. It's precision about what the second half requires.