H1 COACHING REPORT & THE IMPACT ON H2
In the first half of 2026, I sat inside the problems your leadership team is feeling but rarely naming and will struggle to articulate.
From AI-fuelled noise and broken marketing ops, to a quiet crisis of confidence, suspect “strategy”, and growing questions about founder–leadership fit, the same 7 themes kept surfacing across CEOs, founders and department heads.
More content, less clarity. More tools, weaker decisions. Bigger targets, lower conviction.
This H1 coaching report is a distilled view from dozens of candid conversations with leaders like you: what’s really going wrong, where blind spots are hiding, and the practical moves that actually shift performance in H2, not just the narrative or performative colleagues making noise.
If you recognise even one of these signs in your business, it’s likely time for a direct, off-the-record session to stress test your plans, your team, and your own operating rhythm for the next 6–12 months. Book a coaching slot and let’s turn this from an anxious H2 into a deliberate one.
Over the last 6 & 1/2 months, I have spoken to (30+ companies and their leadership teams), coached, mentored, & ran power hours to help business & department (including ops, product, marketing, founders & CEOs) leaders improve, fix internal problems & address ongoing competitive challenges.
In this free doc, I offer the problems, the actions to take to protect & improve your chances.
I have also shared a few blind spots from these conversations to help you prepare for H2 and the challenging months ahead.
The 7 Core Themes That Kept Coming Up In H1 2026
AI - AI over-influenced most of what happened in H1
Marketing Operations - the lack of previous operational rigour has hit many departments particularly marketing
Crisis of Confidence - there were real confidence issues, knowing what would work and what did work
Work Slop - creation of hundreds and thousands of content and work that were low quality and added low value
Learning & Development - investment into personal training and development dropped and was misspent
Suspect “Strategy” - the confidence in company-wide strategy was low and was second-guessed constantly
Founder Fit Vs Fit Founder? - continued issues with the right person in the right role and questions around the founder's decisions and guidance
Theme 1 - AI
AI AI AI - AI was raised in every call, session & caused huge confusion from the right tool, spending enough, right level of training and how do we ensure we use it. There is continued fear, FOMO, fear of being left behind, fear of losing to competitors racing ahead
Lack Of AI Transformation - Many did not roll out the right level of training and guidance. Often not centralising any information. Many continued to race towards AI without a detailed plan or roadmap
Race At Any AI Target - Several leaders found their team members ran towards targets with AI without understanding what they needed to do to hit targets. Many founders and CEOs found misalignment with their department leads down to misuse and overuse of AI tools.Many reported team members wanted to be seen using AI
Quantity Not Quality - The issue for many was their team are making more not better content. Often using AI to reproduce existing content, auto-create stackable content and auto-summarise content. Causing more noise on Slack, Teams and inside of docs.
Cognitive Offloading - Team members using AI to think, summarise and jump to the end by summarising. Many couldn’t explain what, how and why their colleagues and team members did what they do in important projects
Action Plan
Create AI guardrails for team members - for maximum effect, this should be company wide
Research and protect your department/company from the risks of agents and bots carrying out tasks; your name and reputation is at risk with poorly configured bots/agents. Don’t over rely on agents to replace good work
Create guidelines for when team members can use AI & where AI is adding value - anAI manifesto will guide the team well
A good use case: use AI &/or agents to run competitive analysis and inform you of how they are progressing, tech changes and any good uses of AI, keep a record of these so the teams can action.
Raise the quality bar not quantity bar, recommend & show use cases of improved work via AI
Create a home and hub to share AI use cases. This should then evolve into a system
>> It is important to remember you are not being left behind in AI but you will need to accelerate safely in the very near future, particularly with the largest tech companies fighting in trying to ensure LLMs get near profitability and in a huge shift into agentic commerce
If you’d like to discuss any of these points, drop me an email to coach@dannydenhard.com or book in a call below
Theme 2 - Marketing Ops
The lack of previous operational rigour has hit many departments, particularly marketing
No Centralised Knowledge - Several kept coming back to a lack of understanding, lack of knowledge sharing and hidden information. When pushed, there was no process to share or centralised knowledge away from group chats and shared documents.
Lack Of Distance - Majority of leaders are not giving themselves any critical distance, so often too close and not stepping back to organise or assign an owner, co-owner and letting everyone know they are collaborators on this.
Org Design Issue - Specialist vs Generalist was at the centre of issues, an over indexing to specialists who struggled to collaborate and communicate effectively
No One Connecting The Dots - Time and time again, there is no-one connecting the dots, specifically inside of the team, away from department meetings.
Cross-Functional Collaboration Woes - A constant theme x-functional communication becoming more of an issue, creating release problems, delayed launches and in some cases failed campaigns.
Action Plan
Create a centralised space for sharing knowledge (internal knowledge centre/wiki), results and examples of great marketing (swipe files)
Assign an owner, someone who will own sharing effective comms - they need to know what great looks like
Improve cross-functional updates and collaboration. Use short videos to remove real-time working and demanding more calendar invites and constant meetings
If your team will struggle, hire a marketing ops consultant
If in doubt, take a step back and give yourself critical distance.
Theme 3 - Crisis Of Confidence
There were real confidence issues, knowing what would work and what did work
What Actually Worked? When pushed, many department leads cannot confidently say what worked and what worked together. Many could say what failed…
What Will Work? - Connected to what worked, many have low to no confidence in what will work. It's often a spray and pray play with a leaning towards quantity.
C-Suite Communication - Founders, CEOs complained about poor communication from Marketing & Product departments. Many Marketing leaders were nervous about communicating what their team achieved and where there were ongoing concerns.
Knowing My Team Can/Will Deliver - When quarterly goals were created there were real concerns and confidence issues for what their team could deliver and what they would deliver towards targets, goals and KPIs. Many opted to finger in the air guesses and later connected to what the team members suggested could work
Headcount - Confidence in filing headcount, confidence in the people in roles and confidence in asking for more to hit targets. This was reported by founders & department leads.
Action Plan:
Review what has worked previously and look to ramp vs creating whole new processes or work streams
Break down your long list into an easy way to view and take action: 5 big projects max, 3-5 actions per project, goal, owner & deadlines - easy, repeatable and visible for the whole business to connect into new framework (here is a copy of my free template)
Create 2x workshops to address core problems, break them down, prioritise and create small wins as momentum
Don’t rely on over communicating, improve communication by having a simple template that explains what is working, results, what isn’t & its impact and a plan to correct action.
Theme 4 - Work Slop
Creation of hundreds and thousands of content and work that were low quality and added low value
Too Much Content - Too many are creating more content, not less or more precise. Many documents, emails, slack message aren’t adding value its adding cognitive load.
Over Reliance Of AI - Of everyone I spoke to and coached have observed there has become an over reliance on AI, in summarising, in creating, curating and basic tasks like writing emails. This cognitive handoff is creating a huge disconnect (mostly negative) on what is actually happening and how people are across projects, campaigns and work streams.
Auto Creating Content - From meeting notes to follow up documents to auto replies on slack/teams, the auto creation of content is creating low quality outputs and lowering the status quo. Bots and agents are guided by staff and often with positive intent without thinking of 2nd and 3rd order effects
Losing Ability To Communicate - Shifting to automated and semi automated content is creating an over reliance on communication, and often there are tells that the content is written or automated. This is creating a poor communication loop. There have been no guidelines set on who, what, when, how and why use AI to help with work.
Search Vs Filing System - A continued trend that many rely on search to find docs, updates etc vs using a structure and hierarchy for your system, often creating numerous versions of docs and docs auto-created without finding the work already undertaken.
Action Plan
Remove reliance on AI summarisation and auto creation
Always have a human in the loop - hybrid AI is the only way to reduce the amount of updates and auto creation
Remove the reliance on auto summarisation - this is removing critical thinking and ownership
Cool out bad AI behaviour - but importantly show what good and great AI behaviour is
Use rich media updates, use voice, video and interactive formats to land updates, use AI to transcribe & create from grounded information. Less = more in great communications
Theme 5 - Learning And Development
Investment into personal training and development dropped and was ‘misspent’
Where You Need Training Vs Where Spending It - Many leaders were not helping their management teams understand where they needed training and extra levels of support vs being frustrated with conference attendance and a lack of addressing known issues
Misspent Budget - A continued frustration with conference attendance, going on poorly thought through training sessions and investing in low quality training courses
Conference Spending - Conference spending is often seen as poor ways of spending L&D budgets by senior leadership. There was no guidance on why and where better L&D investment were
Teaching Others - A common talking point was that once training took place there was no appetite to teach or train their colleagues in new skills. Often resulting in knowledge hoarding
AI Coaching - A new trend was using LLMs as a 1-2-1 coach. Offering a good enough level of support but rarely helped top execs and directors (and above) the opportunity to gain their own experience and had a high level of confidence that the answer was always right vs often misleading with overly generic advice. A few led to HR and PR issues
Action Plan
Help team members understand where they need to improve. No feedback should be a surprise in quarterly or annual reviews
Work with team members to select the right use of L&D budget - encourage better sharing of knowledge, templates & frameworks
If any abuse of L&D, remove the ability for team members to self select without approval (speak to HR to protect yourself here)
Write guidelines with use of AI in coaching and development, this will ensure better outcomes and reduce potential inaccurate or misleading generic advice. Impact of bad and inaccurate AI coaching can take months to show up, particularly in planning and execution work
Create an approved list of coaches; exec coaching isn’t just for CEOs and founders.
Theme 6 - Suspect Strategy
The confidence in company-wide strategy was low and was second guessed constantly
No Strategy - The challenge for most was there was no long term strategy, it was reactive and often changed constantly misaligning departments and making hitting goals difficult.
No Flex In THE Strategy - When there was a strategy there was a general sense of there was no room to wiggle or flex in the strategy, often referencing it was set and “we stick to the strategy”.
Lack Of Strategic Understanding - When pushed on strategy most understood a list of tactics as strategy, this came from within these businesses. Often when asked how decisions were made and how strategy was creating there was no real answers.Tactics vs Strategy - There is always a misconception of what tactics are and what a strategy is. Often mixing the two together and frequently a list of KPIs and the tactics associated as seen and understood as the strategy.Changing Strategic Pillars - When asked about the 3-5 pillars that underpinned the strategy, it couldn’t be answered. When pushed harder, it often came down to financial goals.
Action Plan
Create a strategy sanity check, ask leadership to explain the strategy on one page so the business can follow
Run through your strategy with board or external advisors to gain a 10k foot perspective, don’t ask for approval but ask for high level feedback
Build in flex for tactics - tactics can change, as can company plan, these have to be flexible; however an approved and stress-tested strategy should be reviewed 1x per year
Create a one-page strategic framework and goals table the whole company buys into and can see progress on a weekly basis - ensuring the company feels connected and co-ownership of progress and successes.
Theme 7 - Founder Fit vs Fit Founder
Continued issues with the right person in the right role and questions around founders decisions and guidance
Do I Have The Right People? - A number of leaders asked if they had the right people around them and if they were up for the fight to win
Are They The Right Person? - A new trend over Q1 and into Q2 was for leaders to question a specific leader with a lens of tricky H2 coming up. Often for non performance indicators
Does This Make Sense? - There was an undertone of leaders and leadership teams not having confidence in core projects and if it made sense, often questioning the founder and their decisions or the collective ability to know what will move the needle
My Company My Rules - A number of times leaders question the rules of the founder/CEO, highlighting an ongoing disconnection between my way and the highway and the gulf between founders and their leadership team buy in
Direct Reports & Reporting Directly - There has been many stories of founders having large direct reports and then some having none. A number of founders are looking for lower touch 1-2-1s or fewer 1-2-1’s. Many want to rely on AI for reporting lines
Action Plan
Leaders step back, ask whether my rules land with me?
Ask yourself: Do I receive the same feedback and don’t listen?
Answer: If I had to change 2 rules this quarter what would they be & why?
As a founder, ask: Do I have the right people around me? Leadership team fit is incredibly important, especially in war time mode.
Start to use a scorecard for leadership team fit, including: skills, emotional intelligence, team buy in, buy in from leadership team colleagues, team performance & cultural influence. If you struggle to score you have to dig deeper
Create your own executive sense check, does this make sense to the business? Will it still have impact? Ask: if I explained this to my biggest critic, would they understand and then back this move?
Leadership teams, if you had to feedback the most important pieces of actionable information to your founder, what would they be and how would they need to change? If you cannot say these today, you have work through are you part of the issue?
Bonus Theme - Blind Spot
The common blind spots over the last 6-7 months
What Impact Is AI Really Having In Your Org?- Understand the real impact AI is having; many cannot answer and struggle to understand if it's had any positive impact, away from quantity not quality
X-Functional Disconnections - Far from new; however, there are real disconnects between departments and cross-functional work. This is causing real performance issues & taking quarters to uncover as no-one is owning the collaborative efforts effectively
Poor Hiring Practices - The majority of hiring managers have allowed poor practises and AI to review and shortlist for them, often without any real criteria or understanding how what a great candidate looks like
Low Confidence Is Hurting You - A number of leaders expressed low confidence, calling out the next 6 months plan, often causing poor communication, slow decision-making, and in some cases low confidence = performance anxiety & rushed layoffs without any backup plan.
