A growing number of CEOs question whether their company's current path will take them beyond the next 10 years.
PwC's 27th Annual Global CEO Survey garnered responses from 4,702 CEOs across industries from fall 2023. In this edition, 45% of CEOs said they are not confident that their companies will be economically viable in 10 years or less on their current trajectory — up from 39% who indicated the same one year earlier.
Interestingly, CEOs' concerns about corporate viability do not appear tightly linked to nearterm economic concerns. The survey found a shift in outlook, with CEOs less likely than they were one year ago to anticipate a decline in global economic growth and much more likely to expect improved growth in 2024.
That said, in the nearterm, CEOs expect more pressure in the next three years than they saw in the last five from technology, changing customer preferences, government regulations, competitors, climate change and demographic shifts — "megatrends" affecting global business and how companies create, deliver and capture value.
Given how much AI, particularly the generative category, dominated business conversations and forecasts in 2023, it is worth noting that 32% of CEO respondents said gen AI has been adopted across their company in the last 12 months.
At the same time, CEOs see big inefficiencies in their companies' routine activities, viewing roughly 40% of the time spent on ordinary tasks as inefficient. Emails, contracting processes, information-sharing meetings, hiring processes, expense approval processes and performance reviews were all identified among the most inefficient and time-consuming by the CEO respondents.
PwC summarized the latest edition of the report as indication of a "growing premium" on leaders to maintain energy and challenge the status quo. CEOs will likely be responsible for an existential level of change management, which is heavy lifting.
"People who are proficient at their current jobs may resist change because they're concerned they may not be good at what they'll be required to do in the future," the PwC analysis notes. "So CEOs who are serious about reinvention must find approaches for acknowledging concerns, prizing curiosity and openness to learning, and encouraging managers to help people adapt."