What CEOs Are Thinking This Year

The Conference Board recently released its annual C-Suite Challenge report, which outlines the challenges and critical issues that corporate CEOs are facing this year as well as their strategies for meeting them. These insights potentially impact community and nonprofit leaders as they struggle to garner resources and assistance for their causes and vulnerable neighborhoods and populations.

It’s notable, but not surprising, that CEOs cite COVID-19, vaccine availability and changing consumer buying behaviors as the key potential game changers in 2021. Recession risk is also top of mind for CEOs globally.

To meet these threats, CEOs say that they will focus on a mix of prudent financial management and cultural changes to drive growth and improve performance, which will require finding the right balance between conserving cash and investing in innovations and programs to succeed in an ever-changing environment.

Specifically, CEOs say they are focused on these top external hurdles in 2021:

• COVID-related disruptions

• Lack of quality talent

• Resource constraints relative to business needs

• Lack of an innovation culture

• Regulation

In order to deal with these challenges, these CEOs plan to focus on the following strategies:

• Accelerate the pace of digital transformation

• Improve innovation

• Modify their business models

• Lower costs

• Streamline processes

As a result of COVID-19, CEOs point to several lasting legacies, including:

• Reduced business travel

• More tasks automated

• More resilient supply chains

• Increased focus on climate change

• Increased expectation for businesses to address social goals

Concurrently, Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), released a summary of its recent CEO Roundtable, which included the following takeaways:

• Communicating with employees remains critical as CEOs try to find the right balance of information and empathy in their messaging internally.

• There are indications of a strong market in the next four to six months because of an increased focus on employee well-being, vaccine roll-out and technology advances, but continued divisiveness among communities may continue to be a big hurdle for CEOs to overcome.

• With a new administration and split in Congress in the US, less economic volatility is expected, but more emphasis placed on climate and a low-carbon future.

Nonprofit and community leaders may want to adopt some of this thinking for their own organizations as well as in their correspondence with corporate philanthropy and citizenship managers. To the extent that companies and nonprofits are on the same page regarding opportunities and threats, more partnerships and collaboration is not only possible but probable.