Organisation Performance Index™

CEOs today face a host of unprecedented challenges in leading their organisations to success. In the backdrop of severe headwinds brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic fallout, 58.3% of Fortune 500 CEOs believe that pre-pandemic levels of economic activity will only return in 2022 . The economic impacts already felt could be amplified by a global second-wave of infections that could bring global economic output decline from -6.2% to -7.6% and double global unemployment rate to 10% .

In coping with this ‘new normal’, CEOs have to reimagine the future and reinvent their businesses, and that will require them to focus on three of the top ten challenges that have been confronting them recently with renewed and heightened importance. This ‘Big Three’ challenges that CEOs all over the world currently face are:

1. Strategy & Innovation – The most important building block for a CEO that maps out the organisation’s choices and path to success , and innovation to ensure the long-term success of the organisation ;

2. Executional Excellence – CEOs who are able to come up with winning strategies yet face the challenge of translating these ideas into reality in order to achieve success . It has even been argued that the importance of execution outweighs strategy ; and

3. Talent War – There is an intensifying competition among organisations worldwide to secure the best talent for their respective organisations, and the competition appears far from diminishing .

Today, the Big Three challenges not only still remain relevant but have been amplified in the climate of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Fourth Industrial Revolution with disruptions and technological transformations.

Recently, geopolitical challenges have also been added into the mix where anti-globalisation trends have bred pervasive sentiments of jingoism and protectionism against global free trade, with major world powers igniting trade wars and erecting multiple barriers, both physical and economic, with their neighbours.

To further compound these challenges, mindset shifts in today’s workforce has been anything but gradual. At present, organisations have to manage a spectrum of differing perspectives from the Baby Boomer Generation, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z. CEOs now face the challenge of harnessing and uniting these disparate perspectives to create an effective working team.