Winter 2023 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey

Déjà vu or are better days ahead?

When comparing the findings from the most recent February 2023 Fortune/Deloitte CEO survey with prior survey findings, a distinct pattern emerges regarding CEO outlook and expectations for the year ahead. Despite exiting what they deemed a challenging year, CEOs once again expressed positive sentiments for the year ahead.

Upon initial review, we wondered: are we noticing a momentary ‘beginning of the new year’ attempt to shake the past year’s challenges? Or are things actually on a more enduring upswing? After digging deeper into the survey findings—for which 149 leading CEOs shared their predictions, perspectives, and planned approaches for addressing current challenges—we came to believe that CEOs may indeed be seeing an upturn ahead. It is worth noting that the survey was fielded before the current set of issues facing the financial markets occurred.

Entering the new year, growth expectations and optimism are on the upswing

While not up to the same levels from a year ago (65%) or Summer of 2022 (49%), heading into the new year, CEO growth expectations for their own organizations have ticked up from Fall of 2022, with 45% expecting strong or very strong growth (as compared with 34% in Fall 2022). Factoring in modest growth expectations, this proportion increases to 88% (up from 85% in Fall 2022).

Over the next 12 months, I expect my organization's growth to be:

Along the same lines, personal optimism is on the upswing (Own company: 81%; Industry: 46%, and Global economy: 12%) and pessimism is down (Own company: 5%; Industry: 12%; and Global economy: 37%), surpassing not just Fall, but also Summer 2022 levels, perhaps suggesting that optimism may have bottomed out, and pessimism peaked in Fall of 2022.

Similar but different: Gaining energy from challenges and moving from hope to optimism

Once again, we asked CEOs to describe the year behind and year ahead in one word. Upon first glance, CEOs repeatedly characterize the year behind as challenging, while again deeming the new year optimistic. This may suggest that CEOs, by their nature, tend to be optimistic in order to lead their organizations through challenges they fully expect will come in the year ahead. However, when digging deeper, we observe that the other words chosen to describe the year behind in prior surveys had a much weightier undertone, such as sad, tough, and difficult (Figures 1 and 2). The words emerging in this recent survey’s lookback suggest that while the past year may have once again been challenging, it also was transformational, strong, and resilient (figure 3). Thus, rather than wearing the CEOs down, these challenges may be propelling them forward. Similarly, in terms of the year ahead (figures 4, 5, 6), it appears that hopeful, a positive feeling, has been unseated by optimism, an expectation for a positive outcome.

On a semantic level, this change in language suggests that CEOs have shifted their mindset from “hopeful” to “optimistic” representing a much more positive outlook for the future. CEOs will undoubtedly continue to be faced with several opposing forces they’ll need to navigate. However, they will likely continue to use these challenges as a source of energy for themselves and their organizations and as motivation to continue to learn, grow, reimagine, and propel themselves forward.

¹ Ambidextrous leadership and the CEO | Deloitte Insights
² Winter 2021 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey
³ Winter 2022 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey
⁴ Winter 2023 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey
⁵ Winter 2021 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey
⁶ Winter 2022 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey
⁷ Winter 2023 Fortune/Deloitte CEO Survey

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