2024 Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) Survey

Over the last year, uncertainty has been all over the news, with global markets sending mixed and occasionally confusing signals. These signals speak to the challenges facing strategy and business leaders today—how to create advantage and capture value in a landscape characterized by disruptive technologies, geopolitical and economic uncertainty, changing consumer and stakeholder expectations, and complex policies and regulations around sustainability, tech, and data. In this environment, we conducted our fifth annual global survey of chief strategy officers (CSOs).

CSOs offer unique perspectives that can resonate across many organizations, which is why we survey them year after year. Often reporting directly to the CEO, CSOs advise on special projects, collaborate cross-functionally on high-impact decisions, lead corporate development, keep a pulse on markets, and are increasingly responsible for the execution of these strategies.

In this year’s survey, we set out not only to pulse strategy leaders on their outlooks, growth agendas, and focus areas but also to better understand how they are adapting their approaches to strategy in the face of these pressures. In a recent Monitor Deloitte report, “Strategy Now,” we explored how strategy is changing and outlined the new options, challenges, and opportunities for strategy leaders. That report suggests strategy should be resilient, agile, inclusive, and bold to better match the challenges businesses face today. We wanted to explore this assertion in this year’s survey data.

Here’s what we found: CSOs surveyed offered optimism, resilience, and a commitment to evolution.