2022 Truly Changed CEO Perspectives: Mark Raskino

A recent survey of CEOs and senior executives by Gartner, Inc. revealed significant shifts in their thinking regarding people, purpose, prices and productivity in 2022, specifically on matters of sustainability, workforce issues and inflation.

“2022 is the year that truly changes CEO perspectives,” said Mark Raskino, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “The pandemic gradually brought a number of deep societal trends to the surface, such as a desire to change the way we work and the fragility of long-distance global supply chains. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraineis amplifying macroeconomic factors that CEOs must now deal with, such as inflation. Simultaneously, however, CEOs’ digital business ambition continues to rise, unabated by the pandemic and related crises.”

The annual Gartner 2022 CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey was conducted between July 2021 through December 2021 among 400+ CEOs and other senior business executives in North America, EMEA and APAC across different industries, revenue and company sizes.

Sixty-two per cent of CEOs see general priceinflationas a persistent or long-term issue. Their top response to inflation is to raise prices (51 per cent of respondents), rather than responding with productivity and efficiency (22 per cent of respondents). In fact, productivity and efficiency are not even in the top 10 business priorities for CEOs this year.

“Clearly, there is some complacency around inflation impact,” said Raskino. “When asked about the top two sources of competitive differentiation, only 3 per cent of CEOs mentioned price. Gartner expects that may change quite quickly as inflation continues to bite.”