A CXO Watchlist for 2024

Over the years, we have thought it prudent to review the past twelve months as we approach the new year with hope in the heart and some trepidations around the unknown. This time round, we thought of approaching this exercise from another direction. We’re taking a throw forward approach instead of the throwback one. So, here goes… 

As a first question in this series, we thought we’d ask what mattered most to the C-suite in 2023? The response wasn’t surprising. CXOs in our network had pretty much the same answer. They said, family, friends, commitments and a work-life balance was what made them wake up each morning looking forward to a good day’s work. 

So, we tried again. What are some of the developments from the past 12 to 18 months that they believe would keep them busy or at the very least make the CXOs track further developments? Now the answers were varied and we present a few of these below in the form of a watchlist that the CXOs would track over the next 12 months:

The Generative AI Magic Wand

Hardly surprising, given that barely a day goes by without some new business use case related to GenAI surfaces in the media. Of course, there’s some truth, lots of hype and even more ignorance surrounding a field that came out of the closet in November 2022 when Open AI gave a taste of the future via ChatGPT. 

McKinsey research believes GenAI could add between $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion of value each year, which is what makes us place it on top of the watchlist. CXOs play a critical role in this value capture as they have in the past when the internet, mobile telephony and social media came calling. Experiments and pilot projects add to the hype before the egregious “population scale” planning takes over. 

Today, we are in the stage where use cases are floating in thick and fast of how GenAI can make an impact across industry verticals – from automotives to insurance and real estate to media and entertainment. In 2024, watch out for the population scale plans that enterprises may set out – some like Microsoft have already done so and others will follow suit. 

Digital Transformation Next

The need to rewire businesses to make the most of technology innovations around digital has been felt for long. Post the pandemic, the good-to-have became a must-have as enterprises sought digital transformation with a new verve. The emergence of AI is now causing businesses to shift gears, while others continue to languish around their need for a fundamental organizational restructuring – the panacea for a successful digital transformation. 

Industry research indicates that the C-suite which fundamentally changes their talent, operating model, technology and data capabilities are the ones that succeed. The focus of the exercise remains the same – how to tech-enable the company in a fashion that offers great customer experience, reduces costs and builds value on a continuous basis. 

With AI making its presence felt in a multitude of operational areas, the CXOs expect more of their ilk to shift focus on how to undertake organizational surgery before aspiring to becoming a digitally-enabled enterprise – one that automates data capture, quality and delivers actionable insights on a real-time basis. Where there’s just a single source of truth. 

The Global Power Shift

No, we’re not referring to the CFO becoming more valuable than the CEO. That’s for another time in another blog post. Here the reference is to the energy transformation that industry must go through if it wants to survive. Net-zero can be a zero-sum game if industry doesn’t sit up and take note of reducing their carbon footprint as the world tries to save itself for another century. 

Over the past year, navigating the net-zero economy kept getting complicated as energy prices rose, supply chain pressures came calling, interest rates went north leading to higher input costs – all of which caused the economy to whimper. Most CXOs pushed ESG off their radar during 2023 due to these economic factors, but come 2024 and they’re likely to be in focus. 

Issues related to long lead times, supply shortages, and price fluctuations around the ESG product line could also be a reason CXOs postponed their ESG drives. Some of the leaders we spoke to feel once there’s more clarity around macroeconomic indicators, the journey would get back in overdrive – the challenge being short-term fiscal performance vs saving the world. 

Making the most of Middle Managers

Now, this one could appear controversial at first, but there are enough proof points that companies where middle managers were empowered to connect and integrate people and tasks, actually benefited the organization, both in the immediate term and the short term. For this to happen, the C-suite needs to cast away legacy beliefs. 

For starters CXOs needn’t feel compelled to promote middle managers to the top where they do not perform a people role. Best individual contributors needn’t be pushed into a leadership role if they do not fit. Most importantly, middle managers shouldn’t be tasked with administrative stuff and kept away from taking decisions themselves. 

We expect this to be a critical element on the CXO watchlist as they need to make the right offer to retain their best middle managers. Maybe, the time is ripe to rip off old habits and just ask these star performers what they’d like? A salary hike? Some ESOPs maybe. Or some more paid holidays perhaps. Maybe just the luxury of working from home or bringing their pets or their toddlers to the office? Whatever it may be, it’s time to tailor the rewards.