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CEOs still grappling to define work’s new normal

Posted on February 9, 2023April 25, 2023 by Shield Insurance Agency

Worklife.com | BY LAURA PETRECCA | JANUARY 4, 2023 | Work’s new normal | Business Insurance

Inflation.

A potential recession.

Geopolitical uncertainty.

Managing a remote workforce.

Company leaders are buckling up for a bumpy 2023. After nearly three years of dealing with pandemic-induced stressors, they’re bracing for more tough times to come with economic instability, geopolitical risks, and talent-related concerns, among other looming issues.

As we enter the new year, more than a dozen top executives have shared their expected challenges with WorkLife. They also reflected upon their most pressing concerns in 2022 and addressed how they cope with continuous change.

The leaders work at firms that range from startups to well-established companies and represent different fields, such as communications, health care, food service, and entertainment. Yet, many of their concerns overlapped. In their predictions for 2023, one overarching theme emerged: expect the unexpected.

“Never before have CEOs faced so many different variables in trying to plan for, budget and strategize” for a new year, said Constantine Alexandrakis, CEO of leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates, who speaks with other CEOs regularly. “The unpredictability of the unpredictability is the biggest thing keeping us up at night.”

At his firm, “the biggest challenge will be navigating that uncertainty, pivoting resources, attention and investments to where the opportunities are and pivoting away from the spots that will be particularly troubled,” he said.

For Lisa Osborne Ross, U.S. CEO at public relations giant Edelman, the most daunting challenge of the last few years was simply accepting the ambiguity and uncertainty. “I thought the hard would be over by now,” she said. “But we still have yet to truly define our new normal, and that lack of clarity on the future of our workplace — and our world — continues. Being comfortable with those lingering unknowns, while still seeking to move forward and make progress, is not an easy position to be in.”

Looking ahead, “the biggest leadership challenge of 2023 will be learning how to not just survive but thrive, regardless of what comes our way,” she added.

Contending with internal and external issues | Work’s new normal

And indeed, there’s much coming their way.

There are internal concerns, such as keeping a remote workforce productive and engaged, as well as outside factors, such as inflation, economic instability, and the widespread effects of the war in Ukraine.

On the workforce front, Melissa Bouma, CEO of content marketing agency Manifest, said finding a hybrid work model where employees can effectively ideate and create is among her most significant issues as a leader.

Like countless other CEOs, Bouma also manages employees that had an incredibly tough past few years. “We went through the pandemic. We went through societal evolution. We went through a Great Resignation and reshuffle,” she said. And now there are concerns about inflation and the overall economy.

One of her biggest challenges in 2023 is “to find a way to encourage everyone at the same time to get excited and passionate and remain that way,” she said.

Great blogs by Shield Insurance Agency

1. Reassessment of the “Hockey Stick.”

A favorite trend of venture capital funds and investors is the promise of the “hockey stick” growth curve. This translates to a predictable and scalable influx of new users (or revenue) subject to doubling down on sales or paid acquisition channels.

The premise is straightforward — market penetration or even domination. Obtaining unicorn status and acquiring users at all costs. The model works in theory, but in the land of funding, this usually comes at the expense of piles of debt and no profit whatsoever.

It’s easy to scale a business with a freemium model that gets funded by investors. But infrastructure, staff, warehouses, and vendors are entitled to their own funding. And unless this model converts at the same pace as a standard business cost plus a profit margin, companies will face severe consequences.

Prioritizing profitability again will become a reality check of 2023.

2. More Business Predictions: Layoffs

Over 910 tech companies laid off over 143,000 employees in 2022 alone. The tracker relies on public data that doesn’t account for medium and large businesses outside the public purview (whereas the numbers are likely to exceed 200,000 or even 250,000 at the time).

Financial scrutiny, combined with unfavored financing tools thanks to the aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, is limiting access to funding to combat the effects of hyperinflation.

With unlimited resources, it’s easy to get sidetracked and keep pouring more people, money, and servers into a problem. This anecdotally conflicts with Brooks’s law (a known adagio in project and product management), where adding workforce to a software project that’s running late is dragging it even further.