Managing macroeconomic bumps, cyber security, and innovation
Written by Dan Parry • 27 January, 2026
Future Skills Article
Uncertainty is creeping into boardrooms, overshadowing business as usual. Three major studies on CEO sentiment reveal short- and mid-term concerns about AI, geopolitical turbulence, and cyber security threats. How can leaders manage uncertainty in the coming months in order to build confidence and spend less time looking over their shoulder?
Leaders are not predicting collapse. But compared to last year, significantly fewer CEOs feel very confident about their company’s revenue growth over the next 12 months.
Uncertainty carries a threat of jeopardy. Change is perhaps easier. Imagine jogging through a park, change strikes when your regular path is closed. Complexity involves choosing one from many alternative paths. Uncertainty is seeing that your path is obstructed and trying to find a way home while dealing with fog, a tight timeframe, and possibly a cliff-edge or two.
In uncertain times, understanding the bigger picture will help you avoid precarious cliff-edges. The impact of macroeconomic volatility, cyber risk, geopolitical conflict, AI developments, and regulatory uncertainty, is explored in PwC’s Global CEO Survey, based on responses from 4,454 chief executives across 95 countries (January, 2026).
This report follows KPMG’s Global CEO Outlook, (October, 2025), based on responses from 1,350 CEOs. For a glimpse at what’s coming down the track over the next five years, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has released a white paper called Futures for the New Economy, (December, 2025.)
Between them, these reports provide insights into shared concerns, common interpretations, and typical responses to the uncertainty that is now a dominant feature in business.
CEOs’ confidence in the global economy has fallen to its lowest level (68%) in five years, according to KPMG. This has given many leaders a sense of compressed time.
According to PwC, only 30% of CEOs are very or extremely confident about revenue growth over the next 12 months, down from 38% in 2025 and a sharp drop from the post-pandemic rebound (56% in 2022).
Consequently, CEOs spend nearly half (47%) their time working on issues with horizons of less than a year. That’s three times more than they devote to thinking beyond five years. This raises an uncomfortable question: are organisations having to focus on short-term resilience at the expense of long-term preparedness?
Many CEOs are feeling less inclined to make big decisions. A third (32%) say geopolitical uncertainty is making them less likely to make large, new investments.
In August 2025, an MIT investigation found that only 5% of in-house AI pilot projects were extracting millions in value. Less than six months later, PwC noted that close to a third of CEOs (30%) report increased revenue from AI in the last 12 months.
However, this speed of change creates challenges such as skills shortages, generational gaps, and cultural resistance. In a follow-up report (focusing on the finance sector), KPMG found that 79% of banking leaders say AI has redefined entry-level skills (up from 53% in 2024).
This report also noted that the slow pace of AI regulation is seen as a major barrier (by 61% of CEOs) – not because banks want a regulatory vacuum, but because uncertainty makes it harder to invest boldly and at scale.
Cyber security now sits alongside macroeconomic volatility as the most cited threat to organisational growth.As digital platforms, AI systems, and interconnected supply chains become more complex and harder to defend, more business actions are vulnerable to attack.
KPMG’s report on the finance sector found that 86% of CEOs say cyber security poses the greatest threat to growth in next three years. No surprise that many are prioritising cybersecurity above all other work on mitigating risk.
According to PwC, nearly a third (31%) of CEOs believe their company is highly exposed to the risk of a significant cyber-related financial loss in the year ahead, a figure that has risen steadily over the past two years.
In uncertain conditions, trust acts as a buffer. It buys time, patience and goodwill when things go wrong. However, cyber incidents, AI mishaps, data breaches, and poor decisions can all trigger rapid reputational damage.
PwC found that two-thirds of CEOs experienced trust-related concerns in the past year, on topics such as AI safety, data privacy, and the impact of climate change on business performance.
It’s worth noting that PwC also found that companies with the fewest trust concerns delivered total shareholder returns over a 12-month period that were, on average, nine percentage points higher than those experiencing the most trust concerns.
When asked (by PwC) what concerns them most, CEOs overwhelmingly point to a single question: are we transforming fast enough to keep up with technology, including AI?
After tech, the second greatest concern among CEOs when managing uncertainty was their company’s ability to innovate, according to PwC. This, despite half of CEOs saying innovation is central to their business strategy.
Agility now consistently outranks scale or cost-cutting as the leadership capability most needed today. Leaders are also increasingly focused on adaptability: faster decision-making, clearer communication, better risk sensing, and the ability to move resources as conditions evolve.
KPMG noted that a key objective in uncertain times is resilience to risk, including threats arising from technology, skills shortages, and ESG (navigating an increasingly politicised and polarised world).
In uncertain times, leaders find that the biggest constraint on performance is not access to technology but the readiness of people. Organisations with an adaptable, confident, well-supported workforce can respond faster, make better decisions under pressure, and recover more quickly from global shocks.
Leaders increasingly recognise the need for people to combine human judgement with machine intelligence, so that they can interpret insights, manage risk, and communicate clearly. KPMG’s report on the finance sector found that 83% of CEOs are prioritising workforce reskilling to unlock AI’s potential.
Leaders adapting to AI have been redeploying people to higher value roles – such as interpreting insights, managing risk, and designing products.
According to the KPMG report, a clear majority (71%) are focusing on retaining and retraining high-potential talent, 61% are actively hiring new talent with technology skills, and 79% said AI is redefining entry-level skills in banking.
Over the next five years, uncertainty could potentially lead to one of four scenarios, according to the World Economic Forum:
Working with leaders and analysing business implications, the WEF devised a set of “no-regret moves” to help businesses mitigate risks, regardless of which future emerges:
The real challenge for CEOs over the next 12 months is not how to avoid uncertainty but how to avoid becoming frozen by it. Leaders must decide how their organisation will behave under sustained uncertainty. Will it retreat into caution? Or will it build the capabilities that allow it to move with confidence?
At Working Voices, our Managing Uncertainty training course helps participants deal with their own relationship with uncertainty, equipping them with the skills to make decisions even when there are gaps in the available information. We also offer a package of essential IRL (in real life) skills specifically designed to help people manage uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a feature of the 2020s. In that context, training and upskilling are no longer about keeping people employable tomorrow. They are about keeping organisations viable today. And over the next 12 months, that may make all the difference.
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The founder and CEO of Working Voices, Nick Smallman has been at the top of his profession for 25 years. Advising global blue-chip clients on engagement, productivity, and retention, he counsels leaders on increasing revenue via simple cultural adjustments.
Overseeing the successful expansion of Working Voices across the UK, the US, Asia, and the Middle East, Nick supports the leadership and communication capabilities of clients in a wide range of sectors. In particular, he has advised companies such as JP Morgan, Barclays, Sony, Nomura, M&S, and Blackrock for more than 15 years.
Developing his reputation for thought leadership, in recent years Nick has been leading work on The Sustainable Human, the subject of his forthcoming book. A concept unique to Working Voices, The Sustainable Human offers a package of solutions focusing on leadership enablement, future skills, and cultural harmony.
Working closely with HR specialist Mercer, Nick has developed solutions to four key modern workplace challenges:
“I’m excited to share the conclusions of three years of research that, if implemented, can make an immediate practical difference to leaders and their organisations.”
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