Jay Holstine: Important Endemic Decision Factors

Decision Factors 2021 Thriving on Disruption

Decision Factors 2021 Thriving on Disruption

In this report Part 1 | How big to bet Expert Perspective: Alan Beaulieu

We live in a time of accelerated disruption. When the pandemic hit, we experienced 15 years of behavioral change in just 30 days. Over the past 18 months, the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally disrupted how people live and work across the globe. Now we must continue to adapt to this new reality.

Part 2 | How to hybrid

One thing that businesses are struggling to adapt to is the change that has come to the workplace. The work-from-home genie is out of the bottle, and there is no going back. Employees who were able to work remotely have experienced a new quality of life — and they like it. CEOs face critical, immediate decisions about returning to the office and providing a hybrid work environment. CEOs never were forced to face these decisions before.

Part 4 | How to manage the rising cost of everything

Expert Perspective: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky Part 3 | How to connect to the connected customer Expert Perspective: Karen Hayward Expert Perspective: Casey Brown Part 5 | How to accelerate digital transformation Expert Perspective: Russell Safirstein Part 6 | The challenges of compressed decision-making

Compounding this complexity, 66% of small and midsize businesses plan to increase their headcount in the year ahead, fueling the talent wars. The demand for talent has never been higher for hourly, skilled and professional staff. Employees at all levels have options. A workplace migration is already underway as workers find better, higher-paying jobs that align with how they want to work. Businesses that mismanage the return to work will see increased turnover as a result.

In this climb to recovery, businesses now are focused on capitalizing on a rapidly expanding economy and embracing a post-pandemic life.

At the same time, businesses are grappling with challenges related to hiring, growth, inflation, supply chains, COVID-19 variants and other economic headwinds.

Thriving on disruption happens when CEOs continuously prepare, adapt and innovate. They harness disruption by creating strategies that mitigate risk and capitalize on growth. And disruption requires leaders to make hard decisions in rapid succession.

This report is designed to support CEO decision-making by providing research, data and expert perspectives on five critical factors impacting businesses today. No one can avoid disruption. But those who quickly pivot to a new reality will thrive in the midst of it.

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Part 1 | How big to bet As our economy entered the next growth cycle in mid-2021, CEO optimism surged. In Q2 2021, the Vistage CEO Confidence Index reached 108.8, the ninth-highest level recorded since the Index’s inception in 2003. However, in Q3, our survey revealed that this optimism had moderated, as a result of inflation, supply chain challenges, talent shortages and rising cases of the COVID-19 delta variant.

Notably the drop in CEO confidence in Q3 is not a decrease in optimism, but rather a reflection of the deceleration of growth. Small and midsize businesses are still preparing to ride a wave of economic recovery because forecasts indicate growth for the latter part of the year and into 2022. The challenge for CEOs is to quickly navigate hard decisions and be positioned to ride this next wave of growth.

Among the indicators of CEO confidence are plans to increase investments and head count, the resources required to scale to meet demand.

Nearly half (47%) of CEOs plan on increasing fixed investments in the year ahead, moderating from 53% in Q2 2021 surpassing the 44% reported in Q1. The Q2 survey revealed that 65% of CEOs plan to increase their technology investments to reduce or offset labor. Many of these leaders are further leveraging digital transformation and technology because of opportunities created by the pandemic.

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Increasing headcount is a critical part of many CEOs’ expansion plans. Two-thirds (66%) of CEOs plan to add people to their organization over the next 12 months. Although increased hiring — along with increased wages — will add costs before contributing to productivity, these investments are necessary to keep pace with growing customer demands and market opportunities. Many leaders recognize the need to both retain their people and compete for new employees on the battlefields of Talent Wars 2.0. To that end, CEOs are increasing wages (69%), focusing on developing their existing workforce (56%) and refining their recruiting strategies (54%).

Boosting wages and developing employees are SMBs’ top responses to hiring challenges.

If hiring has become more difficult, what are you doing in response?

Boosting wages Developing existing workforce Refining recruitment strategies Allowing employees to work remotely Investing in automation and labor-saving devices Adding employee benefits Offering hiring bonuses Increasing overtime for existing employees Slowing or delaying growth Creating apprenticeship or internship programs

29% 28% 27% 26% 24% 18%

41%

56% 54%

69%

Source: Q3 2021 Vistage CEO Confidence Index n=1,620

©2021 Vistage Worldwide, Inc. All rights reserved

While economic conditions are favorable, headwinds are building that could slow expansion and challenge growth. Rising inflation, talent scarcity, supply chain problems and the ongoing pandemic all have the potential to dampen growth. The delta variant has threatened to stall growth with a two-month surge that is regionally intense but moderating, consistent with cases in other countries. As with all big waves, the undertow lurking beneath the surface is as strong as the surf above it. In the next 12-18 months, expect widespread worker migration to completely reorganize the workforce.

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Expert Perspective | Alan Beaulieu, President, ITR Economics Each decade, the economy has experienced some unprecedented impacts. This decade’s impact will be defined by the pandemicrelated shutdown. We live in a business cycle — that is fundamental to ITR — and there are cycles within cycles. In the near term, we’re going to see much of what we’re seeing today: Businesses that are busy will stay busy. Businesses that are supply-chain constrained will remain supply-chain constrained. The economy is going to grow, and you’re going to make some money.

In 2023, inflation is going to come back. It’s not going to be hyperinflation; it’s going to be less punitive and more pernicious.

But the more that you spend money on your business and invest in your productivity now, the better off you will be.

This is the time to invest in your business. But think about longerterm investments. Don’t buy something with a six-month lead time to solve a problem you have today. Ask yourself: Which of my capital investments am I making because I feel like there’s a chokehold against my throat? If you’re looking for a short-term fix, I would suggest you think about a longer-term solution.

When a slowdown eventually comes — because it always does — you will be prepared for it. You won’t have a heavy headcount. You’ll have an operation that can easily scale to whatever you’re facing in the future.

In 2022, the pressure you’re under is going to ease to more manageable levels. You’re going to grow but at a noticeably slower pace. The growth is still going to be healthy, but it won’t be at the strangled pace it is now. Build your budget for next year based on that slower growth.

Spend money to automate anything that you can to maintain your headcount instead of growing it. Growing your business without growing your headcount is going to put you in a much better position. Do anything you can now to make yourself more efficient, and borrow the money to do it. The economy is on your side.

From a theoretical perspective, we’ve been here before. The economy has cycles within cycles. What’s different each time are the causal effects and the intensity. Fundamentally, a downturn is caused by overspending and overborrowing. One time, it could be caused by a housing bubble driven by banks and the government. Another time, it could be caused by war or development overseas. It’s never the same cause twice, but it’s always the same result.

“The more that you invest in your productivity now, the better off you will be.”

Alan Beaulieu

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Part 2 | How to hybrid Before the pandemic, the workplace was much simpler: All employees, aside from a few remote workers, were expected to be in the office Monday to Friday, 9-5 (MF95). But once COVID-19 hit, everyone got a taste of work-from-home (WFH).

Now the question perplexing CEOs of small and midsize businesses is not how to go back to work. It’s how to move forward with a hybrid workforce.

In the short term, bringing people back to the office raises questions about developing policies that support workplace safety, following CDC guidelines and enforcing state and local mandates. But heading into 2022, CEOs will have to make bigger policy decisions about their workplace. Some will choose to return to the traditional MF95 model, while others will remain fully virtual. The majority will seek to find some balance between the two. Currently, 68% of CEOs anticipate offering WFH options for some employees beyond 2021.

Certain aspects of work, like collaboration, problem-solving and innovation exercises, are performed more effectively in the office. Planning sessions, culture-building activities, alignment events and team-building exercises are also better done in person. But individual tasks, personal project work and many day-to-day responsibilities can be done as productively in a remote setting — if not more so — than in a work environment.

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Company culture is both a victim and beneficiary of the new paradigm. Culture is hard to maintain and harder to nurture and grow in a WFH workplace, yet its importance is even more profound. With fewer face-to-face interactions, CEOs will have to find new ways to communicate, reinforce and reward culture in the new hybrid workplace. In companies with weak cultures, workers will have little to no attachment to the workplace and will treat their job as transactional.

The workforce revolution has given power to the employee. With 65% of businesses increasing headcount, workers can quickly find jobs that might better align with how they want to work. Finding the right balance of remote and in-office work is key to retaining and attracting employees. A great worker migration has already begun as many reject a return to the MF95 workplace and seek a model aligned with how they want to work.

Unfortunately for CEOs, it’s difficult to determine which workplace model is right. But what’s clear is that businesses that get this wrong will pay for it with high turnover or hiring difficulties.

Power has shifted from the employer to the employee.

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Expert Perspective | Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO, Disaster Avoidance Experts When Amazon, Apple and Google recently tried to force their employees to return to the office full time, many protested, and some resigned.

Their reaction reflects a broader trend.

Several large-scale research studies show that employees who worked remotely during the pandemic strongly prefer to continue to work from home. One study by Harvard Business School found that 81% of professionals don’t want to go back to the office or prefer a hybrid model. Another study, by Owl Labs, found that 46% of workers would look for a different job if their employer didn’t allow remote work after the pandemic.

To adapt to these changing dynamics, I recommend a team-led hybrid model based on these best practices.

Set broad parameters. Don’t declare a top-down policy on remote work. Instead, allow lower-level supervisors to decide what works best for their team, while providing them with broad and flexible guidelines for their decisions. Many companies will find that most workers will come into the office 1-3 days a week, and a small minority will work remotely full time. To maintain workplace culture, bring all employees to the office once a quarter for team-building retreats.

Reshape your office space. With input from your team leaders, anticipate your office usage and decrease your real estate accordingly. If your office will only have 40% occupancy, let go of the other 60%. Reshape your space so that one-third supports individual work (via hot desks) and two-thirds supports collaborative work (via lounges, video conferencing rooms and other group-work spaces).

Upgrade your video technology and swap desktops for laptops.

“Don’t declare a top-down policy on remote work. Instead, allow lower-level supervisors to decide what works best for their team.”

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Revise performance evaluations. Measure your employees’ performance and productivity based on tasks completed, deliverables met and contributions to the bottom line. Replace annual performance evaluations with weekly one-on-one checkin meetings on deliverables between the team leader and each of their team members.

Adapt your culture. Instead of trying to turn in-person activities virtual (e.g., Zoom happy hours), create new types of virtual bonding activities that are distinct from those that are based in office culture. To facilitate collaboration, set up digital co-working.

To facilitate innovation, establish virtual brainstorming and virtual venues for serendipitous idea generation. Assign virtual mentors to employees, one from their own team and one from outside their team. Be sure to address diversity and inclusion concerns with your staff, being mindful of their thoughts and feelings.

Provide training. Teach your employees what they need to do at home (e.g., individual tasks or project tasks) versus the office (e.g., collaborative tasks). Hire experienced professionals to train employees on effectively communicating and collaborating in a virtual setting.

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Part 3 | How to connect to the connected customer In the past 18 months, buyer behavior has changed just as quickly as everyone else’s. Buyers have become more autonomous, digitally engaged and comfortable shopping without a salesperson. This shift was underway for years but was accelerated by the pandemic. For small and midsize businesses, effectively engaging with these “connected customers” is critical to capitalizing on the economic growth wave.

The key to engaging with customers has always been about understanding their buying process. At some point, buyers need or want to engage directly with a salesperson to learn more about configuration, customization or integration of the product or service they are considering.

With greater buyer autonomy, that inflection point occurs later in the buying process because buyers are spending more energy on and placing greater trust in their digital buying experience. This requires sales to engage with the buyer later in the process while expanding the role of marketing in the buyer’s journey.

Alignment between sales and marketing has always been critical. Now, with buyers spending more time and energy in the digital sphere, sales and marketing must rebalance their connection. Sales teams need to provide deeper expertise in connecting the customer’s context with the company’s capabilities and prepare for a much more informed customer. Marketing must step up its digital presence and provide more specific insights at a deeper point in the buying process. Marketing must also support the sales process by maintaining a digital relationship with customers to encourage repeat orders, renewals or additional business.

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Rising to the challenge, 42% of CEOs reported increasing their marketing investments this year over pre-pandemic levels. Over 82% have directed those investments to digital marketing, which includes designing websites to match customers’ buying processes. Investments in a social media engine to cultivate followers and in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work together to direct prospective customers to the website.

Connecting to customers: Digital marketing investments of small and midsize businesses.

What elements of digital marketing are you investing in?

88%

Website

80%

Social media

62%

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

54%

Online content: Blogs, video, webinars

52%

Email marketing

38%

Online advertising: pay-per-click, display ads

27%

E-commerce Mobile marketing

16%

Source: Q3 2021 Vistage CEO Confidence Index n=1,620

©2021 Vistage Worldwide, Inc. All rights reserved

In a digital context, messaging becomes essential. This starts with online content that will build credibility and educate prospective buyers in their search for information. Marketing messages must be clear, consistent and direct to deepen connections with digital buyers. Telling a story that uses benefit-centered, outcome-oriented language engages buyers and pulls them closer. Incorporating thought leadership into messaging establishes credibility and authority, provided a salesperson can speak to it intelligently when they connect with buyers.

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Expert Perspective | Karen Hayward, Managing Partner and CMO, Chief Outsiders Two things have happened as a result of the pandemic: The needs of buyers have changed, and the way buyers want to buy has changed. Understanding the impact on your business is key to capitalizing on the growth opportunities that lie ahead.

People’s desire for digital interaction has completely accelerated. Buyers want to do their own research and make their own evaluations. They want to decide with which vendors to engage. They interact with salespeople later and later in the process.

What does that mean for the average company? It means your strategy needs to be rooted in digital. You need to have strong SEO. Your website needs to function well from a structural standpoint and an engagement standpoint. It needs to be much easier for people to find your business online. If you’re a B2B business, your website functions as the first sales call. If you’re a B2C business, your website is the business.

Think about the buyer’s journey versus your selling process.

Salespeople are not necessarily the ones getting the order. Marketing is increasingly filling the top of the sales funnel. For that reason, make sure you’re not over-resourced on the sales end. In 99% of cases, that money would be better spent by moving it into top-of-thefunnel programs, which would give your salespeople much better leads.

Your customers’ problems have changed. Do a win-loss analysis so you can update your value proposition and go-to-market plan.

Conduct a 3-3-3 survey in which you ask your employees, “What are the three strengths of the company, three weaknesses of the company and three things you would do if you were CEO tomorrow?”

This will highlight both issues and strengths that you may not know you have. Leverage those strengths in your go-to-market strategy to penetrate other accounts.

When you’re selling in a virtual environment, you need to slow down the sales process. There are two best practices I recommend: One, never email a proposal to a client without bringing it up in a virtual meeting and calling it a “draft review.” Walk the client through the proposal and ask questions so you build out your understanding of the problems they want you to solve. Two, map out the path to close in collaboration with your client. Figure out when they want to have the solution implemented and then work backward to figure out what needs to happen between now and then. It’s a non-intrusive way to understand the path to closure.

“Think about the buyers’ journey versus your selling process.”

Karen Hayward

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Part 4 | How to manage the rising cost of everything Why is the cost of everything rising? As we learned in Economics 101, when supply is low and demand is high, prices will rise. Inflation has surged as consumers and businesses have rushed back to the marketplace as quickly as they ran from it a year ago. Absorbing the off/on shock of volume has caused supply shortages that can’t keep pace with demand. Our data from Q2 revealed that CEOs of small and midsize businesses are seeing increased costs from suppliers (80%), labor costs (79%) and raw materials (64%).

The complex, interconnected global supply chain proved to be much easier to shut down than to restart. Our most recent survey shows that nearly twice as many CEOs say supply chain issues are getting worse (43%) rather than getting better (23%). Businesses continue to face shortages of raw materials, computer chips and shipping containers while dealing with backlogged ports and absent delivery drivers.

High demand for labor and low supply of qualified talent are also increasing wage costs. Two-thirds of CEOs are increasing wages, and 27% are offering hiring bonuses in response to hiring challenges. Companies need labor for growth and 67% of CEOs report that their hiring challenges are impacting their ability to operate at full capacity, representing a drag on growth.

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With little choice but to absorb price increases from every direction, 74% of CEOs say they will increase their prices in the year ahead.

Nine months ago, the Q4 2020 CEO Confidence Index revealed that only 43% of CEOs planned on increasing prices. The increase of 31 points demonstrates both the speed of the recovery and urgency of growth. Raising prices, even when everyone else is, remains a fine balance between profitability, market forces and customer acceptance in place of lower-cost alternatives.

Nearly three-quarters of CEOs report plans to raise prices.

How do you expect prices for your product or service to change during the next 12 months?

Don’t know/no opinion Decrease 74% 43% Q4 2020

+31 pts

Remain the same Increase

Q3 2021

Source: Q4 2020 Vistage CEO Confidence Index, n=1,519 Source: Q3 2021 Vistage CEO Confidence Index n=1,620

©2021 Vistage Worldwide, Inc. All rights reserved

The intensity of the recovery and economic surge has stressed all systems like never before. But the market always responds. As supply increases to meet demand, prices will begin to normalize, if even at a slightly higher level than before. The supply chain will recover and hiring will remain strong; however, it will moderate as growth settles. Time is the ultimate cure because these pressures are transitory in nature.

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Expert Perspective | Casey Brown, President, Boost Profits

“Get granular.

The riches are in the niches.”

Casey Brown

This is not the time to hunker down in economic fear. It’s the time to be bullish on price. Most companies in nearly every vertical are raising prices, and the entire world is becoming somewhat numb to it. Don’t be the last to jump on board, because once this ship has sailed, you’re going to find it very hard to catch up.

Good pricing strategy is generally agnostic to the macroeconomic environment. There are winners and losers in any economic climate.

The companies that eke out a price premium — even when there is market contraction — focus relentlessly on value, differentiate their offerings and message their price increases appropriately.

The smartest companies also play the arbitrage game, holding off on accepting cost increases for as long as possible and raising prices as fast as possible.

Most of the time, sellers don’t price from confidence. They price from fear. They don’t price to win, rather they price not to lose. Sellers are afraid to increase prices because they think, “What if we lose customers?” The reality is that you will lose few if any customers through surgical application of your pricing strategy.

Savvy companies segment their price increases by products and services, by customer types, and by risk categories.

Don’t raise prices 5% across the board. Customer A might pay only 4% more for Product 123 and 6% more for Product 456, while Customer B is willing to pay 8% more for Product 123 and 12% more for Product 456. Get granular. The riches are in the niches.

Even if you do suffer a modest volume loss with a price increase, the result is that you’ll be a slightly smaller but much more profitable firm. Internal discussions revolve around volume loss concerns because of customer feedback. Don’t pay attention to customers’ price objections unless they actually stop buying. Complaints are just noise. Only sales (or lack thereof) are data.

When you announce price increases, don’t tie your messaging too closely to cost. If you tell customers, “We’re raising our prices 10% because our costs have increased,” then you’re vulnerable to the downside when costs drop. It also strips your company of its value. It says the only reason you have permission to increase prices is because of the cost of your inputs and not because of the value you provide. While it’s reasonable and maybe even necessary to cite cost increases to justify price increases, never let that be the only justification. Cite improvements to customer value. Michelangelo’s prices weren’t just dependent on the cost of marble.

When should you raise prices? As often and as high as possible.

In my 25 years of experience in this space, I can count on one hand the number of times a company has gone to the well too often or asked for too much. More often, companies go too slow or too low.

Stop debating internally and start raising prices. (And if you did it already, can you do it again?)

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Part 5 | How to accelerate digital transformation Technology is the unsung hero of the pandemic. Without it, we would not have been able to pivot to work from home, attend events virtually or replace family visits with Zoom gatherings. We couldn’t have done this 15 years ago; the existing digital infrastructure lacked the bandwidth, collaboration applications and personal technology to pull it off.

The companies that have fared best in the pandemic are the ones furthest on the digital transformation journey. But the pandemic hasn’t just demonstrated our dependence on technology; it has intensified our thirst for more.

To improve efficiencies and scale their business faster, 65% of CEOs are investing in technology to reduce the labor burden on their product or service. The productivity gains of automation and technology have transformed every aspect of work and life.

Manufacturing automation, business applications and personal productivity tools all power commerce. Digital transformation is the commitment to advancing automation, system optimization and worker collaboration.

The single greatest obstacle to change always has been human behavior. Every change initiative, from culture to customer systems, requires behavior change. This always takes longer and is harder to achieve than expected. However, the pandemic has accelerated behavior change and lowered resistance to change by forcing people to adapt. Going forward, digital transformation initiatives should find a more receptive community prepared to step forward.

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Despite the health and financial crises brought on by COVID-19, cyberattacks remain the greatest threat to every business. Nefarious hackers don’t attack just large-enterprise businesses for bitcoin ransoms; they also go after small and midsize businesses. Each year, over a quarter of small and midsize businesses experience a cyberattack, which in reality is likely higher because many cases go unreported. Ransomware attacks hold data hostage and block operations, stopping a business as suddenly as a heart attack. This threat only has increased because the weakest link in cybersecurity — people — now function remotely on largely unsecured home networks.

Cyber threats will always be with us, constantly mutating, threatening every business and costing money. Businesses can’t ignore that risk and must continually invest to stay ahead of the hackers. That’s simply a brutal fact.

The good news is 49% of CEOs have an up-to-date cybersecurity plan in place for their business. That’s up from 37% in 2017 when we first started surveying small and midsize businesses about their cybersecurity. But the sophistication of cyberattacks advances every day, and plans need to be reviewed regularly. Even though a protected business is still vulnerable to attack, it will react and recover far better than a business that ignores the threat.

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Expert Perspective | Russell Safirstein, President and CEO, Redpoint Cybersecurity

“Treat ransomware gangs as if they’re Fortune 100 companies.”

Russell Safirstein

At the start of COVID-19, the shutdown required many employees to work from home, and cyberattacks rose at a steep pace. But they’re rising even faster this year. The number of breaches related to ransomware was up 150% in the first half of 2021 compared to one year prior. In those six months, there were 227 million cases in the United States alone.

I tell our clients to treat ransomware gangs as if they’re Fortune 100 companies. Behind the scenes, threat actors engage in a sophisticated process of research and development to ensure their ransomware deployments are successful. An organization can have threat actors in their system for weeks or months before they’re actually hit. During that time, the threat actors are looking for potential opportunities and vulnerabilities. They’re trying to locate the data that’s most valuable to a business.

In the event of a breach, get a cyber attorney, also known as a “breach coach.” They’ll help you make sure you are following regulatory disclosure guidelines. Many countries, including the United States, have laws that require you to send breach notifications 48 or 72 hours after a data breach. A breach coach also can prepare an Incident Response Methodology from the moment an incident occurs to when remediation is complete. If you have any claims against your organization, this will allow you to say, “We did a forensic review. This is what we’ve found and what data was taken.

We’ve notified the appropriate authorities, and now we’re moving to remediation and restoration to get to a steady state.”

From January to June 2021, every case we’ve worked on has involved a ransom of at least $1 million, and we’ve seen a few cases over $20 million. But companies are facing even greater risks than the expense of ransom. It’s costing them customers as well. For example, we are working with one 5,000-employee organization that was locked down for 2.5 weeks after a ransomware attack. Now their main clients are concerned about their data being impacted, and they’re considering pulling out.

Many organizations have a very defensive strategy; they’re rich in tools and poor in resources. Ultimately, your strategy needs to be more offensive. Focus on identifying and removing the threat actors from your systems. Additionally, you need to transfer some risk by getting cyber insurance. Know that insurance carriers will expect you to meet certain requirements before they give you a policy. You will not get a policy if you don’t have multi-factor authentication and endpoint detection tools, or if you haven’t had a penetration test in the last 12 months.

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Part 6 | Research Perspective | The Challenges of Compressed Decision-Making Compressed decision-making occurs when the speed of change forces us to make immediate decisions without sufficient time or experience to think them through completely. Many of these decisions are part of a post-COVID world.

Here’s the challenge: In this unprecedented environment, we have limited expert perspectives, data, case studies and best practices to inform our thinking. In the absence of this information, we default to our judgment. However, we lack experience with and knowledge of altered markets, changing workplaces and a dynamic economy, so we can’t rely solely on our judgment. As a result, we default to our instincts, which tell us how we feel or want to feel about a decision. The problem with instinct-led decision-making is that our biases influence our decisions.

We look for information to confirm our thinking, assume people see things the way we do or seek to maintain the status quo. Our instincts will make us feel satisfied with our decision, and then we’ll justify why it’s the right call.

Compressed decision-making in a world of accelerated disruption means CEOs must understand and maintain awareness of their personal biases in their decision-making. CEOs must be conscious of their subconscious and become comfortable with being uncomfortable, even if the best decision doesn’t necessarily feel right. But you can be sure your employees, customers and competitors will be paying close attention and make decisions accordingly.

Accelerated disruption is forcing CEOs into a state of compressed decision-making. By contrast, optimized decision-making is a combination of:

• • •

Instincts — how we feel about a decision Judgment — what we think about a decision Perspectives — what we incorporate from people and resources we trust and respect

Optimized decision-making happens when we incorporate trusted perspectives with our own experience, training and knowledge. This forms our judgment, which is then validated by our instincts.

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In his analysis of the debate over hybrid work models, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky has noticed many CEOs exhibiting five cognitive biases in particular.

Note if one or more of these biases have influenced your decision-making.

1. Status quo bias: Desiring to maintain or return to the old ways of doing things.

2. Anchoring bias: A mental blind spot rooted in feeling anchored to our initial experiences and information.

3. Confirmation bias: Ignoring information that contradicts our beliefs and looking for information that supports them.

4. False consensus effect: Believing that people in our in-group — such as those employed at our company — share our beliefs and values much more than they actually do. For example, many leaders are shocked when, after surveying their employees, they find that most of their workforce wants to work from home at least half the time.

5. Functional fixedness: Having a fixed perception on how an object should be used, or how people should behave, and ignoring other ways of using an object or behaving.

The speed and depth of change has never been greater than it is now. From March 2020 to today, we have experienced disruptions in every aspect of our lives. Some of these disruptions have led to an economic surge and growth opportunities. The workplace is experiencing seismic change as the hybrid model takes hold and employees look to align with the work model of their choice. Buyers have changed just as fast, engaging in a more autonomous buying process that is both informed and influenced digitally. Issues with supply chains, access to labor and rising costs are causing inflation to skyrocket for the first time in decades. Technology adoption, utilization and dependence are making transformation decisions even more urgent.

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Contributors Alan Beaulieu, President, ITR Economics With a reputation as an accurate, straightforward economist, Alan Beaulieu has been delivering award-winning workshops and economic analysis seminars across the world to thousands of business owners and executives for the last 30 years. Alan has coauthored, with Brian Beaulieu, the books “Make Your Move,” “Prosperity in the Age of Decline,” and “But I Want It!” He has also penned numerous articles and makes up to 90 appearances a year. Alan’s keynotes and seminars have helped thousands of business owners and executives capitalize on emerging trends.

Casey Brown, President, Boost Profits As president of Boost Profits, Casey Brown leads a group of consultants who help companies sell more at higher prices to increase profit. She is a highly sought-after speaker on the topic of commanding excellent pricing for the value provided. Her 2015 TedX talk has accumulated over 4 million views to date, and the Boost Profits blog – of which she is a coauthor – has been named a Top 50 Blog. Casey’s unique background of engineering, Six Sigma and pricing strategy for multiple Fortune 500 companies provides a rich backdrop of real-world application, which has helped establish her as an expert in helping clients discover their true pricing power and watch their profits rise as a result.

Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer, Vistage Worldwide As Chief Research Officer for Vistage, the world’s leading executive coaching organization for small and midsize businesses, Joe Galvin is responsible for providing Vistage members with current, compelling and actionable thought leadership on the top issues, topics and decisions of small and midsize business CEOs.

Karen Hayward, Managing Partner and CMO, Chief Outsiders Karen Hayward is an author, international speaker, and Managing Partner and CMO with Chief Outsiders, where she is responsible for building and supporting a team of world-class marketers. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Karen matches midmarket CEOs and private equity portfolio managers with the best-fit chief marketing officers to help accelerate top-line growth. Her book “Stop Random Acts of Marketing” takes the learnings from her previous experience as a VP in both sales and marketing and shows midmarket CEOs how to build a strategic growth plan in the digital age to deliver compelling ROI. Inc. named her book a top 10 mustread business book for 2020.

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Anne Petrik, Sr. Director of Research, Vistage Worldwide As senior director of research, Anne Petrik leads the design, deployment and analysis of CEO surveys for Vistage, capturing the sentiment and practices of the Vistage CEO community.

Using her analysis, in collaboration with perspectives from experts and partners, Anne directs the thought leadership published by Vistage research to provide small and midsize business CEOs with insights that inform on how to optimize their businesses and enhance their leadership.

Russell Safirstein, President and CEO, Redpoint Cybersecurity Russell Safirstein is president and CEO of Redpoint Cybersecurity, LLC, a subsidiary of Anchin, where he is also the Partner in Charge of Anchin Digital Risk Solutions.

A senior executive and a progressive thinker with over 30 years of experience, Russell has been successful in bringing nontraditional solutions to an ever-changing work environment. He has cofounded several organizations that specialize in artificial intelligence and machine learning and holds several patents.

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, CEO, Disaster Avoidance Experts Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is an internationally renowned thought leader in future-proofing and cognitive-bias risk management.

He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-proofing consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, which specializes in helping forward-looking leaders avoid dangerous threats and missed opportunities. He is a best-selling author with several titles, including “Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters” (Career Press, 2019) and “Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage” (Intentional Insights, 2021).

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About Vistage Worldwide, Inc. Vistage is the world’s largest CEO coaching and peer advisory organization for small and midsize businesses. For more than 60 years, we’ve been helping CEOs, business owners and key executives solve their greatest challenges through confidential peer groups and one-to-one executive coaching sessions. Today, more than 23,000 members in 20 countries rely on Vistage to help make better decisions for their companies, families and communities. The results prove it: Vistage member companies grow 2.2 times faster than average small and midsize U.S. businesses, according to a 2017 study of Dun & Bradstreet data.

Learn more at vistage.com.

About Vistage Research Vistage conducts original research and curates subject-matter expertise from thought leaders to create actionable, thoughtprovoking insights for leaders of small and midsize businesses. Our analysis of surveys we conduct, including the WSJ/Vistage Small Business CEO survey and Vistage CEO Confidence Index survey, informs various reports. Since 2003, Vistage has published the CEO Confidence Index, which has been a proven predictor of GDP two quarters in advance. Vistage provides the data and expert perspectives to help SMB CEOs make better decisions.

Learn more at vistage.com/confidenceindex and vistageindex.com.

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