Silencing of the CEOs

Davos is usually a platform for CEOs to take to the stage and extol the virtues of their business, its values and the influence and impact they seek to make as leaders. 

Not this year. Our team on the ground report that CEO public proclamations and discussions are very muted. While there’s plenty of chat about AI and technological advancement, most CEOs of large businesses are favouring closed-door roundtable discussions and face-to-face meetings. 

With a large US delegation in town, led by President Trump, CEOs are following a trend that became evident last year of keeping their counsel on issues of wider public, economic, social and sustainability relevance and limiting platform discussions to matters of commercial performance and innovation. 

Why? Because businesses are having to tread an increasingly delicate tightrope between different stakeholder groups who often hold diametrically opposed views on critical business issues. 

Investors, the public and customers will want to know that corporates still have a plan for managing and mitigating sustainability risks. Conversely many politicians, and some activist groups will regard this as woke nonsense that is best consigned to the dustbin of history. 

In the face of this turbulence, it’s easy to see why silence can seem a pragmatic option. 

Indeed, a study out this week from Nardello & Co suggests that one in ten business leaders are even avoiding meeting their own junior staff out of fear of false allegations and nearly half avoid social media. A quarter of leaders rank reputational damage as one of their top three concerns while a fifth admit trying to mitigate reputational risk by making safer decisions. 

Yet in a world of complexity, geopolitical tension and intense global competition, timidity has never been a virtue in a successful CEO’s skill set. You can only sit on a fence for so long. 

That opens up an increasingly important role for CEOs as corporate diplomats: working with corporate affairs advisors to identify the various stakeholder groups that surround them, understand the issues that matter to them and identify how the business and its leadership team is expected to show up. 

It also means planning for the inevitability of negative scrutiny and being cancelled, and having answers to the tricky questions; ones that resonate with the strategy and purpose of the business and are not just structured to close down critics.  

Into this mix, SEC Newgate’s annual Impact Monitor, released last week, shows that the public still expect corporates to act responsibly, prioritise sustainability and social development, and to speak out and defend their culture and values. Yet our research also found that the UK public want business to prioritise local impact (investment, jobs and social and environmental action) over global mission statements and proclamations. 

All this adds to an increasingly febrile environment where business leaders are having to satisfy the demands of numerous audience groups, anticipate the reaction of different activists and critics and navigate a geopolitical environment that is fast-moving, unpredictable and where trade and business is being weaponised. 

It’s a new reality that requires CEOs to embrace corporate diplomacy and lean into corporate affairs insights and advice to ensure leadership isn’t silenced, yet at the same time resists the ever-present risk of being cancelled. 

If that sounds like a challenge that requires fresh insights and thinking in your business, then we’re happy to talk.