What keeps global CEOs busy? Not always the right things.
A few days ago, PwC published its 27th "Annual Global CEO Survey", parallel to the World Economic Forum in Davos. What caught my eye: Germany is losing trust. 15% of the almost 4,700 CEOs from 105 countries surveyed worldwide rank Germany among the top 3 growth drivers for their company in the next 12 months. In 2023, this was still 18%. Nevertheless, Germany remains in third place behind the USA (29% cited) and China (21% cited).
Unfortunately, the study does not reveal what international CEOs think about Germany in detail, but we already know that from plenty of other surveys and anecdotes.
However, it does tell us what German CEOs consider to be the biggest threats: Cyber risks are #1 with 42% naming them (twice as high as globally!), followed by geopolitics (28% - globally 18%) and climate change (28% - globally only 12%). The list continues with a poor macroeconomic situation, inflation, health risks and social inequality.
What's missing from the list? That's right. The shortage of skilled workers. PwC did not consider what is probably the greatest threat to the prosperity of industrialized countries to be important enough to include in the list at all. Ouch.
Because guess what it takes to contain cyber risks and implement important climate policy? Skilled workers, of course. Geopolitics and climate change are incredibly important, but they are also dark horses for German companies somewhere: Exactly how, where and when they will affect companies is difficult to say. There is no such uncertainty when it comes to the shortage of skilled workers; it throws quite big sticks in the way of the German economy on a daily basis.
Hopefully, the lack of a shortage of skilled workers was just a lapse on PwC's part and the German companies would all have voted him up if he had been available for selection. Unfortunately, I notice in my day-to-day work that many companies are not yet aware of how severely the skills shortage is affecting them. So it's no wonder that "cyber risks" never disappear from the list of fears, as there is no one who can solve them.
