Nordic CEOs stand out in how they view the role of the CEO. For them, it’s about running the business and not about their own egos – the team and the overall result come first. They seem well aware that they are using their skill sets to run a company at a given point in time.

In a fast-moving world, the openness to change is an obvious success factor. This year’s results of the CEO Outlook prove not only that Nordic CEOs embrace change, but also that they recognise that different types of leadership and skills are needed at different points in a company’s lifecycle. Nearly half of the Nordic CEOs strongly agree that different kinds of CEOs are needed for various stages of a company’s journey (46 percent vs. 31 percent on a global level).

Different kinds of CEOs are needed for various stages of a company's life cycle

Putting more trust in data

What is more important than confidence is the recognition of the importance of change. And this year’s results prove not only that Nordic CEOs embrace change, but also that they recognise the different types of leadership it entails. They still prefer traditional decision making – over the past three years, 72 percent have rejected insights provided by data analysis models when they were contrary to their intuition. However, last year that number was 78 percent, which shows that Nordic CEOs are moving toward a more data-driven approach to their decision making.  

Haval Van Drumpt

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