Short-term, crisis management becomes the focus of executives when their companies face external threats, but it isn’t the type of work that attracts them to the chief executive’s job. Most CEOs want to shape and execute long-term business strategies that support a company’s clear vision.

In the final months of 2024, Padilla, a Minneapolis-based communications firm, discovered a trend among executives who are yearning to carry out plans to grow and strengthen their companies after reacting to the disruptions caused by Covid-19.

It was a major finding of Padilla’s third annual C-suite Perspectives study.

“The big theme is that after two years of [Padilla] reports that demonstrated leaders managing in the moment, we now have leaders with a pent-up desire to lead with vision and long-term direction,” Matt Kucharski, Padilla president, said in a recent TCB interview. “They’re looking for ways to do that in an environment where it is still challenging to build a strong culture and there are external factors that are working against them.”

Padilla surveyed more than 100 C-suite executives and 1,000 employed adults in the United States during the latter half of 2024. In addition, about 50 C-suite executives took part in interviews.

The C-suite executives were asked to select their top five choices for key challenges they were facing as business leaders. Coping with rising inflation was the No. 1 challenge, which was cited by 42% of the executives. But that was down six points from the prior year.

Coping with economic uncertainty came in at No. 2 at 37%, a two-point decline from 2023. These responses were provided by the executives in late 2024, so the business, consumer, and market uncertainty caused by President Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy in early 2025 had not yet been revealed.

The next five top priorities all attracted higher percentages than they did in 2023. Kucharski said those priorities would be considered “future forward” because they involve ways to improve businesses rather than dealing with negative external factors.

Achieving business performance goals increased by seven points to 33%. Protecting data privacy and security saw a double-digit increase, rising 11 points to 31%. Meanwhile, adapting to market shifts in consumer/customer behavior was boosted by eight points to 30%.

During a period of worker shortages in many industry sectors, 29% of C-suite executives placed a priority on attracting and retaining talent or employees. That priority choice increased by 11 points from the prior year.

The workforce priority was followed closely by one dealing with artificial intelligence. One in four executives gave a priority ranking to determining whether and how to leverage artificial intelligence. Only 12% of those surveyed gave AI a top five ranking in 2023, but it jumped 13 points in 2024 to 25%.

Kucharski acknowledged that the Trump administration has created new conditions that affect business revenue and expenses. But he said many C-suite leaders still harbor a sentiment to “move some key business initiatives forward.”

What will it take for CEOs to implement change agendas and make long-term business development investments? “Their ability to do so will be predicated on No. 1, overcoming the headwinds that are out there, and No. 2, bringing people along. Not everybody is in the same place they are [in terms of change agendas], particularly when it comes to employees.”

Confidence, credibility, and ethics were deemed “extremely important” leadership attributes by large majorities of C-suite executives and employees who were asked to rate the importance of various leadership qualities.

Empathy, which was valued highly in Padilla’s first survey, remained important in the 2024 study.

“The empathy of the past [study] had been about recognizing that employees might be struggling a bit,” Kucharski said. “The empathy now is [from a CEO mindset], ‘I want to move things forward, but I have to be empathetic enough to know that not everybody is in the same place I am.’ It’s still empathy, but empathy applied in a different way.”

Threats to workplace culture

Workplace culture is a topic that’s attracting analysis from C-suite leaders and their employees. “You have leaders who recognize that a strong culture is essential to achieve their vision and direction,” he said. “Yet they’re fighting against worker well-being declining. They’re fighting against the fragmentation of hybrid work. They’re fighting against polarization, and they’re really worried about polarization entering the workplace.”

In conducting the third study of C-suite Perspectives, Kucharski said there’s a shift he can see in how corporate executives choose to address social issues in society. “There is much more deliberation before an organization speaks out on any social issue, and leaders are making sure that it has business relevance,” he said. “They’re having a recognition that not everybody’s going to agree with them. The bigger issue is that organizations don’t want polarization to devolve into grievance in the workplace.”

Diversity, equity, and inclusion also have been addressed in the Padilla study. “There’s obviously a lot of discussion about companies rolling back their DEI programs. We believe that is an oversimplification,” he said.

“There’s a continuum of commitment and there are plenty of organizations that are retaining their DEI programs,” he said. “But they are reframing them in ways to focus on business relevance. There are good business reasons why some organizations have invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. They’re altering them because they know they need to, but they certainly don’t want to see them go away.”

Companies don’t want to get sued, so he said they are avoiding quotas and numerical targets for certain jobs or groups of employees. While they might not use the acronym DEI, he said they are preserving many of its tenets.

“Most employers want diversity because that allows them to attract people from a lot of different places,” he said. “They want inclusion because inclusion leads to a strong culture.”

Another prominent acronym, AI, also is on the minds of C-suite leaders. “Nearly 80% are either aggressively adopting or selectively adopting AI,” Kucharski said. “It’s a big, powerful tool.”

The survey showed that leaders want to use AI to improve the quality of products and services, keep pace with their competitors, or gain a competitive advantage, he said.

In the past two Padilla surveys, a high level of C-suite turnover was detected, and Kucharski has used the phrase “Great Executive Resignation.”

If bad economic conditions block C-suite leaders from carrying out long-term strategies for their companies, Kucharski anticipates more leaders will retire early. If they can’t get the satisfaction of making progress, he said, “we’re going to continue to see more of them step off the train.”