The CEO’s Guide to Delivering Despite Uncertainty

For the CEO

What’s at Stake

The multibillion-dollar challenge for CEOs in 2025: executing their most critical priorities in uncertain times.

How can leaders focus on what matters most, ensuring that their businesses are able to achieve strategic objectives in full, on time, and within budget? As CEOs grapple with what the policies of the new US administration mean for their companies (not to mention ongoing geopolitical conflicts, volatile markets, and the impacts of climate change) this already demanding task becomes that much more daunting.

 

 

According to BCG research, costs were top of mind for CEOs leading into 2024. They still are in 2025. The numbers suggest that companies are looking for a path to greater efficiency and streamlined operations—without sacrificing opportunities for competitive advantage, innovation, and growth.

As they chart their path forward, leaders will have to navigate their way around the fault lines in search of more predictable footing. They must remain flexible, ready to adapt and pivot based on changing market or political conditions. That means focusing on costs.

Delivering Despite Uncertainty

CEOs need to set ambitious cost targets—and be confident that their organizations can deliver. They must beware of strawman goals—short-term reductions that appear impressive on paper but never reach the bottom line.

When done right, effective cost management enables companies to execute their highest-order objectives: spurring innovation, entering new markets, upskilling talent, and more. Here’s how CEOs can make it happen.

Build a culture of cost discipline. Cost cutting doesn’t have to result in flagging employee engagement. In fact, recent BCG research finds that, when executing cost management programs, the most successful cost transformations actually improve employee morale.

CEOs are essential to building this culture. More than 80% of the most efficient, lean organizations—those that realize outsized impact from their cost initiatives and enjoy the most competitive market position—communicate cost ambitions directly from the top, compared to less than 40% of underperforming businesses.

Leaders set the tone by example, modeling cost-conscious behaviors. They incentivize and reward those same behaviors across the enterprise, empowering employees to take on greater responsibility and more critical roles while aiming to reduce bureaucracy.

• Potential first step: Identify a north star for your cost-cutting efforts and comprehensively communicate it. Every employee should understand the strategy behind the business's decisions to cut costs. Work with your leadership to craft an inspiring change narrative—explaining how cost cutting can lead to increased market share, competitive advantage, and outsized profitability. Establishing a clear vision and ensuring that it is communicated widely throughout the organization will make the transition seem more meaningful and, ultimately, palatable to employees.

Cut surgically. Cost programs run aground when leaders execute blunt-force cuts across the business. Don’t assume that rigid revisions to the annual budget, indiscriminate headcount reduction, or shuttered business functions will yield structural, sustainable savings without hurting operations or hindering growth.

This is especially true when it comes to talent. The boom-bust cycle of workforce contraction and expansion can be costly and counterproductive. Businesses often fail to fully leverage the employees they already have at their disposal. As AI, innovation, and seizing new market opportunities become increasingly important, companies should work to identify ways they can position their employees to create the greatest impact and build the necessary programs to support this effort.

Accomplish this by reducing waste and removing less-critical work. Search for needless layers and competing, duplicative activities. Where possible, automate and digitize, redirecting your talent to carry out the highest-priority activities that are aligned with leadership goals and deliver concrete business value. Employee morale will improve, costs will fall, and the organization will be better prepared to execute.

• Potential first step: Scale back or eliminate internal white-glove services, which create needless expense with little additional business value. An internal function might, for instance, spend a lot of time producing internal monthly newsletters that few employees actually read; that same function might better serve the business by managing a self-service communications portal or drafting targeted updates. When in doubt, reallocate resources from overhead to activities that add value and increase productivity.

Shore up your supply chain. Ongoing geopolitical tensions, shifting trade patterns, and new tariffs mean that businesses’ supply chains will remain strained for the foreseeable future. Regardless of how confident they feel today, CEOs should move immediately to ensure that their supply chains are flexible, resilient, and supported by the latest technologies.

KPIs should be focused on measuring the ROI on innovation alongside cost-saving efforts. Developing dynamic cost models and three-year rolling plans will allow organizations to optimize make-versus-buy decisions and align culture with cost-saving goals to drive lasting reductions. Prioritize your supply chain stability now so that it doesn’t confound your ability to deliver on goals later.

• Potential first step: Enhance your company’s crisis-response capabilities to anticipate and mitigate disruptions ahead of the competition. Deploying new tools—such as a dynamic model that quantifies costs across steps and processes, digital twins, and real-time AI systems—is essential to this effort. CEOs who harness these technologies will be able to react to black swan events efficiently. From there, leaders should develop nearshoring strategies and regional partnerships to reduce dependency on vulnerable global routes.
  

Bet strategically on AI. Scale relentlessly. AI isn’t always a cure-all. How companies integrate this technology and rethink the way they work will make all the difference. Many organizations struggle to move past scaling pilots and translate AI-driven efficiencies into measurable P&L impact. Those that do successfully implement and scale AI initiatives often fail to root out old behaviors and legacy infrastructure that the new technologies were designed to replace, so they are unable to realize savings.

Nevertheless, leading companies—those that successfully integrate AI into their operations—are increasing productivity, accelerating transformation, reducing costs, and improving the customer and employee experience. These organizations focus their AI investments on reshaping critical functions, scaling a select few high-impact initiatives, and prioritizing people and process change over algorithms. Compared to lagging companies, they realize 150% revenue growth, 180% total shareholder return, and 140% higher employee satisfaction by making AI a core driver of business value.

• Potential first step: Start by reshaping core functions, not just automating processes. Go beyond streamlining existing workflows and instead pursue efficiency and new business capabilities. Align AI initiatives with business priorities, focusing on two to four transformation areas that will have the greatest impact. Set clear KPIs that measure cost savings and new value creation—such as revenue impact, customer experience, and product or service innovation. Invest in talent and organizational change: dedicate 70% of AI-transformation efforts to upskilling teams and embedding the tech into daily decision making.
  

A Parting Thought

CEOs have a demanding agenda in the coming months. They must closely monitor market signals, filter out the static, and spot opportunity where the competition only sees opposition. Successful leaders will cut costs, streamline their portfolios, and dedicate significant resources to stay ahead of the news cycle.

These priorities aside, leaders cannot capture short-term gains at the expense of longer-term prospects—or despite future hazards. Our research suggests that a stunning 25% of corporations’ 2050 EBITDA could be at risk from the physical effects of climate change. Meanwhile, rapid advances in agentic AI, quantum computing, new sources of energy, and other technologies will broaden the divide between leading and lagging companies.

Leaders face an unenviable task: staying the course without narrowing the field of vision. The challenge today is delivering wins despite uncertainty. The challenge tomorrow is turning those wins into continued advantage.