PwC CEO Kevin Burrowes reflects on global CEO expectations for 2025

PwC’s Australia boss Kevin Burrowes has commented on the findings of the firm’s latest annual global CEO survey, noting the benefits of longer leadership tenures in driving business reinvention.

Burrowes, who was flown in in 2023 and had his term extended through to at least 2026 early last year, said the correlation between CEOs who felt more stable in their positions and those acting to reinvent their businesses had caught his eye.

PwC’s annual global CEO survey – now into its 28th edition – checked the pulse of more than 4,700 chiefs worldwide, including 116 in Australia, broadly finding a growing level of optimism among the business leaders both here and abroad.

Personally weighing in on the results, Burrowes said a number of findings stood out, including that CEOs who expected to remain in the role longer than others were statistically more likely to be taking multiple actions to reinvent their organisations in the face of disruptive forces, with the PwC boss adding that this decade was shaping up to be one of the most decisive in business history.

In addition to leading the way on reinvention, CEOs with longer expected tenures were also more likely to be reporting profitability gains and using a variety of techniques to evaluate their strategic actions. Yet, as Burrowes notes, most of the CEOs surveyed in Australia have been in their position for less than five years, with, globally, the majority not expecting to last beyond that mark.

Less than a half of the respondents – or just 40 percent – conveyed a belief that they would remain in their roles beyond five years, with over one third altogether projecting the figure at somewhere between three to five years. Meanwhile, only 12 percent foresaw themselves in the hot seat for more than a decade, contrasted with the 5 percent who didn’t expect to see out the next twelve months.

Burrowes, who has since taking the helm overseen an organisational restructure and the launch of new three-year strategy focused on the four key areas of climate advisory, AI, business model reinvention, and its traditional core strengths in areas such as audit and tax, framed this as “a gap between relatively short CEO tenures versus the long-term disruptions which they need to solve.”

In its global report, PwC was at pains to point out that the firm wasn’t necessarily advocating for longer executive terms as standard practice, as there are of course other governance and performance-related issues in play, but asked of corporate boards if they were doing enough to encourage ‘through-tenure’ considering the current long-term reconfiguration of industries.

Balancing priorities

As to the balancing of demands for near-term performance against “the imperative to reinvent, which is no longer optional,” Burrowes concludes; “Reinvention requires a mindset that looks beyond the immediate horizon. Organisations which cultivate a culture of leadership that extends beyond individual tenures, can ensure reinvention is sustained across generations of CEOs.”

Elsewhere, Burrowes noted the close to one half of Australian CEOs who reported having already seen tangible benefits from the adoption of generative AI tools, in terms of employee productivity and expected profitability boosts, but warned those who took a business-as-usual approach and considered their organisations to be resistant to change that such faith might be misguided.

“There is no room for complacency: it’s time to self-disrupt, or be disrupted,” Burrowes concluded. “While nearly three quarters of Australia’s chief executives believe their companies will survive the next decade, only 55 percent of their global peers share that view. This confidence, rooted in historically favorable conditions, may be misplaced in today’s era of constant disruption.”