Bold Bets and Few Regrets: BCG on Future CEO Strategies

In a world of heightened uncertainty, CEOs likely view betting big as the greatest risk, when it may actually be hesitating to make a bold choice that poses the greatest threat.

A survey of 70 former CEOs and senior executives found that more than half said moving too slowly was among their biggest regrets, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found.

This compares to those who initiated transformations within the first two years, delivering higher total shareholder returns than those who started later, according to a study by BCG assessing the tenures of 7,000 CEOs worldwide.

The delay in action is described as “costly” in the report. To succeed, BCG suggests: “CEOs need to balance operational caution with strategic boldness. 

“This dual mindset - part operator, part visionary investor - is essential in transforming short-term uncertainties into long-term strategic advantages.”

Christine Barton, a BCG Managing Director and the firm’s CEO Advisory Lead in North America, says: “We have increasing uncertainty and increasing enterprise volatility.

“There is a set of skills that you want to see in future leaders that were probably not as required in past leaders.”

Four strategies to betting bolder

BCG poses four approaches CEOs can take to secure their organisation’s competitive future by building an uncertainty advantage through embracing calculated risks, leveraging external insights, and continuously challenging industry biases.

1. Quantify upside and the cost of inaction

To act or not to act? Caution doesn’t always guarantee safety. Companies often focus on the downside of market disruptions rather than the potential upside - for example, a 2024 BCG survey showed that 80% of senior leaders “viewed risk in a mainly negative or neutral light”.

The result of this mindset, according to BCG, is that many CEOs may be missing out on opportunities that could be grasped as an early adopter.

‘What-if” possibilities can shift a CEO’s mindset, it says, stating that successful leaders ask questions like ‘What if our strategy delivers better-than-expected results?’ and ‘If we hesitated, what actions would we regret taking?’.

Julia Dhar, a BCG Managing Director and Global Lead of the firm’s behavioural science lab, says: “One of the very useful, quite understudied emotions is regret.

“As human beings, we are very invested psychologically in avoiding regrets. So, pursuing a strategy of regret minimisation is powerful.”

2. Balance the operator and investor hats

Operational excellence must be sustained through strategic investments and shaping compelling long-term growth narratives, says BCG.

But its research shows this is not often achieved. Analysis of the company’s capital allocation database, covering over 10,000 firms, showed a 10% decline in capex relative to revenues over the past decade.

This is despite more than 70% of US and European investors supporting companies making investments in innovation and market strategies.

The balancing act of operational duties and investor-oriented actions - how can this be achieved?

This creates a delicate balancing act of operational duties and investor-oriented actions that some find hard to achieve.

BCG says that senior leaders should put aside uninterrupted time for big-picture reflection, focusing on the future in collaboration with executive teams. The balance of immediate operations and long-term strategy reinforced the importance of looking ahead not just looking at where the now.

3. Get out of the echo chamber 

BCG encourages leaders to tap into diverse viewpoints within teams and across broader professional networks to break away from group think.

Execs should seek insights from the inside - retail teams, operational heads and junior engineers - engaging with challenging critiques to test new ideas.

But CEOs should also reach beyond their organisations, with BCG research revealing that companies that consistently look beyond their immediate environments - examining industry trends, geopolitical factors, macroeconomic shifts, and sustainability developments - achieve a 5% higher success rate in growth transformations compared to inward-looking firms.

According to Bryn Davies, Director of the Oxford High Performance Leadership Programme at Oxford University's business school: “If a new CEO said to me, ‘I want to step out of the shadow of my predecessor’, I would say ‘Ask yourself: why are you even thinking about this?’”.

4. Check bias, blind spots and boldness

Are CEOs dismissing ideas simply because they haven’t been done before? BDG says CEOs must remain self-aware and audit their decision-making processes for blind spots.

Being bold begins with recognising and confronting what's generally holding back the decision, so self-awareness can be a CEOs most powerful tool.

Research published in the Academy of Management in 2024 suggests that the board can play an effective role in company decision making, saying: “it reduces the overall influence of cognitive, personal, and group biases on a given decision”.

This enables execs to follow their own intuition but safely bet big by critically seeking out alternative viewpoints.

Choosing risk over regret

BCG says CEOs must adapt to an increasingly volatile environment and use the element of risk as a key driver for growth, collaborating with teams throughout the company to explore these bets for their best possible outcome.

By not adapting to these critical challenges, Rich Lesser, BCG’S Global Chair, says that leaders are at risk of being in the “CEO bubble”, where the dialogue drifts to what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

He adds: “Without proactive intervention, leaders are likely to be sheltered from the reality of a difficult situation at a critical juncture or until it's entrenched.”