Good morning.
There’s ample evidence that the political backlash against ESG is affecting businesses, both in terms of how they talk about social issues as well as what they actually do to address them. But I continue to find myself in conversations like the one we held earlier this week, in partnership with Deloitte (which sponsors this newsletter), where CEOs insist that defining a purpose beyond profit is more important today than ever.
Our conversation began with Deloitte’s Jason Girzadas laying out the results of our latest CEO poll and noting that 48% of the respondents expressed a view of the global economy that is “increasingly pessimistic to very pessimistic.” That reflects concerns about inflation, geopolitics, rising regulation, and what he termed a “VUCA” environment—characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Many of the participating CEOs argued that a clear sense of purpose is what allows them to forge a path through the confusion. Some excerpts:
