2025 AI Spending Strategies

As we move into year three of Generative AI, its potential for enhancing operations, driving innovation and building a competitive edge is becoming ever clearer, as are the challenges and risks.

The world’s most innovative companies have moved, or are moving, beyond experimentation to integrate AI-first models, adjusting spending and recalibrating business strategies to maximise ROI and stay ahead of the curve. PwC found almost half of the US’s Fortune 1000 companies now have AI fully embedded in their workflows, with a third using it in their products and services.

This year, priorities should include solidifying foundational structures, measuring outcomes and adjusting programmes to make Gen AI work effectively and safely and secure that advantage. Those late to the party or failing to understand the critical need to constantly evolve and manage Gen AI may struggle to ever catch up.

In a recent survey by Ernst & Young (EY), 97% of senior business leaders reported positive returns on their AI investments with a third planning to spend £8 million or more on AI initiatives this year while UK software buyers expect to increase spending by an average 5-15%. Organisations that commit 5% or more of their total budget toward AI are seeing more positive returns than more cautious investors with the biggest in operational efficiencies, (84%) and employee productivity (83%).

It is essential for c-suite executives to have a full and proper understanding of the AI landscape, both within their sector or industry and beyond. Trying to experiment or get to grips with Generative AI in a bubble or silo is like constantly trying to reinvent the wheel when budgets would be better spent targeting funding to improve its performance. Progressive organisations will research thoroughly the tools, programmes and platforms used by competitors and sector leaders to learn what has and has not worked for them and how they are prioritising their AI budgets in 2025 and beyond.

Chaotic implementation has led to lost ROI and confidence in some early iterations of Gen AI-powered programmes as over-eager organisations put the cart before the horse, buying the latest hyped-up tools or platforms through FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) without really understanding their value, testing them or building sound foundational infrastructure. Only 12% reported using sandboxes in one survey, for example, leaving too much to chance and increasing risks of damaging failures. Getting it right demands a disciplined approach with co-operation and collaboration from every department and at every level.

UK senior decision makers told Capterra’s 2025 Tech Trends that successful technological implementation was the greatest challenge they now faced as they moved onto the next phase of adoption, followed by training and upskilling employees, economic and geopolitical pressures, assessing value and risk of AI and identifying the right technologies to invest in.

The most innovative companies will be patient, appreciating that real returns on investment may take years to materialise in terms of profit, but that agile, future-focused and strategically aligned Gen AI-led programmes will ensure long term competitive growth.

(See our previous insight on the five stages of AI maturity)

Here we look at trends within the three main focuses for the AI spending priorities c-suite executives should be considering over the next 12 months: Tech, data and upskilling the workforce.

Spending on Tech:

Globally, spending on hardware and devices, including computers and smartphones, is likely to grow by £10 billion to £118.5 billion, with Covid lockdown working-from-home technology nearing the end of its useful life and new AI-powered devices offering far more possibilities.
Spending on software is expected to see an even greater increase, accelerating by 13.2% in 2025 to £230.5 billion.

Most software buyers in the UK expect to spend between 5-15% more on digital systems this year as they seek to increase ROI on their AI investments, according to the Capterra research. Six in 10 will dedicate one to four months choosing the right product and 38% see implementation as a key challenge.

The survey found security will be the highest priority, followed by AI, IT management, IT architecture and business intelligence and data analytics.

Automation: Justina Nixon-Saintil, vice president and chief impact officer at IBM, believes AI automation will be the story of 2025. “Any tasks or jobs in the company that could be automated by AI will happen within the next year,” she said.

Alicia Pittman, global people team chair at the Boston Consulting Group said a priority should be custom GPTs and mini-automations to build bottom-up power, enabling entire knowledge-based workforces to boost productivity and quality. She said: “It’s super quick, and it doesn’t require big investments or processes.”

CRMs: This year, more companies are expected to move away from in-house Gen AI solutions towards buying partner solutions. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce and Amazon AWS are constantly improving their AI-powered offerings with broad options for customised integrated systems that can enhance almost all business objectives, from identifying new product or market opportunities and analysing big data to hyper-personalised marketing and sales which vastly improve customer experience, boost sales and build loyalty.

Fortune Business Insights predicts that the CRM market will more than double from the £50 billion spent in 2022 to £120 billion by 2029. Most platforms offer free, simplified versions of subscription models which can keep costs down, such as Microsoft Pilot and Salesforce Einstein, enabling smaller businesses and start-ups to capitalise on these fast-evolving Gen-AI powered technologies.

Spending on Data:

As the AI landscape matures, decision-makers at innovative organisations will look to upscale, standardise and refine AI use with connected, clean data across all functions and lines of their organisations to ensure it remains relevant, agile and that risks are understood and managed.

Two in five UK companies identified data quality as the greatest challenge to successful AI adoption in a survey by Hitachi Vantara. Nearly half reported significant challenges with data storage and 56% admitted to using less than half their data. Meanwhile 83% of senior business leaders say stronger data infrastructure would enable faster AI adoption.

Gen AI is only as good as the data on which it is trained and building scalable and flexible data architecture that can manage speed, variety and volume of data is critical to enable any organisation to scale up programmes and ensure maximum ROI, potentially accelerating adoption by 30%. The IBM Institute for Business Value found that poor data quality costs the US economy around $3.1 trillion a year.

Companies like Netflix and Tesco have shown the value of substantial investment in data and data infrastructure, able to process huge datasets to hyper-personalise their services, innovate, and get closer to their markets. Innovative enterprises are investing in tools including ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, data lakes, or iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) solutions to optimise the value of their data.

Cloud storage: More than half of IT spending in key market segments is projected to shift to the cloud by the end of 2025, with global spending on cloud computing services expected to reach £1 trillion. Organisations are moving towards multicloud, open data storage to avoid vendor lock-in.

The UK government has welcomed news of £25 billion investment in data centres which will provide more computing power and data storage building infrastructure to boost AI development and innovation.

Businesses will need to manage 150% more data by 2026 and Gartner predicts that spending on data centres will climb by 15.5% in 2025 on top of a 35% rise in 2024.

Security: With this increasing reliance on data and cloud storage, security becomes ever more essential, especially in sensitive sectors such as finance, defence and healthcare. IBM reported the average cost of a data breach at more than £3.5 million in 2021. Gartner expects cybersecurity spending to increase 15% in 2025.

ESG: Organisations also need to think about the energy costs and impact on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) credentials of increased use of Gen AI and other technologies, investing in renewable sources wherever possible. Two thirds of senior leaders fear the negative impact of increased AI use on their sustainability targets and energy supply.

Steve Wanner, EY head of Americas Industrials & Energy said: “Leaders are waking up to the energy challenges inherent in scaling AI. To create innovative solutions that enable energy efficient and sustainable AI growth, companies must collaborate across the value chain, connecting the dots from energy providers to the end-use AI customer.”

Technology could also be part of the answer. Deloitte found three quarters of public companies planned to invest in AI-powered reporting tools to help them evaluate, analyse and share ESG data to comply with tightening regulations worldwide.

However, the biggest rewards are likely to be found in the joining up and safe (anonymised) data-sharing of and between AI systems, which demands greater collaboration within and between organisations, sectors and industries.

Spending on upskilling:

This year, CEOs and other c-suite decision-makers will be more hands on and, hopefully, AI-literate, and therefore committed to restructuring operations so that departments have access to data scientists and AI leads as well as focusing on educating and upskilling all knowledge-based workers and ensuring investment is more disciplined, methodical and targeted.

The speed of Gen AI evolution has taken even tech experts by surprise since ChatGPT opened it up to the masses in November 2022, so it’s hardly surprising that most of the workforce, from CEOs to customer agents and even IT managers, often feel overwhelmed and even intimidated by it.

Almost half of companies admit to lacking the know-how to integrate AI while 90% of executives say they do not know their workforce’s AI skill and proficiency. Four in five IT professionals say they are confident they can adapt but just 12% have significant experience working with AI. Organisations should consider the users of the technology before they buy it and the current skills landscape to avoid workforce burnout and unsafe or under-use of the tools and platforms.

This skills gap threatens to seriously destabilise and restrict the opportunities offered by Gen AI while increasing risk. Babies born in 2025 will be the first of Generation Beta and will grow up with AI all around them. Until they mature, businesses need to retrain their own workforces and bring in data science and Gen-AI planning expertise where it is lacking.

Tech companies are ahead of the curve on this. Amazon developed a Machine Learning University, investing heavily in training and development programs to build its internal capabilities.

IBM has made a commitment to scale up two million of its workers in AI by 2026. Nixon-Saintil said. “There’s a sense of urgency in making sure we are not leaving people behind.”

The growing sophistication of Natural Language Processing (NLP) will continue to enable employees at all levels to leverage AI, so the workforce needs to undergo continuous learning to keep up with new and evolving tools, platforms and emerging risks. Staff who will be using Gen AI models such as Chat GPT, Microsoft CoPilot and Google’s Gemini need to learn to craft clear prompts, interrogate the responses and use them to augment their own productivity and quality of work while understanding the inherent risks and having a clear chain of supervision.

EY says 59% of organisation are planning to increase training for workers on the responsible use of AI in 2025, up from 49% six months ago.

Investment in AI is only expected to absorb around a fifth of IT spending next year. Much more, then, will go into infrastructure and the people required to make it work. Both programmes need to be organisation-wide to enable AI-first business models.

Senior leadership also need to prioritise investing in their own AI literacy to make rational, evidence-based decisions before spending on AI programmes. In the EY survey, 54% of respondents said they felt they were failing as a leader as they struggled to keep up with AI’s rapid growth.

The pressure to act decisively is intensifying. Yet many leaders find themselves navigating incremental changes, unsure of how to transform their business models or confidently prove GenAI’s ROI.

Responding to feedback from our c-suite and senior leadership clients, Rialto are facilitating a virtual strategic collaboration programme between leaders from across the globe, to share experiences, perspectives, and best practices on GenAI adoption. It is designed to support leaders with the critical insights, tools, and actionable strategies needed to broaden their understanding of the complexities & opportunities of GenAI.

All participants in the programme will receive a personalised and group alignment report, to support them to more confidently lead their organisation in the GenAI era

To find more details and register onto the Adoption of GenAI Global Virtual Dialogue click here.

Executive Summary

There is no silver bullet when it comes to measuring demand in the U.K. financial services job market.

Over the years we have looked at everything from indices from recruitment agencies, aggregated job board data as well as government/ONS data. All of them are useful indicators but fail to offer an accurate reflection of what’s happening across Financial Services as well as individual and significant sub-sectors.

The City Career LAB & Rialto job market index captures data directly from corporate careers sites as a way of measuring jobs activity – specifically demand. It’s not perfect, but is perhaps the most accurate indicator of hiring demand in the U.K. financial services jobs market.

Each month we collect and analyse data from a broad and diverse basket of handpicked employers that represent a particular sub-sector of Financial Services in the U.K. These results which include all permanent and fixed term contract positions across all functions of the chosen organisations will be published on our website and LinkedIn – to show and explain the direction of the hiring market(s) from month to month.

Our observations this month include:

• Hiring demand across UK financial services is up 1% overall after coming in down 2% last time out.
• This represents a very modest uptick in demand for F.S. talent, which is a small positive coming as it does in the final few weeks of the year.
• Notably, there were gains this month for Wealth & Private Banking (7%) and Insurance (2%), and Banking & Markets (2%), which were dragged down by marginal falls elsewhere.
• In terms of Year-on-Year results – the overall index is 15% up versus this time last year and has been up YoY every month since June

As a reminder – the Job Market Index is intended to be the most accurate read on hiring demand in the UK financial services sector.

The indicators show:

Banking & Markets: Corporate & Investment Banking, Markets, Securities Services (excl. Consumer/retail) +2%
Investment management: Asset Management, Alternatives -8%
Insurance: General, Life, Reinsurance, Broking +2%
Wealth & Private Banking +7%
Fintech: Banking, Lending, Payments, Insurtech, Crowdfunding 0%
Information Services: Data Providers, Ratings Agencies, Risk -3%

In the first part of this blog series Setting the Stage for Career and Organisational Success, we explored practical strategies for executives to establish a strong foundation for personal and organisational growth in the first half of the year. Goals were set, key relationships nurtured, and resources aligned with strategic objectives.

Here in part two, the focus is on building momentum. By evaluating progress, refining strategies, and embracing innovation, leaders can ensure they meet annual goals with a sense of achievement and readiness for further challenges ahead.

This blog outlines a framework for executives to consider in the second two quarters of an annual plan to consolidate achievements, enhance personal performance, and drive dynamic organisational growth.

Q3: Evaluate, Optimise, and Expand Leadership Impact

Opportunities come more quickly to those who stay ahead of the pack, adapt early and differentiate their approach.

Evaluate and Optimise Resources

The midpoint in any plan provides an ideal opportunity to step back and assess progress.  When evaluating your business priorities, review whether current resources are effectively aligned with strategic goals. Review the year-to-date performance against projections and identify areas that require rebalancing. Key considerations include:

• Resource Allocation: Are certain teams overburdened while others are underused? Can talent be redistributed to address shifting priorities?
• Talent Management: Have unforeseen departures created gaps? Are there rising stars who can take on greater responsibilities? Should hiring or upskilling plans be accelerated?
• Operational Efficiency: Examine supply chains, vendor contracts, and project workflows to address bottlenecks or inefficiencies.

By addressing these questions, executives can ensure resources are positioned for the greatest impact during the second half of the year.

Enhance Strategic Thinking with Data and AI

Strategic thinking is at the heart of effective leadership. Being able to think laterally, vertically and see the bigger picture is the hallmark of effective executives.  Focus on enhancing this skill by taking time to review and anticipate market trends, analyse data, and make informed decisions, leveraging data and analytics tools, particularly those powered by AI. These tools provide insights into market trends, customer behaviour, and internal performance metrics, offering a competitive edge.

However, the complexity of AI-generated insights requires careful interpretation. Engage in exercises to deepen your understanding, such as:

• Reverse-engineering AI insights to understand their rationale.
• Incorporating scenario planning and other strategic models to stress-test your decisions.
• Collaborating with teams of creative thinkers or mentors to explore innovative solutions to challenges.

Expand Leadership Impact: Mentoring and Board Roles

To stretch leadership skills and broaden influence, consider taking on roles outside your immediate organisation.

• Mentorship: Guiding emerging talent sharpens your own skills and can also add to your knowledge. It can provide fresh perspectives and bring to light additional strengths or areas to develop, particularly where mentees come from a different function or educational background or have specific skill sets and expertise.
• Non-Executive Directorships (NEDs): Serving as a non-executive director on a charity or start-up board can offer rich opportunities for networking and taking on a new role with different challenges. Anyone seeking a board position in their day job can gain valuable experience and boost their executive credentials. See our insight on how to get ahead as a NED.

These activities not only bolster your leadership credentials but also create a ripple effect of value within your professional network.

Q4: Review, Innovate, and Recharge

Review Performance and Refine Goals

As the year draws to a close, review progress against the objectives set earlier in the year. Think about team members and colleagues you have supported and the progress they have made. Equally, ensure core business imperatives are being met and evaluate.

• Are the original goals still relevant, or do they need refinement?
• Where have successes been achieved, and how can they be amplified?
• Which areas have fallen short, and what lessons can be used as opportunities to learn?

Encourage ongoing honest, blame-free evaluations within teams to foster a culture of learning and improvement. Recognise achievements and celebrate milestones to boost morale and maintain momentum into the final quarter.

This is where leaders earn their stripes and respect. How can a project or team be realigned with goals and get closer to desirable outcomes. What adjustments and corrections can reasonably be made at this time? Work with both stakeholders and teams to review and shift direction or create different collaborations to remain on course and deliver outcomes.

Drive Innovation and Prepare for the Future

With year-end within reach, hopefully the planning you have put in place all year is paying dividends, you have been able to negotiate any unforeseen challenges, you are on target to deliver year-end goals and you now have the resources and space to devote to more creative thinking before jumping ahead to plans for another year.

Q4 is the time to explore current and emerging trends in your sector and function. Actions include:

• Trend Analysis: Stay ahead by identifying emerging technologies and market shifts using free resources such as online magazines and expert professional think pieces and industry insights on LinkedIn and executive websites such as Rialto, BCG and Deloitte.
• Innovation Culture: Think about your ongoing approach to innovation and change: have you been risk averse or open to new ways of doing things? Foster an environment where teams and collaborations are designed to support experimenting with new ideas and approaches.
• AI Integration: In today’s fast-evolving Generative AI-led landscape, those who fear the new are most likely to be left behind. Evaluate how AI and other technologies can be further integrated to enhance efficiency and performance. What are your rivals doing? What is happening in your sector and comparable sectors? What are AI experts telling us about what may be possible in the near future? Are you ready for it?

Rest, Reflect, and Recharge:

Leadership requires resilience, and resilience requires rest. Use the end of the year and holiday period to step back and recharge. Reflect on the journey you set both for your business but also personally.  Look at what you have found most rewarding through the year and ask yourself these questions:

• Am I where I wanted to be when I started this 12-month plan?
• Am I satisfied with my professional growth and achievements?
• Have I maintained a healthy work-life balance?
• What adjustments can I make to ensure greater fulfilment and effectiveness next year?
• Is it time for a change? Or is there see scope for progress and fulfilment in your current organisation?

Consider feedback from trusted colleagues or family to gain additional perspectives on how you are navigating your responsibilities.

Preparing for the Next Stage of Leadership

The second half of the year offers a powerful opportunity to consolidate progress, address challenges, and set the stage for future success. Having a plan in place enables you to be more ready to evaluate and face new opportunities and challenges with clarity, confidence, and purpose.

Leadership, however, is a journey of constant evolution, and while careful planning is essential, adaptability, open-mindedness and reflection are equally critical. The higher one climbs, and the more responsibilities one takes on, the lonelier it can seem.  Working with a mentor or coach can encourage executives and senior leadership to step back and reflect, while providing invaluable guidance to navigate the day-to-day journey, offering perspective and accountability to help leaders reach their fullest potential.

“Planning without action is futile; action without planning is fatal.”

So said Cornelius Fichtner, a Swiss project management expert. Successful leaders understand that their careers and roles within organisations are ongoing projects that constantly needs to be consciously managed, adjusted, aligned with ever evolving strategic objectives, market forces, emerging trends and technological developments.

For executives looking to maintain their career on a positive, upward trajectory – whether pursuing a new role, growing within an organisation, or preparing for a significant step up – taking the time to reflect on personal goals and crystallising a structured vision of how to reach them by setting clear actions is key to success.

Breaking down that strategy into quarterly plans gives a practical framework to improve personal performance and retain a dynamic role in pushing for organisational growth and success.

The wind down to the end of the year and the run-in to Christmas can therefore provide the perfect opportunity for reflection and forward planning.  Executives who make this an annual practice gain clarity on what they aim to achieve, why those goals matter, how they intend to accomplish them, and what or who is needed to make them a reality. This intentional approach minimises wasted effort and maximises returns by focusing resources on meaningful priorities. Leaders who act with purpose and vision inspire confidence in their workforce and stakeholders alike.

In the first of this two-part blog series, we focus on practical steps that executives can consider to set the stage for personal and organisational success over the first two quarters.

Q1: Reflect, Assess, Set Goals.

Reflect: The start of the year often brings a renewed sense of energy and resolve. Teams return refreshed and focused from a break, making it an ideal time for leaders to refocus their efforts. The perfect time, then, to reignite and engage with key stakeholders to understand their expectations, challenges and opportunities and galvanise them into action and aligning objectives.

Asses: Reevaluate and carry out a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).  Define both short-term and long-term career goals. Tools such as 360-degree feedback, personality assessments, and executive coaching can help shape a 12-month personal development plan with clear, actionable goals.

• Benchmark Skills: Compare existing skills against emerging opportunities and challenges. Identify areas for improvement, particularly in soft skills such as emotional intelligence, agility, and creativity, which are increasingly crucial in the AI-driven era.
• Schedule Development: Make time for training, conferences, or coaching. Populate your calendar with key events, manage conflicts, and work your projects around them
• Prioritise: Once you have a view of the coming months, you can set priorities and deadlines, Write a list of the most pressing demands on your time: what needs doing now, what can be delegated, what can wait?

Set Goals

Once objectives are defined, executives can lead team discussions to review successes and challenges from the previous year. Honest and active listening fosters collaboration, allowing teams to collectively identify potential roadblocks and opportunities.

• Explore New Markets: Evaluate how emerging trends, like AI, can enhance operations or open new avenues.
• Communicate Vision: Share objectives and inspire the team with a clear vision of the year ahead, ensuring alignment with organisational goals.
• Plan Talent Needs: Identify skill gaps and strategise whether to upskill current employees or bring in new talent. Build workforce confidence by highlighting how new technologies will enhance their roles and benefit the organisation.

Q2: Build Your Personal Brand, Communication Skills & Strengthen Relationships.

Branding

A strong personal brand is crucial for executives aiming to stand out. This involves defining a unique value proposition and aligning it with communication style, online presence, and professional networks.  Think carefully about how you wish to present yourself and the purpose of your communication. Are you looking to attract the right talent or partners? Gain a promotion? Stand out in your field? Attract or assure investors? Adjust your language content and tone accordingly with the end goal in mind. You may wish to work with a mentor or coach for an objective view.

• Online Presence: Do optimise LinkedIn and other relevant platforms by sharing thought leadership content. See our previous insights on elevating LinkedIn profiles and networking effectively.
• Networking: Stay active in professional organisations and leverage opportunities to expand influence and connections.

Whether you are in the market for executive transition, executive outplacement or you are seeking to establish yourself in a new or current position, stakeholders, employees and employers, current and potential, need to understand who you are, what you represent and why they should place their faith in you.

Communicate:

Effective communication is a cornerstone of leadership success. Plans, no matter how robust, can falter without clear articulation. Executives must refine both their digital and interpersonal communication skills whether seeking a promotion or a new opportunity, or presenting an organisational strategy to the board or other stakeholders.  The way you present and express yourself could mean the difference between success and failure.

• Transparency and Updates: Develop a plan for regular, transparent communication using emails, videos, or meetings. Provide updates and implement channels for feedback.
• Public Speaking: Hone skills in presenting to diverse audiences, both in person and online. In today’s business landscape, personality and likeability are more important than ever. While some have a natural affinity for public speaking and presenting, others may need professional coaching help improve confidence and delivery.
• Non-Verbal Skills: With increasing proportions of meetings held online, mastering the art of creating engaging presentations and holding the attention of people who may all be sitting separately in front of laptops in different time zones around the world is an additional challenge. Focus on body language, not just tone, to build trust and engagement.

Strengthen relationships:

Strong relationships are the foundation of effective leadership. Executives should prioritise key connections—whether with team leaders, clients, or stakeholders.

• Review and Follow Up: Revisit unresolved issues or recent communications to ensure alignment on next steps or actions needed. Schedule meetings with key stakeholders to maintain momentum and address emerging concerns.
• Support Teams: Collaborate with HR and managers to identify and support struggling employees, celebrate high performers, and mitigate risks of losing top talent.
• Encourage Feedback: Maintain an open dialogue to foster trust and identify challenges at the earliest opportunity, sharing your vision, identifying challenges and explaining how you plan to overcome them, to foster trust and openness. Invite feedback and respond positively.

By weaving these practices into their routine, executives position themselves for success going into the final two quarters of the year. They will have enhanced personal performance, strengthened relationships, and ensured their teams are aligned with strategic objectives. With clear KPIs in place, they can adjust plans to navigate challenges and capitalise on new opportunities.

Successful Leaders do not fall into place; they plan, prospect, listen, collaborate, self-reflect and seek to improve continuously. They develop a leadership mindset, a set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that shape how they will think, behave, and inspire others in alignment with organisational goals.

Some may make the mistake of believing a leadership mindset is a fixed set of traits, techniques, skills and a commanding authority. That mode of leadership is outdated and counterproductive in today’s fast-evolving, unpredictable and human-centred business landscape.

Different leadership styles are required for different circumstances and the most influential and impactful leaders will ask themselves not, what is my leadership mindset, but what is my leadership mindset today?

This should be a conscious thought process, where the senior leader behaves like the captain of a ship, continuously considering all of the prevailing challenges and opportunities before adjusting course and ensuring every member of the crew and every instrument at their disposal is set precisely to navigate with confidence while preparing for any unforeseen storms ahead.

The leader must first examine their own skillsets and abilities against the current and future needs of the organisation to set a personal professional development programme. This might need objective structured support from an executive coach.

Leadership mindsets directly influence organisational culture. A leader with an inclusive mindset can foster a diverse, high-performing workplace, while one with an agile mindset can instil a sense of confidence and experimentation during periods of transformation or trust and stability in more difficult times. Regular reflection ensures leaders remain effective role models.

There are four main types of leadership mindset: growth, inclusive, agile and enterprise. Depending on an individual’s position, some may be more relevant than others. Here we look at the four, why and when they might be important and share some of the tips and insights Rialto consultants use when supporting c-suite and senior leadership in professional development coaching.

Growth Mindset

Coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, a growth mindset is the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents can be developed through dedication and hard work. Leaders with a growth mindset view failures as opportunities to learn, encourage innovation, and foster a culture where their teams are unafraid to take risks and grow. This is the mindset for CEOs taking the organisation to the next level and senior leadership taking their teams into new territories, whether they be geographical, new markets, new products and services or technology-led business transformation.

For senior leaders, adopting a growth mindset ensures adaptability in the face of technological advancements and market disruptions. By continuously learning and evolving, they model behaviour that encourages teams to innovate and excel.

Leaders with a growth mindset will avoid negatives, using words such as yet and not yet – as in, we have not yet reached our objective to penetrate the new market – and avoiding not as in can not, have not, will not.

They will build energy, drive and positivity into the workforce, celebrating wins and always showing appreciation for the efforts, persistence and attitude of employees rather than focusing on outcomes and failures. When things go wrong, leaders with a growth mindset take responsibility and invite collaboration to learn from the mistake and improve the next iteration.

One prominent example is Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Upon taking the helm in 2014, Nadella transformed Microsoft’s culture from one rooted in internal competition to one focused on collaboration, learning, and experimentation. Under his leadership, Microsoft embraced cloud computing, pivoted toward AI innovation, and regained its position as one of the most valuable companies globally. Nadella’s focus on “learn-it-all” instead of “know-it-all” is a hallmark of a growth mindset.

Inclusive Mindset

An inclusive mindset prioritises creating a workplace where diversity is celebrated and every individual feels valued and empowered. Leaders with this mindset proactively address biases, promote equity, and foster environments where diverse perspectives drive better decision-making.

Research consistently shows that inclusive organisations outperform their peers in innovation. Diverse viewpoints lead to richer ideas, better decision-making, and novel solutions. They also achieve better financial results. Teams that feel more valued and included collaborate better offering peer-to-peer support, reducing unproductive silos and encouraging team loyalty and investment in shared goals.

Leadership with an inclusive mindset understands the value of diversity and equality in promoting organisational reputation, attracting the best talent from the widest possible pool and making companies more competitive globally. They are committed to ensuring diverse voices are heard and incorporated, that individuals from any background, age, culture, gender, sexuality or race and those with physical and mental health issues are genuinely valued equally, not just in tick boxes. They will interrogate their own unconscious bias and ensure all staff are trained to do the same.

Arundhati Bhattacharya, the former Chair of the State Bank of India (SBI), exemplifies inclusivity. As the first woman to lead SBI, she implemented policies to support working mothers, including sabbaticals for childcare and championed diversity in leadership roles. Her efforts helped create a more equitable workplace, breaking barriers for women in the banking industry.

Leaders should always maintain an inclusive mindset but there are times when it should become the priority. For example, where a company works in an especially diverse market or territory or is expanding into a new culture or region. Also, where equality, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) have become an issue risking organisational and reputational damage. Of course maintaining a constant inclusive mindset – and ensuring you have the correct employment procedures and accountable leaders in place to oversee robust EDI framework – should prevent any such issues arising.

Airbnb’s CEO, Brian Chesky, had to prioritise an inclusive mindset to address racial bias during the company’s global  expansion. Research showed people with African-American names were less likely to be accepted as guests in some regions and received lower rent. It invited open collaboration from anyone in the Airbnb community to collaborate to find solutions. The property rental platform was transparent about the issue and what it was trying to do. It introduced new features to minimise the issue, enhancing its pro-diversity credentials in an incredibly diverse market.

Agile Mindset

This has become increasingly important in the wake of the economic shock of the pandemic and the rapid advances and economic transformation propelled by the AI revolution. This has left senior leadership in almost all roles and functions having to learn and adapt quickly. AI is changing the way all processes are done so it is imperative that every senior leader stays ahead of the curve on what is happening in their zone.

An agile mindset is characterised by flexibility, responsiveness, speed, learning, innovation and adaptability. Leaders with this mindset embrace change, experiment with new approaches and are comfortable pivoting strategies when faced with uncertainty or emerging customer needs. It emphasises iterative progress over rigid plans.

It allows leaders to respond quickly to emerging trends and disruptions, ensuring their organisations remain competitive, relevant and resilient. Companies looking to exploit new technologies need to prioritise an agile mindset but agility can also help buffer any unforeseen shocks and issues.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is renowned for his agile approach to leadership. He famously fostered a “Day 1” mindset, encouraging constant reinvention to avoid stagnation. Amazon’s willingness to experiment, such as moving from book sales to an ever-increasing online market, more recently launching the incredibly successful AWS (Amazon Web Services) and pivoting to prioritise Prime membership, reflects its agility in meeting customer needs and staying ahead of competitors.

Leaders with an agile mindset will also empower employees to respond and adapt to change and have confidence in their decision-making. Leaders will free their paths by minimising decision-by-committee, reducing time spent in unnecessary meetings and duplicating work. They will use data-driven processes to create real time feedback loops to help the workforce learn and improve continuously. Mistakes will be reframed as opportunities for learning.

Guardrails must be put in place to spot any outliers or actions likely to lead to serious issues, but that safety net will enable quick responses and the ability to repivot as an organisation when new opportunities or challenges arise, taking along the workforce.

Enterprise Mindset

An enterprise mindset involves thinking beyond individual roles, departments, or business units to focus on the bigger picture and organisation’s overall goals. Leaders with this mindset prioritise cross-functional collaboration, align resources to strategic priorities and maintain a holistic perspective  to spot and seize opportunities for business success and that of the whole ecosystem. They have a deep understanding of what makes a business work and can think laterally or horizontally as well as vertically.

Being an enterprise leader is like constantly balancing dozens or even hundreds of spinning plates. Recent research by Korn Ferry found that just 15 percent of executives have the quality and skills to do it. Organisations led by enterprise leaders grow 6.7% faster. So, this is an area that leaders should be focusing on developing, demonstrating and exploiting in their careers when looking at executive transition and promotion. It is an elusive skill so may require external support.

Senior leaders with an enterprise mindset can break down silos, foster collaboration and ensure that all parts of the organisation work together towards common objectives. This is particularly important in large organisations where misalignment can hinder progress.

They encourage and support collective decision-making, see the connectivity between different parts of the business and can look forward, like a chess player, at how different moves by different players can be made at the right time to achieve an objective. They can tweak and adjust the strategy effectively in response to incoming pressures and unforeseen issues.

They are, therefore, considerate as to how decisions they make will affect the whole organisation.

Enterprise leaders adopt technology to help stay on top of developments and issues across the organisation. AI-driven platforms are developing sophisticated tools that analyse huge amounts of data for specific prompted questions and uses. Predictive analytics identify issues before they arise or opportunities for new products or markets. They can help isolate areas of underperformance and suggest ways to improve.

They will also think carefully about talent acquisition and retention with an eye always on preparing for the future as well as protecting the brand through compassionate and ethical governance.

However, being an enterprise leader does not mean being an autocratic, micromanaging leader. Jack Ma, co-founder of Chinese retailer Alibaba, knows every inch of his business but empowers and inspires his people to make good decisions to drive growth. He guides and oversees every section, taking responsibility for outcomes. He can see what customers want now and will want in the future and how to deliver it. Unusually He incorporates all four mindsets.

As noted above, these mindsets can not be assumed, they must be developed and constantly adjusted and refined to reflect changing circumstances, organisational goals, stakeholder expectation and other market forces.

Leaders must build periods of self-reflection into their schedules and seek regular, honest feedback from trusted colleagues and mentors to identify blind spots, any personal behaviours or feelings which might be impacting judgement, and look at areas for professional growth. Humility is essential and the ability to take on constructive criticism and advice. A coach can help hold up a mirror and create structured learning opportunities

The leadership mindset is a powerful driver of organisational success, shaping how leaders inspire teams, navigate challenges, and pursue opportunities. From the growth mindset to inclusive, agile to enterprise thinking, each perspective brings unique strengths to the table. However, the true hallmark of effective leadership lies in adaptability—continuously reassessing and refining one’s mindset to align with the demands of an ever-changing world.

Senior leaders who embrace this philosophy not only position themselves for personal growth but also empower their organisations to thrive amidst uncertainty. By adopting the right mindset at the right time, they can lead with vision, innovation, and purpose, ensuring sustained success in a complex, dynamic environment.

If you would like support to develop your leadership mindset, our team of Coaches and Leadership Development specialists can customise a personalised programme, aligned with your personal and organisational goals.

It is difficult to believe that just two years ago, only data scientists had really heard of Generative AI, the form of artificial intelligence that can create content, images and code; summarise vast amounts of data and extract insights according to prompts; identify patterns and illuminate concepts, stimulating creativity and filling vast gaps in our knowledge.

Below is The Rialto guide to the five stages of AI maturity – and actionable steps to help executives guide their organisations safely and strategically to a place of seamless integration and augmentation delivering growth, efficiency, improved services and products and innovation.

The arrival of the first open source ChatGPT in November 2022 led to a more dramatic transformation of the business landscape than any previous innovation and continues to evolve at a dizzying pace, offering unprecedented opportunities for growth and development.

For executives and senior leaders this has presented a new set of challenges – how to guide your organisation through this revolution at the right time, at the right speed, with the right platforms and end uses. Too fast and you risk destabilising your business model and workforce, buying into the hype, overspending on under-developed products and creating an expensive mess. Too late and you risk falling too far behind to catch up, allowing competitors to gain a defining edge.

At Rialto, we support executives to understand the five stages of AI maturity, creating a personalised roadmap aligned to their organisation’s strategic objectives, budget and culture. Those stages go from scepticism/ nascent awareness – the tentative first steps – to maturity, where AI is integrated into all relevant parts of the business, staff are trained and on board, business development and growth are driven by data and insights and a robust governance and ethics framework ensures Gen AI and other emerging technologies are being used safely.

Here is a brief outline of that map, the percentage of organisations at each stage of maturity in 2024* and some of the actions the Rialto team encourage executive teams to take at each stage.

Stage 1: Nascent awareness/scepticism. 26% in 2024

Organisations at this stage may be eschewing AI altogether or understand its potentially profound impact on growth and operations but lack a clear plan or strategy to move forward. Perhaps AI champions are meeting scepticism or fear from key leadership and stakeholders. According to various surveys, the percentage of organisations at this stage was anything between 43% and 65% in 2023, compared to the 26% figure quoted above in 2024 showing the speed at which organisations are moving on. To avoid losing ground and potentially destabilising your business’s future, our team recommend the following steps are taken as a wait and see approach in 2025 will be considered a high risk strategy.

Leadership Action

Prioritise Education and Vision: Leadership must start by educating themselves and their teams about AI’s capabilities and potential. Rialto works with c-suite leaders to support them through this vital first stage with confidence and ensure no wrong turns are taken.  Time is now at a premium, the journey into an AI-driven future must be clearly mapped out with strategic objectives at the fore to catch up with the field without rushing into critical mistakes.

Prepare your workforce: Bring in AI experts and facilitate open, two-way discussions across departments to ensure a smooth, carefully choreographed entry. Invest in training to increase awareness and understanding among employees. Invite feedback and act on it – only 17% of companies do so at this stage. Ensure your biggest asset, your people, are at the forefront of this journey throughout. Collaboration, confidence and co-operation are essential.

Evaluate the Market and Competition: Leaders should analyse competitors to identify how AI is shaping their industry landscape and assess their own position.  Rialto has partnered with a number of executive teams to build their business case for AI investment by highlighting both risks and opportunities to help ensure buy-in from all stakeholders.

Formulate a High-Level AI Vision: Leadership should articulate a clear vision of what AI could potentially achieve for the organisation. This doesn’t have to be fully fleshed out but should set the stage for future AI initiatives.

Assess Current Data Assets: Leadership should work with data teams to audit available data and build systems that can collect and analyse clean, relevant data aligned to strategic objectives as this will be key to future AI success.

Identify Low-Hanging Fruit. What are the best and least complicated first case uses? Seek repetitive, time-consuming, administrative tasks that could be streamlined; customer service portals that could be automated. You may seek external support as well as working with c-suite and data teams to build new AI-led systems that will show instant results with minimal risk to build confidence and demonstrate value.

Stage 2: Experimental/Activation. 41% in 2024

Two fifths of organisations assess themselves to be in this stage, experimenting with AI technologies to address specific opportunities or challenges. This phase is entrepreneurial and opportunistic with a focus on learning, testing agility of existing business models and data. More conservative, risk-averse companies might feel most comfortable at this stage now, trialling and preparing their organisations for more wide scale transformation in the next two to five years.

Leadership Action

Set Up Pilot/Proof-of-Concept Programmes: Identify and define high-potential, simple to run end uses and trial small, measurable projects within a controlled environment. Emphasis should be on analysing results and interaction with systems and employees, iterating and identifying areas which need to be adapted and developed before bigger, more risky projects are explored.

Foster a Culture of Experimentation: Leadership needs to encourage a mindset where small-scale failures are viewed as learning opportunities. Our project teams often find successful organisations treat their AI pilots as experimentation cycles rather than one-time projects. Ensure all learning is documented, analysed and applied to future projects and scaling up.

Identify Key Metrics for Success: To that end, establish clear KPIs to continually evaluate the success of these AI experiments, whether improved efficiency, growth, cost reduction or customer or employee satisfaction. Iterate based on feedback. Report to stakeholders, demonstrating transparency, feasibility and value.

Develop Cross-Functional Teams: Include IT, data scientists if you have them, business unit leaders, and compliance officers in pilot teams to ensure pilots are practical, scalable, and compliant. Smaller companies may wish to hire consultants.

Invest in AI Talent: As experimentation ramps up, recruiting AI specialists or upskilling existing employees will become crucial. Maintain open dialogue with existing staff and look for opportunities to upskill to foster trust.

Stage 3: Foundation Building, Investing in Infrastructure and Data, Wider Experimentation. 2024: 14%

This is where we start to enter the more advanced stages inhabited by earlier adopters.   These may tend to be enterprise and innovative and/or tech companies which have a clear understanding of how AI can benefit their operation and have defined processes for implementation across the organisation.  Leadership understands the need for robust infrastructure, data governance and AI talent.  According to a Gartner report, 80% of AI projects will fail to scale by 2025 if companies don’t build a solid AI infrastructure.

Leadership Action:

Introducing wider AI projects: Those low-hanging fruit identified in stage one should now be going live and being closely monitored for governance, security, quality, impact and ROI. Our clients have tended to scale up first in operational optimisation, customer support and marketing analytics and content creation. If your organisation does not have its own AI ecosystem in place, with a c-suite leader taking accountability and data leads in relevant teams, it might be an idea to bring in external consultants to maintain dedicated oversight and advise throughout this process.

Data Strategy & Infrastructure Investment: Leadership should prioritise building a scalable data infrastructure. This includes investing in cloud computing, data lakes and the tools necessary for managing large datasets. Test platforms for compatibility, robust compliance, cybersecurity, customer service and ease of use before scaling up.

Focus on Data Governance: As AI thrives on data, it’s imperative that leaders ensure that data collection, storage, and usage adhere to regulatory standards. Data governance frameworks must be implemented to guarantee AI models are ethical, secure, and transparent.

Recruit Specialised Talent: In this stage, it’s essential to have the right expertise to scale up and optimise AI use. Leadership should seek to build teams of data engineers, machine learning experts and AI project managers or bring in consultants.

Consider Establishing a Data Governance Committee: Form a committee to ensure data privacy, quality, and compliance are central to your AI operations. Ensure accountability and transparency.

Promote Data Literacy: As AI permeates every level of the business, leadership should invest in data literacy programs to ensure employees at all levels understand how to share relevant, clean data with the knowledge base and interact with and interpret AI outputs.

Stage 4: Strategic Scaling Stage, Deploying AI Across Functions, Optimisation. 12%

Just one in eight are at this stage and those that are here and beyond – having reached it carefully and in alignment with strategic objectives – are reporting promising results with efficiency savings, growth and vastly improved products and services.  At stage 4, AI moves from pilots to full-scale deployment across multiple business units. Agility is built into business models to continuously adjust and adapt. The workforce should be growing in confidence, with AI integrated into their routines and actions.

Leadership Action:

Consider Investing in AI Platforms and replacing some legacy systems: Seek advice on which platforms to use and look at what competitors are doing with them. You may wish to invest in a single Gen-AI powered CRM such as Amazon AWS, Salesforce or Hubspot, and bolt-on other application and tools – or have your data scientists build your own using open access Generative AI models. Continuously monitor ROI and build a relationship with the provider to ensure constant adaptation and improvement or consider alternatives.

Align AI with Business Goals: Always start with objectives, not the technology, to avoid buying into hype. New models and platforms and iterations are coming on to the market daily. In this second wave of adoption, consider prioritising high-impact areas such as supply chain management, customer personalisation and fraud detection.

Consider Creating an AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) and/or Data Governance Committee: Establish a centralised AI committee or CoE that drives AI strategy, oversees technology deployment, and ensures best practices across the organisation. An ecosystem should now be in place with c-suite responsibility and accountability and company policies, guardrails and training for anyone in knowledge-based or customer facing roles in risk and compliance issues such as data security, copyright infringement, GDPR, inaccuracy and bias.

Leverage Data: Use analytics to gain insights, drive decision-making and continuously improve your offering, operations and forward planning.

Stage 5: Maturity, 7%.

Organisations at Maturity stage will find that AI has become a core component of the organisation’s DNA, integrated into the very fabric of the company, driving every aspect of decision-making and enabling continuous innovation. According to a study by Accenture, the few businesses in this stage outperform their competitors by three times in terms of profitability. In the most extreme of AI streamlining exercises, Meta boosted net income by 201% and saw a 178% stock surge by focusing on AI operational efficiency. However this came at a cost of 21,000 jobs. Companies that have successfully reached the fifth stage of maturity find themselves in a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement while employees understand the value of data and are guided by AI copilots in everything they do. AI augments every task, function and team. Employees are 1.5 times more likely to view AI as a helpful colleague. This shift in perspective leads to increased AI usage, enthusiasm, and productivity gains. Impact is assessed and ROI and value are demonstrable and measurable.  Robust guardrails are in place to minimise and mitigate risks.

Leadership Action:

Foster Continuous AI Innovation: There is no time to rest on laurels. Other organisations are catching up and technology is constantly evolving. Leadership must keep pushing the envelope by encouraging teams to innovate continuously. This may involve AI-powered R&D initiatives or the adoption of cutting-edge technologies such as AI-generated content, AI-driven customer experiences and autonomous systems.

Evolve Organisational Structures: Leaders should ensure that the organisation is agile enough to respond to the fast-paced changes in AI technology. This may involve restructuring teams, constantly upskilling or creating new or hybrid roles.

AI in Strategic Decision-Making: Make AI a critical player in c-level strategic decisions, using AI-driven insights to predict market trends, customer needs, enhance supply chain and internal operational efficiencies.

Stay Ahead of AI Trends and New Tech Offerings: Leadership must stay abreast of the latest AI advancements such as generative AI, reinforcement learning, or edge AI, and adapt them to their current and future business models. Rialto supports c-suite leaders at this stage to maintain a bigger picture perspective, stay focused on future and personal/professional development.

Benchmark Against Industry Leaders: Continuously evaluate your AI maturity against the best-in-class organisations to identify new areas for AI-driven growth.

Maintain virtuous cycle of improvement: Ensure data analytics feed into continuous development and growth. Maintain a constant state of innovative evolution. Sustain and expand capabilities and use cases.

Ethical Considerations: Never lose sight of the governance and ethical risks and responsibilities. Build in continuous reviews and ensure continuing compliance with changing regulations in different territories.

Benchmarking your organisation against the above five stages will provide a clear indication of where you and your company lie on the path to AI maturity and the steps you may need to be considering accordingly. It’s clear that organisations are moving through this process at an ever-faster pace, reflecting the growing importance of AI in today’s business environment.  Yet with 41% of organisations now in the experimental stage and only 7% in full AI maturity, there remains a significant opportunity for competitive growth.

While cost reduction and efficiencies may be the primary goal of immature adopters, high performers are twice as likely to have shifted into a phase of innovation where they use Gen AI to create new businesses or offerings, expand into new sectors or regions armed with detailed insights and the confidence of likely success gained with reliable analytics extracted from vast lakes of data.

The shift from initial scepticism to full AI integration can happen faster than many expect with the right approach. Whether you’re just starting out or already experimenting with AI, having a clear roadmap and a focus on continuous innovation will enable your organisation to progress rapidly and stay ahead. The question isn’t whether you should move up the stages, but how quickly you can—and will—do so.

Whatever stage you are at, The Rialto team of experts can help guide you and your organisation to maturity at a pace that suits your culture, while ensuring a human-centric focus, bringing your people on this journey with you. Contact us for a free initial consultation if you would like to know more.

*Asana and Anthropic State of AI at Work study        

It’s been another tumultuous year on the global stage with continued geopolitical tensions, the ongoing threat of conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East spilling over, half the world going to the polls and the looming threat of recession. On the bright side, inflation appears to be under control after two years of peaking in double figures.

But what can we expect for Q4 2024 and how will it all impact company investment appetite and demand for executive skillsets? Below, we take a look at the indexes and indicators.

The UK and Global Economies

The UK and the US find themselves on either side of their respective national elections, with economies on both sides of the Atlantic partially paralysed by a wait-and-see approach.

In the UK, the expected Labour Party landslide majority has seen a shift in hiring in different sectors as some, including technology, construction and renewable energy, anticipate a boost in line with policy priorities.

However, economists have called on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to tone down the gloomy messages around tough times ahead to fill that £22bn blackhole, warning they could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The GFK’s confidence index, which measures UK consumer sentiment, was down 7% to -20% in September 2024, raising the spectre of a potential knock-on effect of consumers holding onto their savings and reducing consumer flow into the economy.

Already, the brief economic bump of Q3, when the UK saw 0.5% growth, is expected to tail off with 0.2% growth in Q4.

Meanwhile government borrowing matched the highest in any August outside the pandemic, which does not bode well for a loosening of the Treasury purse strings any time soon. With public sector pay rises and an increase in the Living Wage, lower earners will have more spending power, however employers may feel the pressure on having to pay the higher wages with the biggest impact on services, healthcare and retail industries.

The Chancellor’s package, to be announced on October 30, will be watched eagerly by business leaders for a clearer indication of potential areas and stimuli for growth and risks/challenges ahead.

Speaking in her first Conference speech as Chancellor, Rachel Reeves didn’t give much away but did strike a more optimistic tone, ruling out a return to austerity, any income tax or corporate tax rises and reinforcing that she would stick to manifesto promises, boost investment in the regions, launch a new industrial strategy in October and host a major global investment summit to send out the message that “Britain is open for business”.

“Growth is the challenge and investment is the solution,” she told delegates, raising hopes of changes to the debt rules to enable more public investment in capital schemes such as schools, hospitals and infrastructure.

Recent figures show the UK has the lowest investment as a proportion of GDP in the G7 while imports and exports are suffering still in the wake of Brexit, which has impacts several sectors including manufacturing and transport and logistics. Retail is the one bright spot. The new government is seeking to build stronger trade agreements, repair relations with the EU, encourage greater investment in British industry through pensions and attract international investment, especially into the green economy, technology and infrastructure.

Ben Jones, CBI Lead Economist said: “By doubling down on the recently announced planning reforms, introducing a Net Zero Investment Plan and implementing a clearer, fairer and more competitive business rates system, government has an opportunity to supercharge investment and UK growth over the next Budget period and beyond.”

Globally, India and Japan have seen growth and the US appears to have avoided a feared recession with recent payroll growth, rising household income, falling inflation and an anticipated programme of rate cuts offering potential stimulus of future growth which started with a surprise 0.5% cut in September, potentially easing the brakes on the engine house of the global economy.

However, the outcome of the US General Election in November and inauguration in January 2025 – after the policy shutdown of the two-month transition period – will reshuffle the deck and help determine different winners and losers. If Trump wins, expect aggressive trade wars which could have a particularly harsh impact on struggling China. A Harris victory could see a drag on policy with a divided Congress but a boost for renewables, lower unemployment, lower budget deficits and average historical 1.2% higher economic growth than under the Republicans.

The view of CEOs

KPMG’s latest CEO survey found company leaders confident about prospects for growth but feeling the pressure to deliver in challenging circumstances.

In the UK, most say they have already adapted their growth strategies to account for increased AI-driven transformation. They view cyber security and supply chain issues the biggest threats to growth, a reverse of the wider global response.

The Executive job market

There appear to be mixed messages on hiring as we go into Q4, reflecting hesitancy as employers await clearer signs of which way the UK and world economies are headed, plus growth in some sectors and stagnation or contraction in others.

The general picture appears to be that employers want to hire, know they need to hire, but are being restrained by a number of factors include wage pressures, uncertainty over interest rates – held again in September – economic inactivity and skills shortages.

Jon Holt, chief executive and senior partner of KPMG in the UK, said: “Recent government warnings that the UK’s economy may weaken further before improving add to the overall sense of uncertainty, affecting recruitment plans.”

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) recently reported permanent positions were still heading downwards and redundancy volumes up over summer while BDO said hiring in August overall was the worst month in a decade.

This is backed up by latest ONS labour market figures which show that in Q3, the estimated UK vacancies fell by 42,000 on the quarter to 857,000, the 26th consecutive quarterly drop.

However, there is hope for a pickup on the horizon, at least in some sectors.

Lloyds Bank UK Sector Tracker said 10 of the 14 sectors it monitors had increased their headcounts, month on month, with more hiring than at any time in the past 16 months. And global recruitment firm Manpower Group reports an increase in UK employer hiring confidence.

Manpower’s survey found estate agents were being hired fastest indicating a pickup in the property market which could be a positive signal for construction and related industries, especially with the government’s determination to press on with a mass housebuilding programme. This was followed by financial services, software services and technology equipment manufacturers.

When looking at intent to hire, UK net employment outlook, confidence was healthiest in information and technology, at 48%, industrials and materials, 32%, and financials and real estate plus health care and life sciences on an equal footing at 29%

There’s been quite a change on the third quarter, reflecting the priorities of the new government perhaps.

Information technology was at 29% just months ago, energy & utilities grew from -12% to +27% and Transport and Logistics was up by 24% over the quarter

Unsurprisingly, demand for hiring at c-suite level was lowest, according to Manpower, at 4% in a multiple choice survey, with senior management at 16%. So, employers are fired up and ready to recruit strategically to power up their Gen-AI driven growth strategies. But some may sit tight a little longer while others press ahead and risk delayed ROI to get ahead.

The Manpower survey found IT & Data the most in demand hard skills with collaboration and teamwork, reasoning and problem solving and resilience and adaptability the most sought after soft skills.

Globally, the picture appears to be a little less competitive, with a similar focus on the same areas of growth, largely around AI and other technologies.

92% of international CEOs said they planned to increase their headcount, but also emphasise the need to upskill their people and work hard to bring in the best talent in the most undersupplied functions, again, especially focussed on technology.

According to Manpower’s poll of more than 40,000 employers in 42 countries the global hiring outlook for Q4 2024 was slightly higher on Q3 but down 5% on the year. Strongest hiring was seen in India, Costa Rica and the US.

Executives looking for new positions may therefore wish to target growth sectors, specifically dynamic companies within those sectors. This may mean needing to repivot or reskill and refocus CVs and applications around the most in demand hard and soft skills to compete in the extremely challenging market.

Rialto can provide structured, professional support to help you understand current global, regional or UK trends and developments in the executive job market, benchmark and understand the skills you need to develop to ensure your brand and profile are strategically positioned to attract the right opportunities and make progress.

As we move towards Q4 and start thinking about end of year, is it just possible to detect an air of optimism that there could be some economic certainty ahead of us? While there is still a need for caution, Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) should be preparing for the fourth quarter by looking ahead at a relief on the hiring squeeze and preparing for more mobility in the market.

That means ensuring departmental strategic priorities are fully aligned with evolving demands, opportunities and challenges of both the organisation and the workforce and making adjustments which anticipate emerging trends. The final quarter is a time to review performance of team capability, plan interventions where necessary – including reskilling and upskilling – and think ahead to 2025 fiscal planning to ensure the workforce is agile and ready to evolve with AI and data-driven initiatives which will continue to be the biggest drivers of progress and growth.

Here are the priorities HR Directors should be considering to help steer their organisations through this final quarter.

Leader and Manager Development

Markets are in a more dynamic state than ever before, largely due to the phenomenal rate with which AI, and particularly Generative AI, continue to evolve and shape business processes.

Q4 is a good time for HR Directors to review how prepared their organisation is to fully realise the potential opportunities and defend against the risks. This change management starts at the top. What will differentiate companies that ride the wave of AI-driven progress from those left floundering in their choppy wake is decisive, informed, confident leadership.

Only then can they guide their managers and teams through this time of uncertainty and change and inspire and empower staff to rise to the challenges. New skills are needed for this new world. Check your leaders also are up to speed on appropriate management style with an emphasis on emotional intelligence, empathy and good communication over authoritarian command and ivory tower leadership. Now is a good time for HR to look at hierarchical structures and ensure the workplace remains open, inclusive and a safe environment in which to foster innovation and creativity.

Key actions: Audit your Board and SLT – decide how best to invest your remaining budget in development programs, executive coaching, digital fluency and continuous learning opportunities and/or plan for fiscal 2025 to help ensure they truly understand the complex new landscape and have the skills in place to constantly adapt and optimise.

Talent Acquisition and Retention

The labour market is anticipated to continue to present challenges with talent demand outpacing supply in many areas, especially around AI-led transformation. CHROs need to refine talent acquisition strategies by leveraging AI and other emerging technologies to streamline hiring processes and improve candidate experiences. How is your attrition rate looking so far this year? Are you losing valuable talent to advanced, more forward-thinking, inclusive and nurturing organisations?

In today’s market employees are far more willing to move around to ensure their needs are met, rather than consider a lifelong career at a single company. In order to retain valued talent and fill skills gaps, consider upskilling existing staff through continuous learning to help build their portfolios, keep them motivated and engaged to improve productivity and serve organisational need.

Key actions: Review your performance on Glass Door or any other company review site and conduct employee satisfaction surveys to learn what you are doing right and what you could do better. Investigate AI-driven recruitment tools and data-driven analytics to help monitor and improve employee experience. Consider how you might enhance internal mobility programs and making them more visible and accessible to current employees.

Foster Positive Organisational Culture and Employee Well-being

A vital element of talent acquisition and retention, every company’s success is closely tied to the well-being, loyalty and engagement of its employees. As the year comes to a close, it’s important to ensure that your workforce remains motivated and aligned with the company’s goals. Year end can see an ennui set in, especially with dark nights drawing in and the wind down to Christmas. How will you maintain energy levels and monitor and nurture the mental health and wellbeing of your staff?

Key actions: CHROs should prioritise initiatives that promote a positive work culture, address employee burnout, and recognise the contributions of their teams. Consider a mid-quarter initiative to lift and energise the workforce, for example, gamification of more mundane tasks, a new reward system, inter-departmental tournaments or team-building activities.

Drive Cost Efficiencies through AI-driven innovation

It’s been another tough year with economic uncertainty and budgetary constraints. CEOs and other stakeholders want to see evidence of cost efficiencies within HR functions without compromising the quality of services. Review the bottom line before the end of your financial year and ensure you remain on target.

Do you need to modernise recruitment methods using new technologies? Are you automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as payroll processing and benefits administration? Ensure your AI-led transformation is transparent and use internal communications effectively, including messaging from the top, to assure staff they are valued, explain how technology will benefit the organisation and ensure they do not feel alienated or fearful. All tech transformation should be people-centred. Take the opportunity of the next board meeting to ensure that all members are aware of the impact a likely acceleration of AI integration through 2025 might have on staff and put strategies are in place to mitigate and minimise this.

Key actions: If you haven’t already, ensure discussions around AI and automation are being held at C-suite level. Where can you make efficiency savings by bringing in AI to take on repetitive tasks and augment the more complex work of human employees? Look at what competitors are doing and pipeline technologies coming onto the market. Show initiative and take them to the board this winter. Audit your workforce skills: looks at training budgets and think about how that money could best be spent on futureproofing your organisation.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Promoting DEI is not just a moral imperative but a business one. CHROs should continue to prioritise building diverse teams, especially at the leadership level. Implementing unbiased recruitment processes and fostering an inclusive workplace culture can help organisations attract and retain diverse talent, which in turn drives innovation and better decision-making.

Key actions: Review any changes to DEI laws and guidance in any territory in which your organisation operates before year end. Check you are compliant and look into any laws tabled for the future to ensure you are prepared. Look at what is happening in your market for inspiration on ways to differentiate your company and make its DEI credentials stand out and ensure they are visible to prospective talent.

Align the organisational skills base with evolving drivers for growth

Q4 is a good time to ensure your workforce is aligned to strategic objectives – have they changed since goals were set at the beginning of the year? Is it equipped to respond positively to current and emerging trends, opportunities and challenges? It is essential that HR builds agility and adaptability into its workforce and can constantly assess and adjust. A staff base that is concrete-footed will be too slow to pick up new technologies and ways of working. If your workforce is falling behind, what can you do to bring it back in step and prepare it for the near future?

Key actions: Audit your workforce skills base against current and future requirements based on your organisational objectives and wider market forces and developments, especially around AI. Look at budgets for training and career coaching for the rest of this fiscal year and next and plan upskilling to suit. Consider AI tools to help monitor performance and introduce automated continuous learning to keep your workforce agile, responsive and up to date.

Modern day boardrooms are increasingly recognising the need to have HR representation at the highest decision-making level. Many CHROs will be into only their first or second year so it is imperative that they use this time of year to demonstrate value and show they are as integral to the progress and growth of an organisation as any other department. Take time in Q4 to review the year to date, make any adjustments to policy, recruitment and skills and plan future growth and efficiency savings through technology-driven initiatives.

Prepare the case for increased budgets for training and development to ensure your workforce is AI-proficient and ready to adopt new technologies and working practices to leave the competition for dust.

As we approach the final quarter of 2024, executives and board directors find themselves at a pivotal juncture. Q4 is not just the culmination of the year’s efforts but also a critical period that sets the stage for the year ahead.

So, as we crunch back up through the gears following the summer slowdown, now is the time for all top tier leaders to look forward, evaluate priorities and ensure all functions and teams are strategically aligned to ensure resilience and growth.

Here we look at what should be top of mind for CEOs as they steer their organisations through the final stretch of 2024.

Almost two thirds of CEOs singled out growth as their top business priority for 2024 in a Gartner survey, the highest level for a decade and up from a half the previous year. This indicated a renewed confidence in the economy after years of uncertainty, stagnation and hesitancy.

The green shoots have been slower to emerge than many had hoped, however there are now definite signs that the most challenging times are behind us, barring any further disruptions such as an escalation of conflict in the Middle East or Eastern Europe.

How can senior leadership then optimise the last months of the year to set their organisations up to seize opportunities as we navigate the interplay of different factors that paint numerous possible futures for the year to come. This includes continued shifts in the global economic environment, how businesses organise themselves across sectors and the continued evolution of digital technologies, their adoption by consumers and the impact on business operating models.

Re-evaluate and Adjust Strategic Goals

This is the perfect time to reassess your company’s strategic goals set at the beginning of the year. Are they still relevant in the current market environment? What has changed in your sector, organisation or the wider economy in that time? Have new opportunities emerged around disruptive technologies, sustainability, for example, or have new markets come to the fore?

Key Actions: Conduct a strategic review with your executive team, focusing on KPIs, market dynamics, and potential pivots. If necessary, recalibrate your strategies to ensure alignment with the latest market realities.

Strengthen Financial Management

Q4 is traditionally a time for financial housekeeping. What are the potential economic challenges on the horizon and how can you best prepare? In what direction are market trends pushing you? Do you need to think about adjusting spending priorities to capitalise on any emerging opportunities and shore up any under-resourced, strategically important areas? Have inflationary pressures changed since your targets were set at the end of 2023? Do your end of year plans still reflect energy prices, transport, wages and any investment needed to bring your organisation up to date with evolving technologies?

Key Actions: Work closely with your CFO to monitor and optimise cash flow, reduce unnecessary expenses and ensure your company is in robust financial health. Review pricing models to ensure they reflect current market conditions and protect margins. Has Generative AI changed your sector and do you need to adjust spending priorities to stay ahead of the curve?

Enhance AI Transformation Initiatives

AI – and particularly Generative AI – transformation is displacing digital transformation as the keyword CEOs mention most as the major driving force behind business growth. AI is moving from the “peak of inflated expectations” in the hype cycle but it is essential that adoption is measured, carefully considered from the point of added value and ROI, and avoids buying into hype. Technology-based initiatives must also be continuously evaluated and updated to keep pace with technological advancements. Q4 is a critical time to assess the progress of your AI transformation efforts and identify areas that require further investment or adjustment. Whether it’s AI integration, cybersecurity, or cloud computing, ensuring that your tech infrastructure is robust, aligned with strategic objectives and future-proof is essential.

Key Actions: Audit your AI transformation progress and invest in key technologies that can drive efficiency and innovation. Look at what is happening in your sector – what is the competition doing? What technological advances are on the near and far horizon? Maintain a dynamic strategy to fully optimise all opportunities. Ensure your company’s cybersecurity measures are up to date to mitigate any potential risks.

Focus on Customer Retention and Engagement

With budgets being finalised for the next year, ensuring that your current customer base is satisfied and engaged can significantly impact your financial projections. Are you doing enough to ensure customer loyalty and meeting their evolving needs. In today’s competitive market, with access to high-quality instant customer service and highly personalised marketing and interactions powered by predictive analytics and data-driven insights, B2B and B2C customers and clients expect more than ever. What is the competition doing? Are you allowing your offering to slip behind? What can you do to accelerate your data collection, analysis and application to sales and customer experience?

Key Actions: Implement targeted campaigns to boost customer engagement leveraging data analytics to personalise outreach and offers. Consider customer feedback loops to continuously improve the customer experience.

Prepare for 2025: Strategic Planning

While Q4 is about closing the year in a position of strength and growth, it’s also about setting healthy foundations for continuing growth next year. CEOs should lead the charge in developing strategic plans for 2025, considering emerging trends, potential disruptions and growth opportunities. This includes evaluating market expansion possibilities, identifying new revenue streams, and planning for talent acquisition or development to support future growth.

Key Actions: Begin the strategic planning process for 2025 involving key stakeholders across the organisation. Focus on building a roadmap that balances short-term objectives with long-term vision, ensuring your company is prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the coming year.

Sustainability and ESG Initiatives

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors are becoming increasingly important to every sector. In Q4, CEOs should assess the progress of their sustainability initiatives and ensure they align with both regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations. This quarter is also an opportunity to set more ambitious ESG goals for the coming year. Failing to meet requirements can be costly, both financially and in terms of reputational damage.

Key Action: Review your company’s ESG performance and make necessary adjustments to meet or preferably exceed industry standards. Engage with stakeholders to communicate your sustainability efforts and future commitments and ensure they are onboard and, where necessary, compliant.

Mitigate Supply Chain Risks

Supply chain disruptions have been a significant challenge for many companies in recent years. Q4 is a critical period for reviewing that your supply chain is resilient, giving you value for money and can withstand potential disruptions. This might involve diversifying suppliers, increasing inventory levels or investing in supply chain technologies to enhance visibility and responsiveness. Again, CEOs should be looking at potential AI solutions to maximise efficiency of supply chain and logistics.

Key Actions: Evaluate your supply chain risks and take proactive measures to mitigate them. Consider building stronger relationships with key suppliers and investing in technologies that provide greater supply chain transparency, reliability and efficiency.

By prioritising these key areas with their Executive Team and using Q4 to review and adjust strategies and objectives, CEOs can confidently steer their organisations to year end on a high, with strong foundations laid for further progress and growth in 2025. As the business landscape continues to evolve, staying agile and proactive will be key to navigating the complexities of the complex modern market.

Rialto has a team of experts in Generative AI and other emerging technologies who can develop an action plan specific to your business and strategic priorities. Get in touch for a free initial consultation.

In the first of our blog series on LinkedIn, we explained how to create an impressive LinkedIn profile. Here we explore ways to optimise your profile, network and seek out job opportunities on the platform.

There are currently more than 58 million companies listed on LinkedIn with more than 15 million open job listings.

Six people are hired via LinkedIn every minute. Read on for tips and tricks to make sure the right recruiters are matched with your profile, improving your chances of being found for the right role.

Be active:

The more active you are on your profile, the more you will appear in employer/recruiter searchers. Tweaks, updates and relevant content sharing and posting will help boost your presence. If you are currently job searching, make sure you are using LinkedIn regularly.

Follow the companies in which you are interested and their executives/thought leaders to build up links and stay informed on developments and opportunities and gain insights into their culture.

Connect, connect, connect. Don’t be shy about sending out a request to anyone you know or is connected to you in any way who you can share insights with and might be mutually helpful. This is not a friend-making platform, it’s about building networks. You will be as useful to an old colleague, schoolfriend, acquaintance, contact-of-contact as they are to you. Also, link in to recruiters, HR leaders, industry influencers and key decision makers. If an employer sees you are linked to them via other connections, they are more like to take you seriously. It will help you access the elusive hidden job market and bring recruiters to your door. Do follow etiquette, though. Don’t employ a scattergun approach, mindlessly messaging hundreds of people with no obvious links to you. Ensure there is a purpose or shared interest or field. Add a personalised message explaining why you want to connect and offer to help or share information, but keep it brief.

Be proactive. Message senior decision makers, hiring managers, recruiters, any of your connections in the relevant sector and ask about opportunities. Keep it brief, friendly and professional. Read profiles fully first to get a sense of their preferred style of communication and their role and experience so you can make any introduction or opening gambit personal and specific instead of sounding like a cut and paste job. Don’t send CVs on spec and long personal sales pitches. Just explain what you are looking for, how you think you can help and ask if they know of opportunities or can suggest anybody else to contact. Any inside information may give you that edge over other job seekers and valuable access to the hidden market.

Open to work. Consider whether it’s appropriate to set your profile to Open to Work. There’s a video here on how to do it. You can limit this information to recruiters, useful if you do not want other people to know you are looking or want to seek opportunities subtly. Alternatively, you can also alert all contacts, although you might wish to discuss this option with a skilled coach to decide on the right positioning for you.

Search and subscribe to job alerts: Clicking on the jobs icon in the toolbar will take you to a page where jobs matching your skills and experience will be displayed. You can search for further positions and switch the “set alert” toggle to “on” to receive notifications when relevant new jobs are posted.

Join groups and networks to extend your reach and stay informed. Add insightful comments to posts and share or create your own content to showcase your expertise and thought leadership and make sure people see your name. Nine in 10 super successful job hunters in a LinkedIn survey belonged to at least one group.

Maintain your network. Once you have made a useful contact, try to maintain it. For example, if you had a good job interview but didn’t get the post, follow up with a message to the panel members thanking them for their time, asking for feedback and politely requesting that they might consider you for any future roles. Be careful not to overstep the mark or become over familiar. Keep it professional unless the relationship has developed into a mutually more friendly one naturally. Ensuring you are gently in the background of a specific space will help keep you in the mind of employers, recruiters and other contacts who may have helpful information or consider you when an opportunity arises.

Prepare for applications and interviews. Use this incredible resource to frame your approach, response and interview style. Look at anyone who has worked for the company or comparable companies. What skills do they showcase? What were their career trajectories? Who do they follow? What do they post?

Similarly, read into the company culture and the backgrounds of any individuals who may have a part in the recruitment process. Finding a common interest with an interviewer before meeting them can be a good icebreaker – say a football team or the fact you’ve both worked at the same company or in the same European city. It shows you’ve done your homework. Don’t be over familiar though! Knowing it’s their first born’s 18th birthday or the name of their dog could backfire!

Should you pay for premium?

If you’re not actively looking for a job, recruiting or seeking to build your sales or following for commercial purposes, the free-to-use platform should meet most or all your needs.

But it’s worth going for the free one-month premium free trial to unlock the extra features and decide if it’s worth paying for while you are in the market. They include direct email access to hiring managers, notifications of views of your CV, LinkedIn Learning courses and AI-powered searches.

These are just some of the tools and benefits to LinkedIn and the beauty of it is that it’s a vast resource of accessible, free and easily searchable information to support you in so many aspects of your career development. However, while algorithms make it as personal to you as they can, there are limitations to its offering.

It goes without saying that competition for jobs at the very top is most intense and the process so much more complex as companies seek the very best candidate for crucial positions upon which futire company fortunes can be made and lost.

If you feel you could benefit from professional, structured highly personalised support in your executive job search, do contact Rialto for a free initial consultation.