McKinsey advises some of the biggest companies in the world, and Kurt Strovink consults with their leaders.
Strovink, a senior partner who has been at McKinsey for 30 years, leads the firm’s global CEO services, which helps support top executives through all aspects of the job, from setting company direction to working with the board.
He told Business Insider in February that it’s one of the hardest times to be a CEO, in part because the number of critical issues on the management agenda has risen.
“They’ve always had to separate the critical few from the important many,” Strovink said of CEOs. “It’s just that the critical few are almost double-digit now.”
There are signs that the CEO job is getting harder, including that they are staying in the job for shorter stints than in the past. In 2025, the average outgoing CEO tenure was 7.1 years, down from 7.4 in 2024 and 8.3 in 2023, according to data from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds, which tracks leadership changes at public companies. Business Insider previously reported that CEO turnover was on the rise and that it was getting harder to replace them.
“The CEO role is the only role that you can’t outwork,” Strovink said. “It will outwork you.”
The big challenges facing CEOs in 2026
In 2026, AI is top of mind for most CEOs, requiring near constant strategy updates in order to keep up with the fast-changing technology and implement it across their business, from strategy to talent to capex, Strovink said. Executives are also moving beyond AI pilot programs and are now focused on implementing at scale.
Some CEOs have already tapped out and cited AI as part of the reason, including the former CEOs of Coca-Cola and Walmart. “With what’s happening with AI, I could start this next big set of transformations with AI, but I couldn’t finish,” Doug McMillon, who stepped down as CEO of Walmart in January, told CNBC.
Beyond strategizing how to best use AI, executives are also considering the ethical implications and risks. There’s also increased pressure on CEOs to figure out how to navigate policy and political issues, and how or if they should publicly take positions on certain topics.
“A lot of CEOs would say, ‘I never wanted to be a politician,'” Strovink said, but at times they feel a bit like a “head of state.” He said CEOs today are asking themselves, “How do I discriminate between what are worthy things for me to take positions on and where it’s not for me to comment or not for the organization to comment?”
Some CEOs are engaging more in public policy discussions and working with government relations specialists to address this.
Geopolitics and economic volatility are also requiring CEOs to constantly update their strategy, as well as build out resilient systems that can withstand unpredictable developments in areas like trade policy and supply chain disruptions.
“Modern CEOs — all reliably and technically proficient in finance, operations, engineering, and other traditional areas of business — now need to actively develop their geopolitical IQ,” a McKinsey report co-authored by Strovink said.
For CEOs, that also means preparing for two potential worlds: a diversified world with open trade and a more fragmented world with expanded trade restrictions.
Another challenge is motivating the next generation of leaders, who tend to be more motivated by finding purpose and meaning than they are by promotions, Strovink said. Millennials and Gen Z are less motivated to climb the corporate ladder than prior generations, Business Insider previously reported.
Because they’re juggling so many different things, CEOs also have to figure out how to get everything done without burning out, Strovink said, adding, “I think you have to be much better at your personal operating model than five or ten years ago.”
While it’s especially hard to be a CEO right now, Strovink said there is a plus side — that the impact you can have as a top executive has “probably never been higher.”
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