Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Feeling a little anxious?
Surveys | Resilience | Industrials & Electronics
December 6, 2023 – Business leaders in advanced industries view their short-term prospects with a mixture of uncertainty and pessimism, according to a McKinsey survey of top executives. Senior partner Mikael Robertson and colleagues find that only about 31 percent of senior leaders feel they are ready to meet future challenges. Respondents were most positive about trends related to rising demand, the potential of breakthrough technologies, and shifting customer preferences. They were most pessimistic about issues such as macroeconomic forces, supply chain disruptions, and people and workforce issues. Click through the interactive to see more.
Interactive
To read the article, see “Resilience during uncertainty: What industrial leaders must know,” November 8, 2023.
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Visual form
Stacked horizontal bar chart. Each row represents one external trend and the bar is split into sentiment categories ranging from very negative to very positive expected effect.
Layout / body structure
The visual is laid out as a survey dashboard read from top to bottom by trend. Reader scans one horizontal distribution row at a time, comparing how the negative, neutral, and positive response segments stack within categories such as breakthrough technologies, rising demand, customer preferences, climate regulation, costs, supply chains, geopolitics, people and workforce issues, and macro factors.
What is being compared
The chart compares expected impact on respondents’ organizations across a long list of external trends. It is comparing sentiment distributions by issue, so the question is not how one number changes over time but how optimistic or pessimistic executives are about each force acting on the business.
Measurement system
The unit is percentage of respondents, and each horizontal bar totals 100 percent. Color segments distinguish very negative, somewhat negative, neutral, somewhat positive, positive, and very positive expected effects, turning each row into a full sentiment distribution.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The graphic is made of repeated horizontal stacked bars with a legend running from darker negative tones through neutral gray to brighter positive blues. The same structure repeats down the page, which makes it easy to spot rows where positive segments dominate and rows where negative segments take over.
Main takeaway from the visual
Executives in advanced industries see opportunity in technology and demand but remain much more uneasy about many operating conditions around them. The bar rows make that visible by skewing more positive on items such as breakthrough technologies and rising demand, while costs, supply chains, workforce issues, and macro factors show visibly heavier negative portions.
Key standout values or extremes
The source range notes that only about 31 percent of senior leaders feel ready to meet future challenges, which frames the overall mood of the chart. In the visual itself, the strongest positive balance appears on breakthrough technologies and rising demand, whereas macro factors, people and workforce issues, and supply chain disruptions carry some of the heaviest negative shares.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The visible controls change the chart view while keeping the same graphic structure.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.