McKinsey’s September Global Survey gathered responses from 992 participants in 86 countries. Looking six months ahead, 35% expected global conditions to improve and 36% expected them to worsen. The figures describe executives’ sentiment at the time of the survey, not a forecast of the economy.
What changed in sentiment
Pessimism eased compared with June, but it did not turn into broad optimism. Thirty-six percent of respondents expected their own economy to improve and 33% expected it to worsen. Views differ by region, so a global average should not substitute for a company’s actual market exposure.
Turn uncertainty into decision rules
The management task is to define what the company will do under several plausible conditions. Specify which signs would release a growth investment, delay expansion or protect liquidity. Assign an owner to each trigger and review it at a fixed cadence. This keeps the strategy responsive without making every headline a reason to reverse course.
Key takeaways
- The share expecting improvement and deterioration is nearly equal, making a single-base-case plan fragile.
- Geopolitics, energy prices and trade-policy changes remain prominent perceived risks.
- Among private-sector respondents, weak demand became the most-cited threat to company growth.
- CEOs can tie investment and staffing choices to explicit demand, margin and energy-price triggers.
What this means for CEOs
The survey supports planning for a range of outcomes, not predicting which one will arrive. A CEO can preserve optionality by making the thresholds for action explicit before pressure mounts.