CEOs and CFOs agree on growth as top priority

Batman and Robin. Peanut butter and jelly. Lennon and McCartney. Some things just go together. Like CEOs and CFOs, naturally.

But just as Batman and Robin presumably have their own petty squabbles and tiffs, CEOs and CFOs don’t always see eye to eye. It's worth a small celebration when they do agree on something.

So, what’s the one thing CEOs and CFOs all want right now? Growth. That’s according to a recent Gartner survey, which found that CEOs and CFOs ranked growth among their top three strategic business priorities this year.

Yet even when they agree, there’s some dissonance. 45% of CEOs put growth in their top three, while a significantly higher percentage—62%—of CFOs did the same. Those figures also meant different things for the two groups. For CEOs, it was a drop from 53% in 2022, while it was a jump from 59% for CFOs. So while they may agree, they actually agree less than they did last year.

Don’t despair: They agree on plenty of other things, too. Especially obvious things: Both CEOs and CFOs said artificial intelligence was the new technology most likely to disrupt their industry within the next three years. Shocker! K, maybe not. And this isn’t either: A majority of CEOs and CFOs ranked inflation as one of the top three factors hurting their organization’s outlook.

Even if CEOs and CFOs mainly agree on the easy stuff, it’s better than nothing.