Report

Over the past year, a global pandemic has killed at least 2.8 million people and brought economies to a grinding halt. Police killings of Black Americans moved thousands to march for racial justice in cities worldwide. Floods and forest fires underscored the reality of climate change, and its dangers. Democracy came under attack in Washington, D.C., where a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the result of an election that didn’t go their way. Lies and conspiracy theories spread like kudzu on social media, leading many to wonder whether empirical truth had become a relic of the past.

Business agility became a CEO-level issue during the pandemic, according to a global survey of business leaders conducted by ThoughtLab and ServiceNow, the publisher of Workflow. A plurality of respondents (33%) said CEOs are taking the leading role in business agility efforts, followed by chief information officers (23%) and chief operating officers (20%). The survey found data management and security have become 27% more agile since the pandemic. IT support and services have seen a 26% agility boost. Sales, marketing, and channel management are 24% more agile. IT architecture, platforms, and systems have seen a 21% improvement. Check out more research findings starting on page 15 of this issue, and on the C-Suite Center section of our daily Workflow site.