Gartner Highlights Three Strategies for CFOs to Deliver Growth as Executive Confidence Languishes

Executive leaders are tempered in their optimism about economic growth and their own organization’s top-line growth, as the Gartner, Inc. Executive Confidence Barometer totaled 49.8 out of 100 in the second quarter of 2025. CFOs have a critical role in helping these executives navigate uncertain economic conditions.

Gartner’s Executive Confidence Barometer is calculated from executives’ rating about the favorability of the current environment for their organizations’ performance (rated on a 1 to 5 favorability scale and then normalized to a 100-point scale).

The survey of 253 cross functional respondents, largely from Europe (n=94) and North America (n=146), showed that European executives were more pessimistic about growth prospects, with a 43.0 confidence reading, than their North American counterparts who had a 53.8 confidence reading (see Figure 1).

“Approximately three quarters of executives are recalibrating their top-line growth expectations down since the start of the year,” said Randeep Rathindran, Distinguished VP, Research in the Gartner Finance practice. “However, a lot of the trends slowing growth – such as tepid demand growth, high input costs and expensive capital - have been present for much longer.”

Fifty-nine percent of executives reported reduced demand from existing customers among the top three greatest external risks to their organization’s growth performance in 2025. They name accelerated inflation (52%) and insufficient organic growth opportunities (50%) among their top performance risks as concerns about constrained supply of inputs and potential foreign market access restrictions take hold.

To address these challenges, CFOs should adopt a proactive, catalyst-oriented approach, moving beyond traditional cost-cutting and reactive decision-making. The three key strategies are:

1. Redirect spending for differentiation: CFOs should educate executive teams and boards on the realities of the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) economy and shift spending away from commoditized costs toward assets and capabilities that drive true competitive advantage.
   
   “CFOs should be looking to invest in scale by focusing on fewer industries, key geographic markets and core products and services that differentiate their organization from competitors, while seeking to avoid unprofitable expansion,” said Rathindran.
   
   
2. Build a cost-conscious culture: Rather than relying on episodic, finance-driven cost cuts, CFOs must foster a culture of sustained cost efficiency. This involves multimodel budgeting for greater transparency, empowering business leaders to make cost decisions, and implementing incentives that reward cost optimization and reinvestment in growth.
   
   “The most successful organizations in difficult economic times do not make unsustainable knee-jerk cost cuts that fail to deliver lasting results,” said Rathindran. “Successful CFOs achieve sustainable cost reduction by continually fostering greater accountability among business leaders through improved budgeting, incentives, and finance partnership
   
   
3. ”Enable rapid adaptation through scenario planning: To counter decision paralysis, CFOs should integrate scenario planning and tariff modeling into processes, allowing for agile responses to policy changes and external shocks. Engaging with policy partners and conducting location-specific risk assessments will furth strengthen organizational resilience.
   
   “Traditional, linear planning is too rigid to be useful in a highly volatile environment,” said Rathindran. “Gaming out various financial scenarios helps organizations to be ready for disruptions and trade restrictions and stay agile in the face of constant change.”

Additional information is available to clients in the Gartner reports 2Q25 Gartner Executive Confidence Barometer and 3 CFO Strategies for Profitable Growth in the VUCA Economy. Nonclients can read The CFO Report.