The shifting landscape for Canada's energy, utilities, mining and industrial sectors­

1. The race for the future

What are EUMI CEOs thinking and doing about long-term trends and challenges, like climate change and digital disruption?

2. Today’s tensions

What’s the outlook for the economy, and how are EUMI CEOs managing a volatile near-term environment?

3. A balanced agenda

How much control do EUMI CEOs have over their calendars to balance short-term considerations with reinventing the business? To what extent are they taking advantage of opportunities, such as collaborating with governments and harnessing the power of organizational culture, to help accelerate change and manage competing pressures?

Takeaways for Canadian EUMI CEOs

In tacit recognition of the extent to which they rely on carbon-based energy, Canadian EUMI CEOs are more likely than Canadian CEOs overall to question their viability in the next ten years. Given that in many cases it’s a matter of survival, they’re also more likely to be doing something material about climate change and using these actions and commitments to differentiate their brand.

Yet CEOs of EUMI organizations express similar concerns to their Canadian counterparts overall about economic growth and their own company’s success rate in the next 12 months. With inflationary pressures and the risk of a recession looming, the only way forward will be to become a more efficient business with what they have today.

Our results show three key opportunities for Canadian EUMI CEOs to navigate the resource and time pressures at the heart of the dual imperative. By considering the questions and suggested approaches below, leaders can increase their readiness for a dual-imperative world:

What is your energy transition ecosystem? As you innovate, building new capital projects and driving different technologies to address carbon emissions, you’ll likely find your organization becoming increasingly exposed to supply chain disruption. To reduce this risk, enable the growth of your local supply base around the most relevant technologies and capabilities. Ask what you’re doing to encourage innovation and growth in diverse suppliers within your geographical area. What proportion of your growth portfolio is coming from local minority- and Indigenous-owned businesses?

Are you ready for a crisis, and how central are your front-line teams to reinventing your organization? In the context of short-term constraints, being crisis-ready is more important than ever—you simply can’t afford to have a crisis you’re not able to respond to effectively. As always, your most valuable asset is your people. Invest in developing the capabilities of your people, particularly problem-solving and analytics capabilities, to help transform your business and drive the efficiency and operational excellence you’ll need to cope with current and future pressures.

What role can you play in helping this sector effectively transition? Given how important collaboration is to EUMI CEOs and the crucial role it will play in getting us closer to energy transition, are you doing enough to help promote and streamline these types of collaborations? Identify the people within your teams who are working to improve collaboration and engagement—rather than just managing the process. Building your organization's collaborative mindset and muscle will continue to be of utmost importance as the sector looks to achieve both multi-party collaboration and alignment around the complex problems that need to be solved to achieve transition, including regulatory challenges.