The future of Canada’s private companies

Agility is key to powering the next stage of growth and transformation

As the Canadian and global economies continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s private companies have several advantages that put them in a good position to emerge stronger. One of their biggest assets is their agility, which has been critical to helping them successfully pivot during a time of disruption.

This ability to adapt quickly is giving many private company leaders confidence about the future of their business as they emerge from uncertainty. We see many signs of this optimism in private company CEOs’ responses to our 2021 CEO Survey and our 2021 Family Business Survey. The findings include:

• Our CEO Survey found 41% of private company executives expect their business to grow this year, compared to 34% for leaders of public companies. A majority (57%) of private company executives anticipate growth in the next three years, versus 49% of those leading public companies.
• Private company executives are more likely (85%) than CEOs of public companies (73%) to expect headcount increases over the next three years.
• Private company CEOs are significantly more likely (54%) than their public counterparts (35%) to be looking to launch new products and services.
• While two-thirds of Canadian family businesses expect to see growth in 2021, this number increases to 9 out of 10 when looking at 2022. 

Building on the momentum for change

The optimism reflects, at least in part, the successes of many private companies during a time of uncertainty. With fewer processes and governance requirements to follow when making key decisions about the future of the organization, many private companies have been able to better position their businesses by accelerating change and transformation.

Even in hard-hit sectors like retail, this agility has led to success. For example, at our recent Designed to disrupt conference, one retail CEO discussed her company’s success in rethinking its business strategy during the pandemic by rapidly implementing a technology-enabled approach during the 2020 holiday season that let online customers enjoy a similar shopping experience to the previous in-store model.

Examples like this show how, for many private companies, technology has now permeated their businesses, which is giving them even more momentum to continue transforming. While some organizations didn’t survive the crisis, those that were able to adapt, think big and make changes to their business models are now surpassing previous expectations.

The new business imperative for Canadian private companies

For private companies with a positive outlook on the economy and their business prospects over the next few years, now is an ideal time to turn this success into further growth by building on the agility they’ve shown during the pandemic.

Achieving this potential will require organizations to focus their energy on two fundamental issues facing businesses today:

• the need to build trust at a time when it’s both more fragile and more challenging to earn; and
• the importance of delivering sustained outcomes in the face of major shifts reshaping the world, such as technological disruption, climate change and the continuing effects of the pandemic.

What could this mean for your organization? Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll explore how organizations can address these critical business imperatives while investing in some of the top concerns and priorities identified by Canadian private company executives in our CEO Survey.