Today’s guest: Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer at Vistage (44,000+ members worldwide). A former Gartner analyst and sales leader, Joe now runs one of the country’s most data-driven windows into the mid-market CEO mindset. The Vistage CEO Confidence Index.

His data captures what business owners and leaders are actually seeing on the ground — what they fear, where they’re cutting or investing, and how they’re navigating the hybrid era without losing people or profit.

Why this matters now: CEO confidence is still hovering near historic lows, even as most leaders continue to project growth. That tension — optimism inside companies, pessimism about the economy — defines 2025. It’s driven by uncertainty around tariffs, interest rates, inflation, and labor shortages that aren’t about headcount but about skills. Add in AI-driven productivity shifts, and you get a market where leaders feel like they’re steering through fog with one hand tied behind their back.

Joe explains how small and mid-market CEOs — the real backbone of the U.S. economy — are adjusting to the “new normal”: running leaner operations, rewarding loyalty, and testing AI tools that cut time but raise new questions about value and engagement.

What You’ll Learn

- Hybrid Without the Hype — Why most SMBs have stabilized into predictable hybrid routines (three or four days in office), why big swings in policy erode trust, and how leaders define flexibility as a retention strategy — not a perk.

- Talent ≠ Headcount — Demand for workers has flattened, but skills haven’t kept up. Construction, manufacturing, and energy companies are scrambling for qualified people while white-collar teams learn to do more with fewer. The bar is higher everywhere.

- Tariffs & Margins — 43% of CEOs say they’ve raised prices in the past six months; 51% plan to raise again soon. Margins are under pressure, and companies are balancing passing costs along with keeping customers loyal in a slow growth environment.

- Productivity, Not Busyness — The meeting tax is real. Joe explains why the illusion of activity still haunts post-COVID workflows and how leaders are reclaiming time for deep work through “collaboration windows” on in-office days.

- AI’s Three Waves — First comes individual productivity (people cutting a four-hour task to thirty minutes), then team automation (removing friction in how groups work together), and finally organizational reinvention. Joe argues the office of the future must be more human, not less, built for trust, creativity, and relationship-building while machines handle the repetitive work.

- Culture That Sticks — Every organization has a culture — the question is whether it’s intentional. Joe unpacks why managers are the “apostles of culture,” how trust is built and lost, and why engagement depends on connecting individual work to purpose and outcomes.

If you’re a CEO, owner, or HR leader in the Midwest: I help teams match space strategy to how people actually work — hybrid cadence, collaboration zones, and time-to-productivity. DM me or visit vvco.com.

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