"56% of C-Suite Leaders May Leave in Two Years. Here's the Structural Reason Why."
- Dr Austin Tay
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- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
The leadership crisis unfolding across organisations is frequently framed as a capability problem — a deficit of skill, resilience, or adaptability at the individual level. The evidence suggests a more systemic explanation.
Gartner projects that 56% of C-suite leaders are likely to leave their roles within two years, with 27% considering departure within six months, driven predominantly by role overload and expanding workload expectations (Digit.fyi, 2025).
Deloitte's 2025 Global Human Capital Trends report identifies the structural tensions compounding this pressure: organisations are simultaneously demanding stability and agility and expecting leaders to optimise for human outcomes and business performance, yet lack adequate frameworks to reconcile these. (Deloitte, 2025).
In the UK, the Chartered Management Institute (2024) found that 82% of managers enter their roles without formal management training — a structural failure, not a personal one — with consequent effects on retention: 50% of employees who rate their manager as ineffective intend to leave within 12 months.
The pattern is consistent across geographies. In Singapore, only 30% of senior leaders are confident in their workforce's long-term skills readiness, and 43% report concern about future talent shortages, based on a Workday survey of 149 Singapore-based leaders (Workday, 2025). Separately, 46% of employers in Singapore identify limited overseas exposure as a structural barrier to local talent reaching senior levels (AmCham Singapore & Centre for Creative Leadership, 2025).
In Hong Kong, 88% of employees report using AI tools daily, yet 54% of organisations have no governance framework in place to manage them (Hong Kong Productivity Council, 2025).
The coherence gap — the mismatch between what organisations demand of leaders and what surrounding systems are designed to support — is the more precise diagnosis.
For those working in leadership development or organisational design: what conditions would need to change structurally before individual leadership interventions could reasonably be expected to produce sustained outcomes?
References
AmCham Singapore & Center for Creative Leadership. (2025). AmChamSG manpower survey: AI disruption and workforce contraction alongside progress in local talent skills [Press release]. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/amchamsg-manpower-survey-reveals-ai-disruption-and-workforce-contraction-alongside-progress-in-local-talent-skills-at-human-capital-conference-302625860.html
Chartered Management Institute. (2024). Management and UK 2030 report. https://www.managers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Management-and-UK-2030-Report-2024.pdf
Deloitte. (2025, March 24). Turning tensions into triumphs: Helping leaders transform uncertainty into opportunity (2025 Global Human Capital Trends). https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends.html
Digit.fyi. (2025). Gartner: Half of C-suite leaders may leave in two years. https://www.digit.fyi/gartner-half-of-c-suite-leaders-may-leave-in-two-years/
Hong Kong Productivity Council. (2025). AI readiness in workplace survey 2025. https://www.hkpc.org/en/about-us/media-centre/press-releases/2025/ai-readiness-in-workplace-survey-2025
Workday. (2025, March). Majority of Singapore leaders concerned about skills readiness of their workforce [Press release]. https://en-sg.newsroom.workday.com/2025-03-12-Majority-of-Singapore-Leaders-Concerned-About-Skills-Readiness-of-Their-Workforce
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