Plus: Booking Holdings’ CEO On Adding AI, Biden Ends With Mostly Good Economic Growth (And One Big Exception), Meta Reorients Policy Before Trump Takes Office, Activist Investors Had A Huge 2024



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Every CEO has the ambition to lead their company into an exciting new future, both spurring growth and bringing new ideas and expansion to the industry. But, a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/getting-fit-for-growth-the-leadership-mindsets-and-behaviors-that-matter" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">new report from McKinsey</a>&nbsp;found&nbsp;it takes audacious and bold moves to be able to do that—something most CEOs think they are doing but are not. McKinsey identified five actions that can drive long-lasting company growth: Focusing at least 30% of your time on long-term growth, investing in growth initiatives in volatile times, incorporating customer input into business decisions, having a smoothly operating talent planning process, and collecting data and insights to support growth decisions. Less than a third of company leaders are doing any of these actions, with only 8% being confident about talent planning.



It’s not easy to make these bold moves. Leaders who do are focused on the long term and not afraid of failure, the report states. McKinsey writes that it often requires more than 18 months for any of these kinds of decisions to bear fruit. Yet an average of 78% of the executive team’s time is spent on short- to medium-term growth initiatives, which are realized in five years or less. Meanwhile companies prioritizing long-term growth tend to make it through volatile cycles more successfully and with higher revenue growth.



Business leaders also must be willing to try new and untested moves in uncertain times.&nbsp;This is more than just encouraging speedy learning activities over perfect execution—something 79% of all survey respondents said they do to try to gain a first-mover advantage. These new moves for growth need funding, which just three in 10 executives increase when times are volatile. When things are unsettled, McKinsey found that nearly half of companies get through it by focusing on their tactics—like changing prices or adding automation—instead of trying to enter a new market or provide new services in areas with growth potential.



Companies also say they put their customers first, with 64% saying feedback is a top source for growth ideas, but McKinsey found that&nbsp;only 15% consistently incorporate that feedback into their decisions. Just 23% regularly engage with customers to see that their actions and changes deliver value.



As a second Donald Trump administration begins next week,&nbsp;change—and likely volatility—will become the next normal. Policy ideas that could both help and hurt businesses have been floated. What actually becomes a reality, when that happens and how it takes effect are much harder to predict. However, it could be prime time for business leaders to take some of the bold actions McKinsey sees as vital for long-term growth. In uncertain times, audacity could be the best solution.



Figuring out how to use AI in a way that’s useful to customers can be a challenge. Booking Holdings—parent company of Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, Agoda and OpenTable—has added AI-powered features to help customers plan for travel and dining. I talked to CEO Glenn Fogel about the process, and an excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.



In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day next Monday,&nbsp;the regular edition of Forbes CEO will be taking a day off. We’ll be back in your inboxes Monday, January 27.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-economic-indicators">ECONOMIC INDICATORS</h2>



Last Friday, the final employment numbers of President Joe Biden’s term were released, and&nbsp;they were much better than expected. According to the Labor Department, the U.S.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/10/december-jobs-report-labor-market-grew-faster-than-expected-as-unemployment-clocks-in-at-41/">added 256,000 jobs</a>&nbsp;in December, beating the economists’ estimates of 153,000 by 67%. These numbers put the national unemployment rate at 4.1%, down a tenth of a percent from November. It was a good report for Biden, and caps off a mostly successful economic term in office,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/10/bidens-final-labor-numbers-lowest-unemployment-since-clinton-marred-by-inflation/">writes&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;Derek Saul</a>. The 4.1% unemployment rate—6.7% when Biden took office— is the lowest at the end of a president’s term since Bill Clinton left office in 2001. During Biden’s four years in office, average hourly wages rose 19.6%, from $29.84 to $35.69 now.



But high inflation marred Biden’s economic record, with the consumer price index increasing a total of 20.8% during his term. And while inflation has been calming down this year, reaching 2.7% in November and leading the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates three times in the last quarter of 2024,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/08/federal-reserve-worried-how-trump-tariff-and-immigration-policieswill-impact-inflation-minutes-show/">Fed officials fear</a>&nbsp;that&nbsp;inflation might not be coming down to their 2% target any time soon. Trump has proposed sweeping changes to trade and immigration policy, including enacting tariffs on many U.S. trading partners and deporting illegal immigrants en masse. “The effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy suggested” restoring 2% inflation “could take longer than previously anticipated,” according to minutes from the mid-December meeting released last week. “Almost all” Fed officials “judged that upside risks to the inflation outlook had increased,” the release stated. Only one interest rate cut is expected to take place in 2025.



The stronger-than-expected job market and the Fed’s cautious stance on rate cuts contributed to an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/10/stocks-drop-after-jobs-report-shows-hot-us-labor-market-heres-why/">overall market selloff</a>&nbsp;on Friday. A booming job market means that&nbsp;the economy is doing well without interest rate cuts to stimulate it. “The Fed cutting cycle is over,” Bank of America economists led by Aditya Bhave wrote in a Friday note to clients, calling the “gangbusters” December jobs report the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”



However,&nbsp;2024 wasn’t all about job growth. According to a report from Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas, U.S. companies&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/01/09/2024-had-most-job-cuts-in-15-years-with-one-exception/">cut 761,358 jobs</a>&nbsp;last year—the most since 2010 (with the exception of Covid pandemic-related job losses in 2020). The tech sector saw the most jobs lost, with a total of 133,988—more than double the number of cuts in the next largest sectors: health care, automotive, services and consumer products.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-from-the-headlines">FROM THE HEADLINES</h2>



As Trump prepares to take office, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta made a series of quick and sweeping changes last week that will likely improve the incoming administration’s view of the company. Last Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/01/07/meta-ditches-fact-checks-for-x-style-community-notes-zuckerberg-says-it-will-restore-free-expression/">is&nbsp;dropping</a>&nbsp;its independent fact-checking program for posts on its platform. Instead, it will use a self-policing system like X’s community notes, where users can flag posts with incorrect or misleading information that will appear alongside the post. In a video posted on Facebook, Zuckerberg said the move is helping the company get back to its roots, saying the fact-checkers on Meta “have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created” by causing “too much censorship” of free speech. Zuckerberg stated in the video that the U.S. election felt like “a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech,” and the change will be “restoring free expression” on Meta’s platforms.



The change, which came as former Republican lobbyist and senior advisor to President George W. Bush Joel Kaplan took over as Meta’s global policy chief,&nbsp;appears to have appeased Trump, who has complained for years that social media platforms moderating or blocking posts with false, misleading and offensive content were censoring conservative speech.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2025/01/07/meta-blindsided-fact-checkers-with-plan-to-cancel-program-for-community-notes/">Forbes’&nbsp;Iain Martin and Sarah Emerson report</a>&nbsp;that the independent fact-checkers employed by Meta—including news organizations such as&nbsp;USA Today, Reuters Fact Check, AFP and Politifact—were blindsided by the announcement.



Zuckerberg&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2025/01/06/zuckerberg-taps-ufc-president-dana-white-to-join-metas-board-of-directors/">also announced</a>&nbsp;last week that&nbsp;Trump ally and UFC President Dana White would join Meta’s board of directors. And on Friday, a company memo announced it was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/01/10/these-companies-have-rolled-back-dei-policies-mcdonalds-is-latest-to-abandon-diversity-standards/">ending several programs</a>&nbsp;intended to increase the company’s hiring of diverse candidates and equity and inclusion training programs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-notable-news">NOTABLE NEWS</h2>



In 2024,&nbsp;activist investors were back with a vengeance. A report from Barclays showed record-breaking 243 activist investor campaigns last year,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2025/01/10/activist-investors-forced-record-number-of-ceos-to-resign-in-2024/">Forbes&nbsp;senior contributor Jack Kelly writes</a>. Nearly half—115—were in the U.S., which saw a 6% increase in investor campaigns over 2023. A record 27 CEOs were ousted last year by activist investor pressure.



Activist investors’ game plans are also changing. More than a quarter of activist campaigns dealt with improving strategy and operations, while just 22% were pushing for M&amp;A activities. Jim Rossman, global head of shareholder advisory at Barclays,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/record-number-activist-investors-joined-shareholder-rebellion-2024-2025-01-02/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">told Reuters</a>&nbsp;last year felt almost like a “shareholder revolt. Investors are no longer willing to sit and wait for promised improvements and are saying, ‘We want the companies where we are invested to change right now.’”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tomorrow-s-trends">TOMORROW’S TRENDS</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-booking-holdings-ceo-talks-about-bringing-ai-to-trip-planning">Booking Holdings CEO Talks About Bringing AI To Trip Planning</h3>



From its inception, Booking Holdings—owner of travel and planning sites including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak and OpenTable—has been a tech company. It’s added generative AI to its tech stack with AI trip planners on Booking.com and Priceline, detailed search filters to find accommodations that meet a variety of needs and an OpenTable integration in ChatGPT. I talked to CEO Glenn Fogel about how he and his team decided to add these features and how it’s going so far. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.



There are many places you could implement generative AI in your company. How did you decide where to start, and what are your priorities for AI?



Fogel:&nbsp;It’s a combination of what the biggest problems are for our partners, our consumers and the people we deal with, and can we solve it now? How much will it cost to solve now? And how much benefit, how much value, will they get from it? That’s kind of our own little algorithm, trying to figure out where to put the resources up.



There’s also where you ask what foundational things do we have to work on right now, so we can solve lots of problems down the road? What kind of data architecture do we need to set up now so that we can build? You need to figure out: What can we achieve right now? What do we need to build as a base foundation for the future? These are the things that we consider as we’re planning out this year’s plan, next year’s plan and the year after. These are all different things that are judgment calls based on data that comes from our customers and our partners and the expert people in our company.



What do customers think in terms of feedback you’ve received? Are people using the AI features?



In terms of good feedback and bad feedback, we’ve gotten both. Sometimes I look at the number and say, ‘Wow, that many people are using it.’ But then I’ll say, ‘Wait, compared to our total percentage of people who are using [the systems], that’s not a big number at all.’ This is early, people are creatures of habit. They know how to use things already, and many people just go to the way they’ve always done it.



In so many new things that come out: Look at people in terms of their social media. They started with one, then a new one came out. ‘But I like this one because I’ve been using this one forever.’ The new one may be better. People are slower to adapt to the new one. I think that for a lot of us, we’re going to have a long gestation before we really get the big ramp up in terms of customer adds.



We’ll [do more to promote] it when I feel that we’ve achieved at a level that I think this really is much better than the way they do it now. One of the things that I don’t want to do is move loyal customers who enjoy the service, have been using us for a long time and love what we do for them, and tell them, ‘Here’s a much better way to do this.’ And they go over there and end up being frustrated by it, and then you lose that trust. So let’s make sure it’s better.



What kind of advice would you give to a CEO that is looking to bring AI into their operations, but isn’t quite sure where to start?



Any time the CEO is thinking about starting something new, [my advice] is bringing in people who will know more than you and get good advice: Does it fit your needs? Is it something that will fit your budget, produce the value you hope to achieve, give you a good ROI compared to other projects you could be doing? What is going to be the cost if you don’t do it? All the natural things.



AI is no different than any project or way to work you will go forward with. The same advice I give anybody about anything is think really hard, plan it out, then think hard about it again.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-facts-comments">FACTS + COMMENTS</h2>



The U.S. Supreme Court&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/01/10/supreme-court-signals-it-will-uphold-tiktok-ban-live-updates/">heard arguments</a>&nbsp;Friday on whether a law&nbsp;forcing the sale or ban of China-owned social media app TikTok violates the First Amendment. The law is scheduled to go into effect on Sunday.



170 million+:&nbsp;U.S. TikTok users,&nbsp;<a href="https://tiktokeconomicimpact.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">according to</a>&nbsp;the app



1%:&nbsp;Increase in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/01/10/meta-stock-rallies-oracle-slides-as-market-reacts-to-tiktok-ban-hearing-at-supreme-court/">Meta’s share price</a>&nbsp;following the hearing, which made many think the law was likely to be upheld



‘Seems like a huge concern for the future of the country’:&nbsp;Justice Brett Kavanaugh said about the government’s concern that China will use TikTok to collect data from U.S. users



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-strategies-advice">STRATEGIES + ADVICE</h2>



The&nbsp;last two years have seen many advances in AI, both in terms of technology and how it’s being used at companies. Here are&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jodiecook/2024/12/26/predictions-for-ai-in-2025-entrepreneurs-look-ahead/">expert predictions</a>&nbsp;of what will happen in 2025.



How can your small business continue to grow in 2025? Here are <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rohitarora/2024/12/30/10-small-business-new-years-resolutions-for-2025/">10 New Year’s resolutions</a> to help it stay on the right path.

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