IBM’s CEO Has a Message for Founders: Treat AI as ‘Day Zero’

We’re fast approaching the fourth anniversary of the launch of ChatGPT, meaning artificial intelligence has been a part of the business conversation for quite some time now. Many companies have experimented with it or attempted slow roll-outs in select areas of their operations. But IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says the days of sticking your toes in the water are over. It’s time to jump in. The rollout of the technology, he says, should be treated as a “Day Zero” event, a chance to reset the competitive race among businesses. But to do that, your business needs to start implementing AI at scale. “It’s time to sit down and take it seriously,” Krishna said on the Masters of Scale podcast. “You’re not in the experimentation phase. Day Zero, the race is about to start. Put yourself in the blocks and start sprinting.” Krishna says he isn’t talking about incorporating AI in every aspect of your company or automating a large percentage of the workforce. Instead, he recommends fully embracing AI in some aspects of your business as a case study of sorts to help you better understand what it can do for you. From there, you can expand your use of AI. “Take three, four, five things—not 100—and learn how to do them at scale, because that’ll teach you how to get all your change management done,” he said. “How do you get your data organized? How do you really get people motivated to change a process? Do a few things at scale. Learn how to do that really well. Then do 10—and then give yourself the confidence to do the next 20.” Despite all the talk of AI, Krishna estimates that just 20 percent of businesses are utilizing it correctly. The rest, he says, are not getting a return on their investment or don’t quite know what to do with it. Incorporating AI might mean bringing on new staff in some cases. And while the instinct of some founders will be to search for an AI expert, Krishna says the smarter move is to find someone who understands the difference AI can make for your company. “Find that 20 or 30 percent who are motivated to say, ‘I want to learn a new way to do things,’” he said. “I think curiosity and willingness to adapt are more important.” When it comes to measuring the returns of AI on your business, that too is going to require a shift in mindset for business owners, Krishna said. Efficiencies and savings aren’t going to be immediate, he warned. In fact, there could be additional expenses. For the first six months to a year, he said, businesses will likely spend more than they save, as they dedicate engineers to implementation and pay for tokens. But as companies operate AI at scale for a use case, they learn how to implement the technology, making subsequent rollouts cheaper. IBM played its part in introducing the world to AI with Watson, which made headlines when it won on the TV show Jeopardy! But that awareness was also a wake-up call to other companies, which began to invest in AI very heavily while IBM did not, said Krishna. “As opposed to creating building blocks, we wanted to create solutions in verticals. That, I think, is a mistake, as technology shows,” he said. Today, the company isn’t trying to be OpenAI or Anthropic. Instead, it’s betting on AI orchestration—the coordination of multiple AI models into a single workflow. It’s also focused on Enterprise AI, providing businesses with tools to build, scale, and govern artificial intelligence. Lately, there has been growing consumer pushback to AI. One recent report from AI platform Parloa found that during automated customer-service calls 61 percent of respondents have screamed at automation to get routed to a human faster. A separate survey from WordPress VIP, which offers an enterprise version of the publishing platform, found that 60 percent of the people it polled found AI in a brand’s messaging to be a turnoff, not a feature. Meanwhile, some companies that went all-in on AI are starting to realize the real cost of the technology. Uber, for instance, exhausted its 2026 AI budget in just four months and was forced to cap employee use. And several companies that fired workers in favor of AI are bringing those employees back. Krishna argued that companies that don’t incorporate AI ultimately face even more potential problems. “The riskiest route is taking zero risk,” he said. “What happens in any business that takes no risk? It means you’re trying to extract profit—or what an economist would call rent—from what you already have. But that means you’re giving everybody else the opportunity to clone you or copy you, to innovate from the bottom, and pick off the most profitable parts of your business.” BY CHRIS MORRIS @MORRISATLARGE

Microsoft and LinkedIn Just Analyzed the Future of Work and AI. It All Points to 1 Key Skill Set

Algorithms can now write code, draft legal contracts, and generate entire marketing campaigns in seconds. As artificial intelligence automates increasingly complex work, it’s easy to assume technical expertise will become the defining trait of great leadership. The evidence points in the opposite direction. Recent data from Microsoft and LinkedIn reveals a fascinating reality. While AI is automating execution, leaders are aggressively prioritizing soft skills like emotional intelligence. As tools become more artificial, humans crave the authentic. The ultimate competitive moat is no longer technical execution. It is the ability to forge genuine human connection. If you are a founder or an executive, community building fueled by high emotional intelligence is the single most important leadership skill you must master. The isolation crisis A massive psychological shift is happening in the workplace. Gallup research confirms that employee stress remains at record highs, and loneliness is a massive factor. When you introduce generative models into your daily operations, your team members spend more time prompting machines and less time talking to each other. This creates a vacuum of trust. Humans are biologically wired for social connection. When people feel isolated, their brains enter a state of chronic stress. You can deploy the most advanced foundational models in the world, but if your team feels disconnected, your output will plummet. The smartest leaders recognize that their job is not to manage workflows. Their job is to manage energy and connection. The empathy premium When technical output becomes a commodity, what becomes scarce? The answer is human resonance. The American Psychological Association recently found that workers who are worried about artificial intelligence are significantly more likely to feel tense, stressed, and isolated. A machine can generate a flawless and sterile piece of text. A human brings vulnerability, shared struggle, and nuanced understanding. In a market flooded with synthetic perfection, people will pay a premium for authentic imperfection. The same principle applies to your internal culture. Your team doesn’t want a flawless manager who acts like an algorithm. They want a leader who understands their anxieties about the future of work. They want someone who can build a safe environment where it is acceptable to experiment, fail, and learn together. Empathy is the engine of psychological safety, and psychological safety is the engine of true innovation. Your blueprint for human connection How do you operationalize emotional intelligence and community building inside your company? It requires a deliberate approach to how you structure your daily operations. Optimize for unstructured connection. Don’t just schedule meetings for status updates—a machine can read a status update. Instead, create intentional spaces where your team can connect over shared interests, challenges, and ideas without a rigid agenda. Reward vulnerability over perfection. If you want your team to trust you, you must go first. Share your own challenges and uncertainties about navigating the new tech landscape. When leaders admit they don’t have all the answers, it gives the team permission to be honest and collaborative. Elevate human milestones. Algorithms don’t care about birthdays, work anniversaries, or personal triumphs. You must. Celebrate the unique human moments that machines cannot replicate. The future of leadership isn’t about competing with algorithms. It’s about doubling down on the things algorithms can’t do. Step away from the dashboard, look your team in the eye, and start building a culture rooted in genuine connection. EXPERT OPINION BY ASH KUMRA

AI is powering an economy in which many Americans are falling behind

At the Richmond Neighborhood Center in San Francisco, more than 200 people are on the waitlist for the food pantry. The center is just a couple of miles west of “AI Alley,” where a cluster of major AI companies take in billions of dollars in investments and pay out high salaries to employees — in turn making home prices and rent payments soar. San Francisco serves as a prime example of how the roaring AI industry is helping drive economic growth more broadly, but masking the economic inequality of lower-and-middle-income families. And San Francisco reflects the same patterns happening on a national scale: In the first three months of the year, the US economy overall grew at a solid 2.1% annualized rate, largely due to businesses ramping up AI-related investments, according to Commerce Department data. Yet consumer sentiment is languishing near record lows over wartime price spikes, and the bottom quarter of Americans on the income spectrum have seen the weakest wage growth of any other cohort this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. “The inequalities in the neighborhood have just grown and grown and grown,” Yves Xavier, community programs director at the Richmond Neighborhood Center, told CNN. “We can’t draw a direct line to AI’s impact and say ‘That’s exactly it’ because it’s been happening for a while, but it doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to see how that’s widening the inequalities in a city already dealing with those issues.” He added that demand for the nonprofit’s food pantry is up about 10% this year. ‘An economy of winners and losers’ The diverging fortunes of the poorest and wealthiest Americans has emerged as a key theme in the US economy, and experts say AI is playing a significant role. The billions poured into the AI industry have minted a cadre of handsomely paid workers in tech hubs across the country, including San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose and Washington, DC, according to a report by Oxford Economics. Those workers are part of the wealthiest 10% of Americans who are increasingly powering US economic growth with their spending, or as much as 62% of growth, according to Moody’s. “You’re seeing incredible concentrations of wealth as a result of AI for these new companies, their founders and their first employees,” said Manuel Pastor, director of the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. “It’s exacerbating an economy of winners and losers.” The winners in today’s economy are clearly involved in the development and funding of AI, including early investors, experts told CNN. SpaceX debuted on Wall Street last month as the largest initial public offering on record. The AI and space exploration company is now worth more than $2.1 trillion, and investors widely expect it to be a windfall for Americans’ retirement accounts. AI stalwarts OpenAI and Anthropic, both headquartered in San Francisco, are also gearing up for their own IPOs, which would add trillions in new market value. And San Francisco companies comprise nearly two-thirds of worldwide AI funding, according to data firm Crunchbase. Those losing out are vast swaths of Americans, particularly recent college graduates who are struggling to find a job; low-income Americans who continue to rack up debt as they feel the sting of higher inflation; and even workers in creative industries, according to Pastor. “What people put on the internet or put into books is being privatized by these AI companies, making it more difficult for those same people to make money,” he said. “That’s happening to people who are authors, to people who are musicians, anyone who is a creative.” The AI hype is also skewing the health of Main Street businesses. “If you exclude AI, business investment would be actually falling, which is quite unprecedented outside of recessions,” said Maxime Darmet, senior economist at Allianz Trade. “The technology is powerful in propping up the economy, but at the same time, there’s a lot of spending being cut in more traditional areas.” Meanwhile, the gap between the broader AI-fueled economic growth and the lived reality for millions of Americans continues to widen. “The inequalities here are very, very stark,” Xavier said of San Francisco. “It’s been an issue for a long time, and I think it’s just continuing to be an issue.” By Bryan Mena

The AI Era Is Creating a New Trust Crisis at Work. Great Leaders Respond With 3 Simple Behaviors

Layoffs are back in the headlines. Across industries, companies are restructuring, reducing headcount, and redirecting resources toward AI initiatives and operational efficiency. For many leaders, the focus naturally turns to cutting costs, productivity targets, and reassuring investors. But in my experience coaching executives for more than two decades, that’s not where the biggest damage occurs. The real casualty after layoffs isn’t productivity or efficiency. It’s trust. And once trust is broken, the costs can linger long after employees are gone. What leaders often miss When layoffs occur, leaders tend to focus on the people leaving. But there’s another group leaders often overlook: the employees who stay. These employees are asking questions that rarely appear in engagement surveys. Am I next? Can I trust leadership? Does this company still care about people? Does any of this matter anymore? When those questions go unanswered, something dangerous happens. Employees stop giving their full discretionary effort. They become cautious, withhold ideas, and protect themselves. The organization may still function, but trust starts to break down. One of the biggest myths in leadership is that people lose trust because of difficult decisions. That’s rarely what I see. Employees can handle bad news. They can handle uncertainty. They can even handle layoffs. What they struggle to handle is silence. What employees want to see and hear from their leaders When leaders disappear after difficult decisions, employees fill in the blanks themselves. And human beings are remarkably good at creating worst-case scenarios. A few years ago, I worked with the CEO of a mid-sized company that had just completed a painful round of layoffs. The reductions were necessary, and to his credit, he handled the departures with empathy and respect. But once the layoffs were over, he assumed everyone wanted to move on. So the leadership team stopped talking about it. For months, employees heard almost nothing beyond routine business updates. No acknowledgment of what people had experienced. No discussion of the company’s direction. No opportunities to ask difficult questions. Within six months, the company lost several of its highest-performing employees—not because they feared another layoff, but because they no longer trusted leadership to be transparent. In exit interviews, one theme kept surfacing: “I felt like I was left to figure things out on my own.” The CEO later admitted something that stuck with me: “I thought silence would help people heal. Instead, it made them wonder what else we weren’t telling them.” That’s the thing about trust. If leaders don’t fill the communication vacuum, employees will. So, let’s say you’re a leader who wants to regain trust. That’s great. Your starting point? It’s to aways remember that trust isn’t built by protecting your people from reality; it’s built by helping your people understand reality. That’s why communication becomes even more important after layoffs than before them. Three behaviors that rebuild trust The best leaders I’ve worked with and coached consistently do three things after workforce reductions. 1. They communicate early and often Not every answer will be available. That’s okay. Employees don’t expect perfection. But they do expect honesty. Leaders who provide regular updates—even when those updates include uncertainty—create stability during unstable times. A simple message such as, “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know, and here’s what we’re doing next,” can go a long way toward rebuilding confidence. 2. They acknowledge the human impact Too many leaders move immediately to business metrics after people’s livelihoods are destroyed by layoffs. Their colleagues and coworkers notice. So, before discussing strategy, be human and acknowledge loss. Recognize the contributions of those who left. Give employees permission to feel disappointment, concern, or grief. Human-centered leadership doesn’t avoid emotions in something as traumatic as a layoff. It recognizes them. 3. They create opportunities for dialogue As we have determined, the remaining employees will look to their leaders for answers. But not through company-wide announcements alone. That doesn’t build trust. Trust grows through conversations. Managers should be encouraged to ask questions like: “What concerns are you carrying right now?” “What do you need from me to be successful?” “How can I support you?” These conversations demonstrate something employees desperately need after disruption: evidence that leadership is listening. The leadership lesson Layoffs may be a business decision. But trust is, and always will be, a leadership decision. The organizations that emerge strongest from difficult periods are not necessarily the ones that cut costs most effectively. They’re the ones whose leaders understand that people are watching how decisions are made, how communication happens, and how employees are treated when things get hard. At the end of the day, employees don’t expect leaders to eliminate uncertainty. They expect leaders to help them navigate it. And that’s where trust begins. EXPERT OPINION BY MARCEL SCHWANTES, EXECUTIVE COACH, SPEAKER, AND AUTHOR @MARCELSCHWANTES