Good morning.
Leadership is a tough task these days. With proxy contests near an all-time high, Masimo founder and CEO Joe Kiani was voted off his board yesterday by shareholder activist Quentin Koffey of Politan Capital. Here’s the story of that battle. Nike CEO John Donahoe is also out, replaced by former colleague Elliott Hill.
I co-hosted a roundtable yesterday with Sharon Marcil, BCG’s North America chair, who notes that “many clients are shifting to always-on transformation.” We talked to CEOs about their priorities and challenges. Here are some edited excerpts of what they said:
"We have a massive opportunity to drive the textile recycling infrastructure in North America. We're a nonprofit, but our entire competitive set, for the most part, is for-profit. We need to really raise the bar and compete. It’s an increasingly complex ecosystem, connecting buyers and sellers, but also one that's driving a lot of very interesting opportunities for us." – Steve Preston, President and CEO, Goodwill Industries International
"We launched a suite called ‘intelligent agreement management' which gives you tabular or search-based access to all your agreements. It can tell you when agreements are up for renewal, which agreements are out of compliance with your playbooks, and then over time, connect that data to say what's actually happening under the agreements." – Allan Thygesen, CEO, DocuSign, Inc.
"The theme that we use is ‘trusted to transform.’ The thing that I worry most about every day is disruption. I want to be the disruptor as opposed to the disrupted, and therefore we are creating agility in the organization." – Antonio Pietri, President and CEO, Aspen Technology, Inc.
"There are certain pockets of talent that are really tight: People who understand large language models, deep learning frameworks, AI ethics and governance. And there's a shortage of SAP consultants." – Abhijit Dubey, President and CEO, NTT DATA Corporation
"You can see how VC investment and some of our smaller competitors are getting their act together. That's energizing and exciting. And I think it's going to make for a really interesting three to five years." – Steve Hasker, President and CEO, Thomson Reuters
"We use technology to reduce the labor burden. We're not laying anybody off. We haven't laid a single person off. Since I've been in the CEO role since 2016, we’ve reduced through attrition. Nobody was laid off." – James Fish, President and CEO, WM
"The unions will negotiate if we utilize technology, whether it be robotics or AI. They’re actually asking us to guarantee the jobs anyway." – James Allen, Chairman, Hard Rock International Chief Executive Officer, Seminole Gaming, Hard Rock Café
"We're a global provider of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems, with about $20 billion in revenue this year. I look at where the opportunities are, continuing to work on our supply chain to make it more resilient." – David Regnery, Chief Executive Officer, Trane Technologies
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Diane Brady
diane.brady@fortune.com
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