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The CEO job description has remained remarkably stable for decadesbut the times they are achangin. That stability persisted through wave after wave of technological change. The internet, mobile, cloud computingeach transformed business operations, but none fundamentally altered the CEO’s core responsibilities. Strategy, culture, resource allocation, organizational designthe essential functions remained constant even as the tools improved. AI is different. It isnt just a tool that executes; it is also a system that makes choices. It makes judgments about customers, employees, and strategy. And this means that when you deploy AI, youre not just installing software. You are importing a decision-maker with its own values into your organization. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity? ","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} That changes what it means to be the CEOthe person who is ultimately responsible for how the organization thinks and acts. Four competencies will be central to CEOs who want to thrive in this new reality. 1. Chief AI Orchestrator Effective CEOs do not simply delegate AI to the CTO and then just forget about it. They actively orchestrate their organizations innovation portfolioa curated collection of initiatives that balances transformational ambition with incremental wins. This means excelling in three areas. Vision setting: articulating how AI aligns with organizational purpose. When employees understand why AI matters beyond cost savings, adoption accelerates and resistance diminishes. Boundary setting: defining where AI should and shouldnt operate. Which decisions require human judgment? Which processes can be automated? If a CEO wants to remain in control of the organizations actions and culture, they must draw these lines deliberately rather than allowing them to emerge by default, depending on what kind of product the AI labs ship. Cultural transformation: personally modeling the mindset shift AI requires. When the CEO publicly shares their own AI learning journeyincluding their mistakesit fosters an organizational culture that legitimates the kind of experimentation needed to adopt and adapt this new technology to the companys needs. Organizations stumble when they become intoxicated by grand visions while neglecting smaller victoriesand they also fail when they ignore the big picture and get lost in the weeds. The key, as always, is balance. CEOs must operate on both macro and micro levels simultaneously. They need to be just as comfortable asking how AI might reshape their entire industry as they are asking how AI helps a product team ship improvements next month. 2. Business Philosopher AI systems make choices about what is true, what matters, and what is allowed. When you deploy AI, you are importing an entire philosophy into your organizational decision-making. This creates three types of misalignment risk. Ethical misalignment occurs when AI absorbs values that are at odds with your organizations stated principles. Amazon developed a hiring algorithm trained on years of historical data. The system mirrored those years of data perfectlyand systematically discriminated against women. It translated past discrimination into automated future decisions. Epistemic misalignment emerges when AI systems apply different standards for determining truth than your organization would under other circumstances. A healthcare AI that privileges peer-reviewed studies over clinical experience embodies a specific stance about formal knowledge versus practitioner wisdom. These architectural decisions, made by engineers who may never meet your team, become constraints your organization lives with. Strategic misalignment happens when algorithmic tactics undermine broader organizational goals. An algorithm designed to maximize ad views might place advertisements alongside any high-engagement contentincluding content that damages brand safety. The AI-ready CEO must develop philosophical literacythe ability to recognize when AI outputs reflect built-in value systems and to evaluate how those value systems align with organizational purpose and culture. 3. Paradox Navigator The test of a first-rate intelligence, wrote the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. The hybrid reality of human-AI business demands exactly this. Every significant decision now involves navigating tensions that must be managed: personalization versus privacy, automation versus authenticity, speed versus reflection. Most leaders instinctively try to resolve these tensionspick a side, optimize for one value, move on. Thats a mistake. Fully prioritize efficiency over employment, and you lose the institutional knowledge that drives innovation. Fully prioritize privacy over personalization, and competitors who found the balance take your customers. The tensions dont go away because you chose a side; they resurface as consequences. Traditional leadership resolved contradictions. The new CEO holds them in creative tension, responding not with either/or but both/and. And this creates opportunity. For example, At Moderna, AI helped design the COVID vaccine in just 42 days. AI created mRNA sequences, scientists tested them, AI analyzed the results. Neither could have succeeded alonethe breakthrough emerged from holding human intuition and algorithmic analysis in productive tension. 4. Ecosystem Steward The three competencies above focus on your organization. This one looks beyond it. Every CEO faces pressure to use AI for cost-cutting through automation. The math looks obvious: automate tasks, reduce headcount, boost margins. But theres a collective action problem hiding in plain sight. When every company simultaneously eliminates jobs to boost efficiency, they collectively undermine the purchasing power that sustains their markets. You cant sell products to people your industry laid offor to communities where mass unemployment has cratered demand. Unlike previous technological disruptions, AI can hollow out employment faster than new opportunities emergeover quarters, not decades. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to eliminate more than half their middle management roles. And CEOs who think our layoffs wont matter in the grand scheme are making a serious errorindividual rationality creates collective destruction. Companies that resist the race to the bottom gain three competitive advantages: Talent magnetism: Top performers increasingly choose employers who demonstrate responsibility. When your industry races to eliminate humans, being the company that augments rather than replaces becomes a recruiting superpower. Knowledge retention: Institutional memorythe kind that knows why that process exists, which client relationships are fragile, what the last restructuring actually brokelives in people. Fire them and youre training AI on an organization that no longer understands itself. Relationship preservation: Customer relationships that took decades to build cant be replicated by chatbots. Companies keeping humans in the loop preserve connections that their automated competitors are quietly severing. The ecosystem steward sees beyond their own companys efficiency gains to the systemic risk that executives are creating together. Four Moves for Tomorrow Adopt a portfolio approach: Balance quick wins (1-3 months), strategic bets (3-12 months), and moonshots (12+ months). The high pilot failure rate42% of companies scrapped most AI projects this yearpunishes all-in bets. Stress-test for values alignment: Before deployment, ask three questions. What does the data say? How will stakeholders feel? Should we do this? Run red-team exercises to surface hidden philosophical boundaries. Protect human judgment deliberately: Schedule regular no-AI problem-solving sessions. Maintain decision logs documenting AI overrides. Watch for dangerous dependency creeping in. Model the second-order effects: Before announcing automation-driven layoffs, ask: What happens if every company in our industry does this simultaneously? Map the impact on customer purchasing power, talent availability, and supplier stability. The CEO who sees only their own efficiency gains is optimizing for an economy that wont exist. The Stakes Have Changed No board will hire a CEO who cant read a balance sheet. Were approaching the point where they wont hire someone who cant articulate an AI strategynot because AI is fashionable, but because its becoming inseparable from strategy itself. The job description has changed. Orchestrating an AI portfolio, detecting values misalignment, navigating paradoxthese arent optional upgrades for the technically curious. Theyre becoming as fundamental to leadership as financial literacy. But you can master all three and still fail. If you optimize your way into an economy that can no longer sustain your businessif your industry collectively eliminates the customers, talent, and communities it depends onno amount of AI fluency will save you. The companies that thrive wont just be the ones that deploy AI best. Theyll be the ones whose leaders understood that the race means nothing if you destroy the track. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/creator-faisalhoque.png","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/10\/faisal-hoque.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Ready to thrive at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity? ","dek":"Faisal Hoques books, podcast, and his companies give leaders the frameworks and platforms to align purpose, people, process, and techturning disruption into meaningful, lasting progress.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Learn More","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/faisalhoque.com","theme":{"bg":"#02263c","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#ffffff","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#000000"},"imageDesktopId":91420512,"imageMobileId":91420514,"shareable":false,"slug":""}}
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Want to be wealthier? Get married. According to a study published in Journal of Sociology, the net worth of a married person grows approximately 75 percent more during their thirties, forties, and fifties than the net worth of an unmarried person. (Thats per person in the relationship, not per couple.) Want to make a higher income, and feel more satisfied with your job? Get married. A Washington University in St. Louis study found that people with relatively prudent and reliable partners tend to perform better at work, earning more promotions, making more money, and feeling more satisfied with their jobs. What the researchers call partner conscientiousness predicts future job satisfaction, income, and likelihood of promotion (even after factoring in the participants original level of conscientiousness). According to the researchers, conscientious partners perform more household tasks, exhibit more pragmatic behaviors that their spouses are likely to emulate, and promote a more satisfying home life, all of which enables their spouse to focus more on work. As one researcher said, These results demonstrate that the dispositional characteristics of the person one marries influence important aspects of ones professional life. Or in non-researcher-speak, a good partner sets a good example and helps create an environment where you can be a better you. Other data backs up the above findings. A 2021 Census Bureau report found that married adults tend to earn substantially more than unmarried adults, and have three times the net worth. A 2021 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey found that married couples spend about $10,000 less per person than unmarried people. Making more and spending less? Great formula for a higher net worth. Thats why deciding whom to marry is one of the most important decisions youll make where your overall happiness, career prospects, and financial success are concerned. Clearly, you have to choose the right person to spend your life with. But just as clearly, you have to choose to be the kind of partner they deserve to spend their life with. For example, a study published in Journal of Physical Activity and Health found that people in romantic relationships exercise less than people who are single, especially where moderate to vigorous physical activity (running, lifting weights, cycling, etc.) is concerned. Why? Become a couple and youre more likely to do couples things: eat meals together, watch TV together, hang out together. Over time, Lets go to the gym is much less likely to top the list, even if you consistently exercised before you became a couple. As the researchers write: For those with a partner, current (exercise) levels are substantially lower when the partner is present than when the partner is absent. When partners spend leisure-time activities apart, their (exercise) levels are higher than those of individuals without a partner.The results suggest that it is not the mere existence of a romantic relationship but the current co-presence with a partner that affects physical activity behavior. Bottom line? Spending time together means youre a lot less likely to exercise.And then theres this. A study published in Health Psychology found that after four years in a stable relationship, people tend to gain significantly more weight than they would from the natural result of aging. A Social Science & Medicine study found that people in a long-term relationship are more likely to gain weight, and less likely to exercise. (Unsurprisingly, the study also found that when a relationship ends, people tend to lose weight and exercise more.) When time together feels short, going to the gym doesnt sound like couples time. Granted, youre together . . . but only in proximity. The researchers also speculate that feeling secure in a relationship tends to cause people to focus less on their appearance, and therefore less on healthy behaviors, like exercise and diet, that affect appearance. Which takes us back to whom you choose to marry. Clearly you shouldnt choose your life partner on the basis of how conscientious they are, or whether you think they not only eat well and exercise but will continue to eat well and exercise. To paraphrase the Washington University in St. Louis researchers, marrying a conscientious partner could sound like a recipe for a rigid and lackluster lifestyle. But it does appear that having a conscientious and prudent partnerboth in a practical sense, and in a healthy lifestyle senseis an ingredient in the recipe for a better, more rewarding career, and for a healthier and longer life. So what should you do? Instead of expecting your partner to change some of their habits, think about what you can do to be more supportive of their goals. In a practical sense, maybe you can take on managing the finances. Or take care of more household chores, or repairs, maintenancethe things that keep your trains running on time. After all, the best way to lead is by example. Take health and fitness. You can decide to make exercising and eating better a priority, and do things to support that goal. You can take on the grocery shopping. You can cook some meals. You can fix a healthy lunch for your partner to take to work. You can choose to be the conscientious one. Thats the real key. Marrying the right person helps, but being the right person to have marriedbeing supportive, encouraging, and leading by exampleis the best way to help your marriage be successful, both practically and, more important, emotionally. Because the person you choose to marry mattersbut what you do for your partner, and what that does for your relationship, matters most. Inc.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump plans to use a key address Wednesday to try to convince Americans he can make housing more affordable, but he’s picked a strange backdrop for the speech: a Swiss mountain town where ski chalets for vacations cost a cool $4.4 million.On the anniversary of his inauguration, Trump is flying to the World Economic Forum in Davos an annual gathering of the global elite where he may see many of the billionaires he has surrounded himself with during his first year back in the White House.Trump had campaigned on lowering the cost of living, painting himself as a populist while serving fries at a McDonald’s drive-thru. But in office, his public schedules suggest he’s traded the Golden Arches for a gilded age, devoting more time to cavorting with the wealthy than talking directly to his working-class base.“At the end of the day, it’s the investors and billionaires at Davos who have his attention, not the families struggling to afford their bills,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank.Trump’s attention in his first year back has been less on pocketbook issues and more fixed on foreign policy with conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine and Venezuela. He is now bent on acquiring Greenland to the chagrin of European allies a headline likely to dominate his time in Davos, overshadowing his housing ideas.Trump noted the Europeans’ resistance, telling reporters Monday night, “Let’s put it this way: It’s going to be a very interesting Davos.”The White House has tried to shift Trump’s focus to affordability issues, a response to warning signs in the polls in a year where control of Congress is at stake in midterm elections.About six in 10 U.S. adults now say that Trump has hurt the cost of living, according to the latest survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s an issue even among Republicans, who have said Trump’s work on the economy hasn’t lived up to their expectations. Only 16% say Trump has helped “a lot” on making things more affordable, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.The president is banking on investment commitments from billionaires and foreign nations to create a jobs boom, even as his broad tariffs have crimped the labor market and spurred inflation. Trump supporters who attend his rallies which the president resumed last month are left to trust that Trump’s business ties can eventually help them.This strategy carries political risks. Voters are more interested in the economy they’re experiencing in their own lives than in Trump’s relationships with billionaires, said Frank Luntz, the Republican-affiliated pollster and strategist.“If you’re asking me, ‘Are billionaires popular?’ The answer is no and they’ve haven’t been for some time,” said Luntz, who last year identified “affordability” as a defining issue for voters. Wooing billionaires instead of the working class Since Trump’s first term in 2017, the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans have seen their wealth increase by $11.98 trillion to $23.46 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.The magnitude of those gains dwarfs what the bottom 50% of households the majority of the country received during the same period. Their net worth rose by $2.94 trillion, roughly one-fourth what the top 0.1% got.One of the biggest concerns for voters is the cost of housing. In recent weeks, Trump has floated proposals like reducing interest rates on home loans by buying $200 billion in mortgage debt and banning large financial companies from buying homes. Yet those efforts would do little to address the core problem in the housing market: a multi-year shortfall in home construction and home prices that have generally risen faster than wages.Trump regularly points to the investments made by the wealthy and powerful as signs of economic growth to come. To encourage billionaires to deliver, Trump in his first year pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that can benefit the wealthy, along with tax cuts, reduced IRS enforcement and fewer regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.“Most billionaires don’t share the interests of the working class,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written about the “wealthification” of U.S. politics. “The ultrawealthy love tax cuts and deregulation, and those preferences make it difficult for government to provide the help that working class people want.”Trump has been trying to sell tax breaks on tips and overtime pay from what is known as the ” One Big Beautiful Bill ” as benefiting workers. But a Congressional Budget Office analysis indicated that middle-class families may only see savings of $800 to $1,200 a year, on average, while the top 10% of earners would receive $13,600. A separate analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a think tank, said those earning above $1 million would save on average $66,510 this year. The company Trump keeps Trump regularly holds public events with the wealthy and powerful at the White House and beyond. He jetted to the Middle East and Asia with billionaires in tow as he had foreign countries announce investment commitments, promising that the money would flow down into factory jobs for the middle class.At a September dinner with tech billionaires, Trump said it was an honor to be surrounded by the likes of Bill Gates, Tim Cook, Sergey Brin and Mark Zuckerberg.“There’s never been anything like it,” Trump said. “The most brilliant people are gathered around this table. This is definitely a high-IQ group and I’m very proud of them.”The White House said the previous Biden administration had alienated the business community to the detriment of the economy. “President Trump’s pro-growth policies and friendly relationships with industry titans, on the other hand, are securing trillions in investments that are creating jobs and opportunities for everyday Americans,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.Last month, Trump celebrated a charitable contribution of $6.25 billion to the “Trump” investment accounts for children by Michael Dell. It was a chance to talk about economic inequality but also another opportunity for Trump to showcase his relationship with billionaires.Trump takes phone calls from billionaires and CEOs to chat about business, politics and interests such as his planned White House ballroom. He regularly peppers his speeches with shoutouts to Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, whose net worth was estimated by Forbes at roughly $162 billion as of Sunday.He’s installed billionaires in his inner circle such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (net worth: $3.3 billion) and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff (net worth: $2 billion). He put Elon Musk (net worth: $780 billio) in charge of slashing government payrolls before a dramatic falling-out and, later, a public reconciliation.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a briefing last month portrayed Trump’s own status as a billionaire as a positive for him with voters.“I think it’s one of the many reasons they reelected him back to this office, because he’s a businessman who understands the economy and knows how to fix it,” she said. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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