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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. In the summer of 2000, moviegoers flocked to see Gladiator and Mission: Impossible II, Finlands Nokia was the leading maker of cellphones, and American telephone companies Bell Atlantic and GTE completed their $52 billion merger. They changed the entitys name to Verizon Communications. Im not big on writing about company anniversariesto me they seem like the corporate equivalent of Hallmark holidays. However, as a business journalist in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a big part of my job was to chronicle the regulatory and technological changes that led to the formation of Verizon 25 years ago. Ive interviewed all of Verizons chief executives, going back to its original co-CEOs, Chuck Lee and Ivan Seidenberg. And I wanted to speak to current CEO Hans Vestberg about the state of telecom today and how hes positioning the company for its next 25 years. Making a big request For Vestberg, who became CEO in 2018 and led the companys launch of its fast, low-latency 5G wireless technology, that means future-proofing the business by investing in its network. In 2021, Verizon pledged more than $52 billion to acquire wireless airwaves auctioned by the U.S. government. (For context, Verizons annual operating revenue last year was about $135 billion.) Vestberg says the purchase sets the company up to deliver products and services well into the next decades. I promise you, 25 years from now, we are going to be the leading telecom company in this country, he says. To do that, he says, you need spectrum, or radio frequencies for wireless communications. Vestberg says the board of directors supported his massive spending request. Our board is committed to think long-term, he says. Investors have been less enthusiastic. The companys stock price is about $42 a share, roughly where it was trading in early 2021, when it agreed to buy the spectrumand the company underperformed the broader market in that time frame. An investment in the future Vestberg notes that today, phone calls and text messagesthe main applications for wireless phones when Verizon was born 25 years agorepresent about 3% of the networks total usage. Nearly half of the usage is for streaming movies, games, and other digital fare. He says he believes the capacity and design of Verizons network will allow the company to accommodate new technologies that will flow over its airwaves and fiber. Im here to manage the legacy of my predecessors and see that this company continues to be the number one in everything were doing in this market, he says. Future-proofing your business How are you future-proofing your company for the next 25 years, and how do you get your board, investors, employees, and others to support your plans? Send me examples of your strategiesId love to share your stories in a future newsletter. Read more: birthday bashes LinkedIn turns 20: An oral history of an unlikely champion 50 stories celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing 4 pitfalls to avoid when navigating corporate anniversaries
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CEOs have become more than just corporate leaderstheyre among the most valuable assets on the balance sheet. Great leadership can drive billions in market cap by shaping narratives and galvanizing stakeholders. But what happens when the communication tools they use to build credibility start to erode it? Were entering a new era in CEO communications, one where human messages increasingly filter through the lens of AI. Analysts and investors have long leaned on AI-powered language models and sentiment analysis to dissect earnings calls, parsing executive tone, word choice, and delivery for signals on strategy, risk, or future performance. Now, CEOs and their teams are flipping the scriptcrafting messages with the help of generative AI to appeal to the very same systems analyzing them. Its a feedback loop of machines talking to machines. And while the tech arms race might make earnings calls look polished and sentiment scores spike, it also risks creating a sentiment gap. In the end, credibility is still the most valuable currency in leadershipand AI cant replace that. The CEO Premium Meets the AI Arms Race Corporate valuation has always been about more than just numbers. Investors have baked intangibles like brand equity, leadership narratives, and cultural impact into their models. As NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran puts it, valuation is as much about a companys story as it is about spreadsheets. The CEOs job is to integrate those stories with their strategies. Jensen Huang didnt make Nvidia a trillion-dollar company because of flawless financial executionhe did it by selling a vision of AI as the engine of the future, powering everything from healthcare to climate solutions. Thats the CEO premium in action: the ability to turn a strategic story into market-moving value. But heres what no ones saying out loud: when that story is over-engineered with AI, something critical is lost. Consider this: Bank of Americas S&P 500 corporate sentiment tracker, based on an analysis of thousands of earnings transcripts, hit an all-time high earlier this year, even as analysts lowered growth expectations for 2025. The disconnect is stark. While executives are optimizing their tone and language to look and sound bullish, its masking underlying realities. Were looking at a sentiment bubble, where polished communications are designed to impress algorithms but are creating distance from actual performance. The result? A risk to long-term stakeholder confidence and broader market integrity. The Credibility Gap is Realand Risky AI-powered communications is an incredible asset. It can help executives sharpen their messages, anticipate audience reactions, and streamline delivery. But when it starts to obscure realityor worse, is used as a veilit risks blowing up the most important thing any CEO has: credibility. Markets thrive on credibility. Investors place a premium on CEOs who communicate clearly and consistently, and are transparent about their strengths and challenges. When communication becomes engineered for algorithms rather than stakeholders, it creates a hollow effectpolished on the surface, but leaving questions below. This is more than theoretical. A recent study published in Harvard Business Review found that employees rated CEO messages as less helpful if they thought the message was AI-generatedeven when it wasn’t. Perception alone was enough to damage trust. That finding underscores the growing credibility risk CEOs face when misusing or leaning too heavily on AI. What CEOs Need to Do Now So where does this leave us? The CEOs who win in this new reality wont be the ones with the most AI-polished messagingtheyll be the ones who balance technology with authenticity. Heres how: Speak to Stakeholders, Not Just Algorithms: Say what you mean. Own the hard truths. AI should enhance a message, not sanitize it. AI-generated communications might score well with language models, but stakeholdersinvestors, employees, customersarent grading on polish. Theyre looking for clarity. Anchor Narratives in Performance: Narratives drive valuation, but theyre meaningless without numbers. If the results are strong, show your math. If theyre weak, explain why. Dont let AI overinflate optimism. Instead, use it to sharpen transparency. Ensure AI Augments, Not Replaces: AI is great for refining delivery and identifying blind spots, but it cant replace human judgment or instinct. Companies that over-rely on AI-driven clones or sentiment engineering risk losing the real connection that drives stakeholder engagement. Anticipate the Credibility Pivot: As sentiment inflation continues, markets will inevitably adjust. Investors will begin looking for the next differentiator, pivoting from polished delivery to deeper signals of authenticity. CEOs who lean into direct, unvarnished communication will stand out. Get Ahead of Whats Coming: The tools analyzing your every word are only getting more advanced. The only sustainable strategy? Consistency. Authenticity. Messages that hold up under scrutinyalgorithmic or human. If your leadership story cant survive deep analysis, it was never leadership to begin with. The Way Forward: Still a Human Game AI is reshaping the rules of executive communications, but the most successful leaders will recognize that technology is a supporting actnot the star of the show. At the end of the day, the algorithms dont close deals, inspire employees, or build relationships with customersCEOs do. In this next chapter of leadership, The CEOs who win wont be the ones scoring highest on sentiment trackers. Theyll be the ones who use AI responsibly, stay grounded in performance, and lead with clarity and authenticity. Because when machines talk past each other, the whole system breaks down. Credibility is still the most valuable asset a CEO has. And no algorithm can replace that.
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For the Los Angeles area neighborhoods devastated by January’s wildfires, rebuilding is a question of how, not if. A new effort involving 40 architecture firms from L.A. and beyond aims to broaden the scope of what that rebuilding looks like. Case Study 2.0 is a model home design program that is creating a catalog of preapproved and deeply discounted house plans for fire victims in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods. Combining the quality of custom design with the speed and affordability of mass production, the designs are intended to be easily permitted, quick to build, relatively affordable and, just as importantly, beautiful. Xenia Projects [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] This effort was launched in February by Crest Real Estate, a land-use-consulting and permit-expediting company that works with architects, developers, and municipalities to get development projects approved for construction. Third-generation Angeleno Steven Somers, who founded Crest with his brother, Jason, 13 years ago, says that once the fires broke, he knew the company was obligated to do something to help in the eventual recovery. “We’re in a position where we understand the next steps,” Somers says. Emre Arolat Architecture [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] To expedite the rebuilding process, Crest recruited 40 top architecture firms from L.A. and beyond to develop more than 50 fire-resilient home designs that can be quickly approved for construction permits. The homes range from Spanish Colonials and compact bungalows to minimalist ranch-style single-story homes and modernist spectacles with sculptural rooflines. Designed to meet the parameters of the eight most common lots in the fire-affected areas, these house plans are contemporary in design but intended to be built in multiples rather than as one-offs. Tracy Stone [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] The architects have agreed to make their plans available to fire victims for $25 per square foot, which, depending on the firm, is just 25% to 35% of what they’d usually charge for architectural services. And once each design goes through the initial approvals process with either the city or county, it will take less than half the usual amount of time to get any additional build of that design permitted. “The question we were asking was how do you rebuild 100 years of character over the next five years?” Somers says. “People are really concerned that what gets built back feels like a tract development and doesn’t have the unique variation from lot to lot that made these communities entirely unique.” Solkatt [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] A historical precedent This effort was inspired by the postwar-era Case Study House Program, which sought to meet the booming demand for housing in the 1940s and ’50s by commissioning architecture firms to design replicable modern homes for the L.A. region. The resulting houses are now regarded as icons of mid-century modern design, but they didn’t achieve their intended scale. Stahl House: Case Study House #22 [Photo: kjmagnuson/Flickr] “Today we have a similarly urgent need for thousands of units of housing to be built. We want that to be done beautifully, just like the first Case Study House Program, but it must be done economically,” Somers says. “That’s where we feel like we’re picking up the baton.” Grant Kirkpatrick is founding principal of L.A.-based KAA Design, and he worked with Somers as Crest was developing the idea for the Case Study 2.0 program. “As someone who has worked in the hillsides of Los Angeles for over 35 yearsand has seen more than a dozen of our projects lost to fireI feel a deep responsibility to be part of the solution,” Kirkpatrick says. “We see this as an opportunity to help reimagine whats possible after lossnot only to restore homes, but to restore hope.” Marmol Radziner [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] Somers says the program cuts the cost of rebuilding in several ways. First is the discount on the designs offered by all the participating architects, including Morphosis, Marmol Radziner, and Tighe Architecture. Second is a range of 15% to 30% discounts offered by partner companies on building materials including doors, windows, roof tiles, and exterior cladding. There’s also the reduced overall cost that comes from having plans that are already preapproved. Morphosis [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] Once the first iteration of a design goes through that four-to-six month permitting process, Somers says each subsequent use of that design should be approved in just two months. And if the same contractor is used to build each iteration of a design, there are likely to be further cost and time savings. “They’re going to start to really create almost an assembly line process,” he says. Solkatt [Image: courtesy Case Study 2.0] All this combines to reduce the cost of building a nearly custom contemporary home by 20% to 35%, Somers says. In L.A., that could translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The goal, Somers says, is for the houses to be built for between $600 and $800 per square foot. That translates to between $1.2 million and $1.8 million for a 2,000 square foot house, which is more than the $970,000 cost of the average home in the city of L.A., according to Zillow. For the affluent residents of the Pacific Palisades, the cost may be more manageable than for the middle class residents of Altadena. The homes offered through this program are not the cheapest option on the market, nor are they intended to be. “The real goal here is giving homeowners an option to rebuild something beautiful and that they’re really excited about, but that can cost less than what a typical one-off custom home would cost to build,” Somers says. The program is still in its early phases, and none of the designs in the catalog has gotten to the point of going up for official city or county approval. But Somers says multiple architects are currently working with clients to pursue rebuilding through the program. “I’m absolutely confident that some of these homes will be built,” he says. “Whether that’s 10 homes or 250 homes remains to be seen.”
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E-Commerce
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