{"id":4984,"date":"2026-08-05T19:14:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T19:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4984"},"modified":"2026-08-05T19:14:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T19:14:06","slug":"reinvent-or-go-extinct-inside-the-ceo-playbook-for-the-ai-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4984","title":{"rendered":"Reinvent or go extinct: Inside the CEO playbook for the AI era"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I was reminded of this warning when I visited Memphis, the home of FedEx and its CEO, Raj Subramaniam, to interview him for our Titans and Disruptors of Industry<\/em> podcast. The 35-year company veteran is leading the logistics giant through multiple transitions\u2014cutting billions in structural costs and retooling the company for the AI age. Openness to change is fundamental to FedEx\u2019s culture, Subramaniam told me, remarking, \u201cIf you don\u2019t like change, you\u2019re going to hate extinction.\u201d My story about our conversation can be read here.<\/p>\n

Read more Hitachi\u2019s CIO says the Japanese conglomerate\u2019s enterprise AI strategy isn\u2019t one-size-fits-all<\/a><\/p>\n

Across global business, we see again and again that the leaders who are winning are those who embrace change. Take Amazon: Founder Jeff Bezos once dubbed his mentality \u201cDay 1\u201d\u2014holding on to the scrappiness of an ambitious startup, where the priorities are growth, innovation, and survival. \u201cDay 2 is stasis,\u201d Bezos wrote in a 2016 shareholder letter. \u201cFollowed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Three decades after its founding, it still seems to be Day 1 for Amazon\u2014even though it\u2019s now literally the biggest company in the world: Amazon has topped the Fortune Global 500, knocking Walmart off its pedestal. The company has continually reinvented itself across new businesses and bold bets\u2014including a $200 billion capital commitment, largely to building its capacity for AI and cloud computing, in this year alone.<\/p>\n

If you ask Bezos about reaching that milestone, as Kristin Stoller did in \u201cNo. 1 on the Fortune Global 500: Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos on how his garage startup became the largest company in the world by revenue,\u201d he will admit the news wasn\u2019t exactly a surprise. That doesn\u2019t mean he saw it coming in his Bellevue, Wash., garage in 1995. \u201cYou could not\u2026have predicted the magnitude of change that would occur,\u201d Bezos told Kristin. \u201cAnd anybody who did predict that magnitude of change would probably have been quickly institutionalized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Running toward change to avoid going the way of the dodo is a theme throughout this issue. Case in point: GE pulled off one of the most impressive transformations of the century under CEO Larry Culp, who broke up the stagnating behemoth in order to save it (\u201cHow GE CEO Larry Culp pulled off the turnaround of the century\u201c). As billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz told Fortune\u2019s<\/em> Shawn Tully, \u201cI was sure GE was going to file for Chapter 11. Then Larry arrived and performed the most amazing rescue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Ask your employees one question about AI. The silence will tell you everything<\/a><\/p>\n

Change is also afoot at Apple: With a CEO succession underway, the company that rose on the strength of its paradigm-shifting design in the Steve Jobs era is trying to rekindle some of that magic under a product-forward new leader, John Ternus. With the AI race accelerating, the stakes couldn\u2019t be higher, as Sebastian Herrera writes in \u201cCan Apple\u2019s incoming CEO bring back the product design mojo of the Steve Jobs era?\u201c<\/p>\n

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Finally, Jeff John Roberts catches up with Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman, who has ridden out booms, busts, and personal heartbreak without losing his faith in the possibility of change\u2014or his determination to be the one driving it (\u201cThe American Dream according to Bill Ackman\u201c).<\/p>\n

May these stories give you ideas for your own next chapter. Thank you for being a Fortune<\/em> subscriber.<\/p>\n

Read more Leo DiCaprio teams with Jeff and Lauren Sanchez Bezos on $200 million plan to save 100 endangered species<\/a><\/p>\n

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This article appears in the August\/September 2026 issue of <\/em> Fortune.<\/p>\n

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From Jeff Bezos’s “Day 1” mentality to Larry Culp’s GE breakup, the companies winning right now are the ones willing to blow up what worked before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-500"],"yoast_head":"\nReinvent or go extinct: Inside the CEO playbook for the AI era - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4984\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reinvent or go extinct: Inside the CEO playbook for the AI era - 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