In today’s AI-obsessed business world, the stakes can feel higher than ever to make big changes to fuel innovation and productivity.
However, executives speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women 2025 summit in Washington, D.C. emphasized that companies must avoid being stretched too thin—and succumbing to pressures driven by fear.
“For me, there’s the pervasive sense of FOMO that’s happening—fear of missing out,” said Pam Catlett, chief brand officer at jewelry company Brilliant Earth. “And the first word, fear, is not a good state to be in when you’re thinking about how to better serve your customer, your team, your organization.”
That fear can quickly turn into exhaustion. The challenge for leaders today, Catlett added, is to “stay focused on the human being”—even as the pace of change accelerates.
It’s a feeling echoed by Vanna Krantz, chief financial officer at Grindr, who added that sometimes the smartest move is to let others lead the charge.
“There are big behemoths out there that are going to pave the way, I hope, for, let’s call it smaller-cap companies, and that’s how I think about it,” Krantz said to Fortune’s Diane Brady. “So we’ll keep our foot in the game. We don’t want to get too far behind, but we could let others lead.”
In the end, Krantz added, adopting a more strategic approach ultimately benefits customers, allowing companies to use their time and money more effectively by learning from the successes of others.
Navigating a FOMO-driven world with education—not pressure
For Astha Malik, chief business and marketing officer at Braze—a customer engagement software company with about a $2.9 market cap—the key to avoiding FOMO-driven chaos is balance.
“What we’re not doing is giving a mandate across the organization to use AI in everything. I have seen a lot of companies go out and talk about: every employee should be doing these 10 things every single day,” Malik said. “I think that draws criticism more than anything.”
Instead, she’s encouraging her teams to become “AI-forward” through education, not pressure.
“We run AI academies for our customers that we as a leadership team have gone through ourselves,” Malik added. “We’re providing that to all of our team members as well because you can’t expect people to suddenly know about something that’s changing every day.”