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NewslettersCEO Daily

Cognizant CEO says AI is remaking middle managers into player-coaches who can both be an ‘executive and develop others’

Diane Brady
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Diane Brady
Diane Brady
Executive Editorial Director
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Diane Brady
By
Diane Brady
Diane Brady
Executive Editorial Director
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June 2, 2026, 6:12 AM ET
Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S speaks at Fortune's COO Summit on June 1, 2026.
Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S speaks at Fortune's COO Summit on June 1, 2026.Kristy Walker/Fortune
  • In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks with Ravi Kumar S. about the broad impact of AI.
  • The big leadership story: Inside Kelly Ortberg’s effort to remake Boeing.
  • The markets: Mixed globally, with European markets staging a rebound.
  • Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning from Scottsdale, where we are on Day 2 of the Fortune COO Summit. (Follow along on our livestream.) These are the leaders who drive transformation and are often tapped to take over, making up nearly one-third of 234 CEO appointments among the S&P 500 over the past five years, according to BCG. The challenge they face is how to accelerate change without blowing budgets or destroying the house. AI is forcing them to reimagine how they hire, manage, lead and structure their organizations. In some ways, as I discussed with a group of COOs yesterday, automation can make the COO’s job harder.

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But I want to focus on some insights from Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S. I spoke with him on stage yesterday about why he’s hiring more entry-level graduates and the perils of tokenmaxxing. We’ve talked in the past about the Hollywood studio model as a better way to organize work. He thinks deeply about the broad impact of AI and how it will change not just his company but business and society. So I grabbed time with him after our fireside to drill down on some topics. Among them:

Macro delegate and micro steer: “This is a tectonic shift where the technology is in the hands of the users. You decide the things you do yourself and the things you outsource to an AI agent, who will be yours. It will be a process where you constantly macro delegate and micro steer. Most people are not used to working directly with technology because somebody else created it for them. Now, you don’t need to code. You just need to express the things you want to do and integrate that into your workflow. That changes what skills matter. It’s why we created these new positions.”

Workers in the middle: “Historically, we created these middle layers because they had the expertise, the tribal knowledge, the heritage of the company. They were able to bridge the asymmetry of information going up and down the pyramid. Now technology bridges that, which means we need a player-coach who isn’t competing with the technology but has the experience to verify, validate … people who can both be an executive and develop others.”

The fog on the horizon: “AI gives us extraordinary incisiveness, but it has created a fog in foresight because I can’t see anything beyond two to three years. Technology is moving so fast. Modern enterprises are built on taking long, slow bets. That’s how we allocate capital and give valuation multiples. Now, you need less linear planning, more adaptive architecture. We need to create lifelong learners, starting in K-12. The agency of impact is transferring from the institution to the individual. We should be able to see more new products and services and structures. Think about having a micro-personalized tutor for every person on earth, a micro-personalized nurse. People need to be equipped to be free agents. But I think the opportunities are immense.”

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top leadership news

The CEO rebuilding Boeing from the inside out

Kelly Ortberg, a former engineer and Rockwell Collins chief, is steering Boeing’s turnaround by restoring an engineering-first culture, putting safety and quality ahead of financial games, and rebuilding trust with workers, regulators, and suppliers. He’s raised billions in capital, stabilized troubled defense contracts, ramped up 737 Max production, and set Boeing up for a real comeback in cash flow and innovation.

CEO confidence falls in Q2

A Conference Board survey of 141 chief executives found sentiment dropped from a score of 59 in Q1 to 47 in Q2, with readings below 50 signaling that pessimists outnumber optimists. The organization's chief economist noted that CEOs view the economy as "materially worse" than it was six months ago and expect conditions to deteriorate further in the months ahead.

Anthropic files confidential S-1

Anthropic filed an S-1 confidentially on Monday, just a week after raising a Series H round that valued the company at nearly $1 trillion. The filing beat rival OpenAI to the punch, signaling that Anthropic is racing to reach the public markets first.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are down 0.17% this morning. The last session closed up 0.26%. The STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.58% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.32% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.30%. South Korea’s KOSPI was up 0.15%. China’s CSI 300 was up 1.45%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.52%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.54%. Bitcoin was down at $69K.

Around the watercooler

Buffett says Abel ‘has launched’ with his first big Berkshire deal: an $8.5 billion housing bet by Eva Roytburg

Erin Brockovich, the activist who defeated a utility giant and inspired a Julia Roberts film, is pushing data centers to be more transparent by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

After issuing more than $20 billion in tariff refunds, the Trump administration is now pursuing legal action to bring the process to a standstill by Sasha Rogelberg

Gen Z is losing the most in the AI economy—and Goldman warns it’s about to get worse by Nick Lichtenberg

AI will turn all of your hotel experiences into luxury ones by Catherina Gioino

CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.

This is the web version of CEO Daily, a newsletter of must-read global insights from CEOs and industry leaders. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
About the Author
Diane Brady
By Diane BradyExecutive Editorial Director
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Diane Brady writes about the issues and leaders impacting the global business landscape. In addition to writing Fortune’s CEO Daily newsletter, she co-hosts the Leadership Next podcast, interviews newsmakers on stage at events worldwide and oversees the Fortune CEO Initiative. She previously worked at Forbes, McKinsey, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, and Maclean's. Her book Fraternity was named one of Amazon’s best books of 2012, and she also co-wrote Connecting the Dots with former Cisco CEO John Chambers.

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