Leadership Next

Duke Energy, number 126 on the Fortune 500, delivers electricity to nearly 8 million customers in the Southeast and Midwest. A fair amount of that electricity remains generated by coal-fired plants. Since Lynn Good became CEO in 2013 she's retired 52 of these plants, but there's still work to be done. And with an increased focus on climate change coming from government, investors, employees and customers - the push to reach net zero is stronger than ever. Good tells Leadership Next's Alan Murray how the company is approaching this challenge. They also discuss cybersecurity threats, activist investors, and how the job of CEO has changed over time.

Vivek Sankaran was ten months into his tenure as CEO of Albertsons Companies when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. His roughly 300,000 employees immediately became front-line workers, and the company had to scramble to figure out how to keep everyone safe. But ultimately, Sankaran said, the pandemic made Albertsons a better company by accelerating innovation around digital orders and much more.Another big change for Sankaran over the past year is how he thinks about social issues and community impact."I shouldn't be episodic about this," he explained. "I need to make this commitment, I need to problem solve it like I'm problem-solving other aspects of the business."

Dow is one of the world's largest producers of plastics, yet company leader Jim Fitterling is committed to ending reliance on single-use plastic products. It's a tension that's difficult to balance, and it makes for an interesting discussion on this week's Leadership Next.As Dow moves towards a more sustainable business, Fitterling points out that products are just part of the equation. The processes used to make the products have an even bigger carbon footprint. So how specifically do you approach this challenge AND still run a profitable business? Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt dig into the details.

Pat Gelsinger has been CEO of Intel for about four months now. But he's not new to the company - he spent the first 30 years of his career at Intel. The story of how a young man from a Pennsylvania farming community landed at Intel is a good one - and it's something Pat shares with Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt in this episode of Leadership Next.But first, semiconductors. They're embedded in all the tech we touch, and most of them are manufactured in Asia. Supply chain problems have led to shortages recently, which has put the issue on many American's radars. But the push to increase manufacturing capacity in the U.S. has been building for some time. Gelsinger admits Intel ceding manufacturing to Asia was a strategic mistake and, as he explains, he has a strategy for improving the situation.Fortune's Eamon Barrett also joins this episode to shed further light on the global chip shortage, the challenges of increasing manufacturing in the U.S., and the political forces behind initiatives to do so.

Chris Nassetta has been CEO of Hilton since 2007. He tells Alan Murray that when arrived on the job "the business just wasn't functioning in the ways that it needed to function." And while some of that related to strategy, he pinpointed the real problem as tied to culture. "It (had) really sort of lost its way from a cultural point of view."While the problem may have been easy to diagnose, it was anything but easy to solve. He succeeded however, as evidenced by the company's high ranking on Fortune's 'Best Companies to Work For' list. In this episode of Leadership Next he explains how he tackled the problem.Also in this episode, the return of business travel and a peek at what Nassetta calls the "phygital" future (yep, it's a combo of physical and digital.)

Any time you propose a change that impacts thousands of companies, you're likely to hear complaints. That's what happened when the Nasdaq stock exchange said it wants its listed companies to disclose their board diversity stats. What's more, it wants companies to have at least one woman and at least one individual who identifies as an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ+ on their boards. The proposal is still making its way through the SEC approval process, but Nasdaq's CEO says she's not concerned by the debate surrounding the plan."This is a significant change to the governance of public companies. And so we like the rigor," Adena Friedman tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt in this episode of Leadership Next. This diversity rule would be a first for a major American stock exchange. Pushing for the change placed Friedman - the first woman to lead a major American stock exchange - on Fortune's latest list of the World's Greatest Leaders. Friedman originally joined Nasdaq as an intern in 1993, and was named CEO in 2017. Tune in for more on the board proposal, her take on the current stock market, and how leadership has changed as a result of the pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, a large number of PagerDuty employees were working in a hybrid fashion."I think maybe even some organizations are underestimating the complexity that comes as a result of giving your employees the flexibility they want," CEO Jennifer Tejada says on this week's Leadership Next.She shares tricks and tips for successfully leading a hybrid workforce. She also talks about the impact the pandemic has had on working women, why PagerDuty opened an office in Atlanta, and the importance of networking.Also in today's episode, the CEO of Puppet, Yvonne Wassenaar. 

Katrina Lake is the founder and CEO of Stitch Fix, a personalized styling service founded ten years ago. When Lake took her company public in 2017, she was the youngest female founder to ever do so. And, she's one of the few women founders to IPO a tech company. The IPO itself was notable for another reason too: many pictures from the event show Lake holding her young son. "It was a really meaningful moment that I didn't anticipate," she tells Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt. Lake reports that she's moved from "bristling" at regularly being called a female founder (instead of simply "founder") to embracing her position as a role model for other women in business.In this episode of Leadership Next, Lake describes the moment she knew she wanted to be in business, the dangerous lack of diversity amongst investors, leading through the pandemic, her plans to transition to executive chairperson, and more.

As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, it's a question that seems to be plaguing most CEOs: How do you hold on to the benefits of remote work while encouraging more in-person collaboration? This is just one topic that Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt broach with Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Listening and responding to employees is clearly something Adobe does well - the company has landed on Fortune's list of 'Best Companies to Work For' several years in a row.It's far from the only thing the company does well however. Adobe's financial results continue to impress year after year. How does he do it, and how is Narayen positioning his company - home to products like Photoshop, Adobe Sign and many more - for the future? That's all on this episode of Leadership Next.Also featured in this week episode, Catalyst's Senior Director of Women and the Future of Work, Lauren Pasquarella Daley.

Patagonia - the 48 year-old outdoor equipment and apparel company - has long been passionate about protecting the environment. But when Georgia passed new voting access laws in March, Patagonia was one of first to speak out and push back against the changes.Why did the retailer choose to be a part of this political fight? That's what Alan Murray asks Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert in this episode of Leadership Next. Gellert details how the company's activism has evolved over time, and how Patagonia decides which issues to support.Gellert also shares the challenges of becoming carbon neutral, how being a certified B Corp has made Patagonia a better company, and why a failure to fight for stakeholders is a "real risk to businesses."