4 minBusiness
Lumen CEO Says Boardrooms No Longer Reward Being Right as AI Reshapes Decision-Making
Lumen Technologies CEO Kate Johnson told the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit that executive partnerships across companies are replacing insular C-suite decision-making, as AI compresses planning cycles and firms turn to alliances over M&A.
Corporate leadership is shifting away from the lone, all-knowing executive toward networks of external partners, Lumen Technologies CEO Kate Johnson said at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, California, on Tuesday. Johnson argued that the traditional boardroom model, in which leaders were rewarded for arriving with all the answers, no longer works in a market defined by geopolitical uncertainty and rapid AI adoption.
«This notion of the boardroom and the conference room that I grew up in — we were rewarded for being right. We had to know our stuff. We had to be the best. We had to come in with a strong opinion. We had to have all the facts we had to master, and that is just not possible in today's market,» Johnson told Fortune's Diane Brady.
Instead, Johnson described a decision-making model built for constant adjustment. She said leaders must form a hypothesis, then continuously test it against signals and expertise from inside and outside their organizations. «I'm getting signals every day, and we're pivoting every day,» she said. «My job is to get a grant and to allocate the capital accordingly, and you have to have a bench of partners that you can go to to deliver those outcomes.»
The shift is already showing up in how chief executives work with one another. IBM's 2026 CEO Study found that more than 80% of chief executives at AI-first companies are engaging partners from external or specialized networks to discuss risk and build on each other's strengths. The report attributed much of that change to rapid advances in AI and the speed at which workplaces are adopting it, which has compressed decision-making cycles and pushed companies to break down established boundaries in pursuit of cooperation.
A broader turn toward alliances is also visible in corporate strategy. Boston Consulting Group observed that as mergers and acquisitions slow, companies are increasingly looking for partnerships instead. In its survey, 60% of business leaders said joint ventures and partnerships will be more important to growth than pursuing M&A over the next three to five years.
Lumen itself has followed that path. In June 2025, EY U.S. and Blue Planet formed a strategic alliance to improve autonomous networking with AI, and Lumen became the project's first client. The relationship between Johnson and EY CEO and Global Chair Janet Truncale began informally a few years ago, when Johnson approached Truncale at a Business Roundtable breakfast and asked, «Will you be my best friend?»
Truncale said she was happy to oblige, and the exchange changed how she approaches new leaders. «In the last two years, I've frankly tried to pay that forward,» she said, «so when there are new CEOs, I try to reach out and say, 'Hey, I've just been through this.'»
For Johnson, that kind of peer relationship is not a soft extra but a working part of the executive toolkit. As AI adoption and geopolitical volatility shorten the shelf life of any single plan, she suggested the leaders who succeed will be those who can assemble partners quickly and correct course without waiting for perfect information. The old premium on being the smartest person in the room, she said, has given way to the ability to build a machine that keeps learning.
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