AI, Growth, Healthcare, Life & Legacy: 5 Essential Takeaways From Chief Executive’s Crazy Spring Event Season

It was a whirlwind spring of live and virtual events here at Chief Executive Group. Nine cities, 14 events, hundreds of conversations across all of the communities we help—CEOs, CFOs, CHROs, public company directors—over four blurry months.

So many great ideas and insights from so many great people both on and offstage. Now that we’ve a moment to exhale, here are a handful of ideas that continue to stick with me:

Hand and Heart. One of the most profound distillations I heard all spring came not from a famous author or speaker but from a member of our CEO100 community on a call with other mid-market CEOs. Talking about the impact of AI, he nailed it in a way I hadn’t heard before: “AI will eliminate a lot of work except for hand work and heart work.”

Hand makes immediate sense—Claude is not going to wire a house anytime soon. But heart work? That’s the work of connection, of authenticity, of listening and real care. Where are we investing alongside AI to seize these opportunities?

Growth by Design. At our Growth Summit in Nashville, one of my favorite writers/speakers, Lior Arussy, asked attendees whether they were focused on designing products or designing customer engagements. The former results in a great sale and top-line growth. The latter creates loyalty and sustainable bottom line growth. Delta Air Lines makes 70 percent of its profits from loyalty and credit card (a form of loyalty) fees. Best Buy gets 40 percent of its profit from warranties.

“They fly airplanes or sell electronics,” says Arussy, “but their growth by design is achieved from planning for loyalty, not for product consumption. It is a completely different approach.” (For more on this, read his useful article “Why Your Company’s Customer Experience Isn’t Working Anymore” from May.)

Own Your Healthcare Data. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. And that’s particularly true—and painful—with your healthcare costs. Way too many companies and CEOs don’t have, and don’t ask for, the data they need to keep what Warren Buffett once called “the tapeworm of the American economy” from eating them alive.

But, as Sandra Clarke, former CFO of Blue Shield of California, told attendees of our CFO Leadership Conference in Boston, you can get that data. You just may have to demand it from your insurer. “You are budgeting blind if you don’t own that claims data or at least own access to it.”

Cliffs and Fog. When Jim Collins came out with a new book, What to Make of a Life, in April (“What’s In A Life?”, Chief Executive, Spring 2026) our communities were among the first people he shared it with. Through a mountain of original research it explores how we come of age, follow or don’t follow our best paths through life and face, for better or worse, the big changes that come our way.

For me, the idea that these “cliffs,” as he terms them, are not only inevitable but always followed by a period of disorientation that can be—must be—navigated mindfully was profound and freeing. I really can’t do his ideas justice here. Do yourself a favor and just read the book.

Forget Your Legacy. Another resonating thought from Collins: Among the dozens of remarkable lives Collins studied for his book, he found almost no evidence of subjects who were preoccupied with how they’d be remembered. They were preoccupied with what they were still responsible for.

“Life is the ultimate punch card,” he said. “Every punch, every few years, is a punch gone, and you don’t get them back—ever. So why would you spend your final punches worrying about how you’ll be remembered after you’re gone?”