Name: Going Faster Together: The Case for CEO Collaboration
Uploaded: 2026-10-14
Duration: 17 min 47 s

Two CEOs discuss how collaborative leadership across sectors can help organizations tackle myriad high-stakes challenges that can often not be solved within a single company or industry. Drawing on personal experience, they explore how today’s leaders can move beyond transactional partnerships to accelerate innovation, leverage collective intelligence and responsibly unlock the opportunities of AI, with the goal of benefitting their respective companies – and the economy more broadly.

Kate Johnson, Chief Executive Officer, Lumen Technologies, Inc.
Janet Truncale, Global Chair and CEO, EY
Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director, Fortune 

Going Faster Together: The Case for CEO Collaboration

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So we are talking about partnerships, but I feel like we should start with the fact that you two know each other, right? So we're personal relationships are very important. How did you meet? Um, funny story for those introverts in the audience, um, when I go to these conferences, ones like these, only the ones with, uh, both genders, it tends to be, uh, a lot for me sometimes and so building connection, making connection with somebody, and, uh, going from there is, is a trick that I've learned. It's in my playbook and so I was at. Um, a business roundtable and I thought I recognized Janet who had just taken over from the prior CEO, uh, her amazing, uh, accomplishment. I kinda wanted to meet her and I also kinda wanted to, uh, have somebody to be connected to in the audience, so I sat down next to her and I said, Will you be my best friend? And I was happy to oblige. There you go and uh yeah didn't say uh sort of sit over there yeah no you weirdo go away. No, she was pretty kind and uh we we kind of traveled through the event together and that's a a trick by the way that I highly recommend. Well, I, I'm curious about the importance of that, and you are both working together because one of the things that I think is really interesting, the more I talk to CEOs right now, they talk about ecosystem. I know it's something you've talked about a lot. Give me a sense as to how the fact that you know each other, you like each other, has that had any impact either on the nature or the depth of what you're doing together. Maybe also talk about what you're doing together. I'm going to go to you. Do you like, I feel like I should say, what do you like most about Kate? What do you like most, but we'll get to that part. So first of all, I think that. Um, that first meeting had a big impression on me, and I know that, you know, having experienced that again, I was sitting at breakfast by myself. I didn't even know where to put my name tag or, you know, what to do at the business roundtable, right? She said, you know, Janet, just so you know, everybody rushes in to put their name tag somewhere early, so, you know, let's go. I'll show you how it's done. So you know that you need a friend like that. Um, but also it left such an impression on me that in the last two years I've frankly have tried to pay that forward and so when there's new CEOs, of which there are many, really just trying to reach out and say, hey, I've just been through this. Let me tell you what I've learned. Let me tell you what, what I wish I knew before and I think that's really important, um, but you talk about partnerships. I think that's. Important as well and we might just go off script like you said um I'm just here to listen. I'll just but what I love is, is we are doing business together, um, some really interesting things that we're proud of. Our team loves working with Lumen, um, but I remember, uh, we talked after a pretty significant RFP that we were working on. And the team came in and they evaluate all the service providers and on your sector experience on your domain knowledge and everything else and I remember you told me that at the top it said like top to top relationship. And it was marked red and you came in and you crossed it off and you said green and you said I know Janet and is it red mean that you don't know each other they didn't know that we knew each other no that there was no connection and I was like what makes you think that? And they said well we don't have anybody at the company who knows anybody over there and I said I'll I'll text Janet and find out if that's true and they were like. I like, I like that. But what I love about that story is that the team had to compete on their knowledge. But at the end of the day when you're going through a significant transformation, I'm sure, right, it matters that you have a relationship that you're trusted when you're going through something significant, and that does matter because again hopefully things always go right, but in, in, in a situation where it might. Not you wanna be able to pick up the phone to someone who's got your back and command all the resources that you need and that you feel that you have that relationship and you don't need that in every single bit of work that we're doing but in the most transformative I think it's really important. Has it changed? Actually, let me start with another question which is let's say that you were sitting down and then Janet had left. I'm going to Dakota Johnson and. In your in your place and she's like um no sit over there hi Jamie hi Sacha I don't wanna know you like what if you didn't what if you didn't like each other? Does it matter because you all we have to do partnerships with people we like people we don't like does it matter at all? So, so it does look, uh, let's be clear, I was looking for connection so that I could, um, have a better day. OK, um, but it wasn't essential to what I was there to do or what I got out of the day other than, you know, edification of, of making a new connection, um. I'm a capital allocator. I allocate human and financial resources, and there's no way on earth I'm ever gonna have enough of either. So I partner for expertise because if I were to build a team that could specialize and you know master every aspect of building the enterprise network for AI I'd run out of money pretty quickly but when I import talent or expertise or I outsource capabilities it's a part of building you know the. Ecosystem that's part partnership that's you know part direct ownership of an operation that's you know uh part connection and um so it's important liking each other isn't nearly as important as respecting and trusting each other's capabilities and and so we're lucky enough to have both but. To be clear, EY won that deal and exactly because you were red, but I think that's also, I think it's interesting to be clear, we marked them red. So let's talk about what's changed, right? Because we've always partnered. Different now because I feel like we're talking about it differently now and you mentioned a playbook obviously it's contextual but let's talk about the playbooks you both have in terms of how you think these ecosystems are emerging in a way that will help people in the start and look I think that the level of complexity that companies are dealing with is at an all time high and it's not showing any signs of slowing. And partnerships are gonna be really critical to reach your ambitions, your growth, and everything else. And so I even look at our own business. We just released our earnings last week publicly. We're not a public company, um, but 25% of our revenues is through our alliance and our ecosystem partners just to give you a sense of scale, and we're 57% more than it was, yeah, it was. It's up. It's up significantly, and that's at a $57 billion company, uh, that we are and that we just reported and I think that's where, you know, as. I think a leader you have to be really comfortable with what are you good at, what do you need to partner with to gain that expertise, and recognize that that is not a sign of weakness, it's actually a sign of strength and you know those that figure that out and figure out how to combine those capabilities with confidence are the ones that they're gonna reach their ambition sooner and further and grow faster. And then I look at the capabilities we talk a little bit about that too, but then if you can have the trust, invest together, um, have shared KPIs that takes the, you know, the relationship even further. And I'll tell you a little story. We had a client that was moving into a new market with us, and they had never had an employees in that market, and they were partnering with us. It was a co-sourcing model, and basically they said we don't have a brand in this geography. Your brand is our brand, and that is really where trust comes into play. And that's a really, you know, critical time to have a trusted partner in that expansion. One of the things that's always interesting in any ecosystem is the power dynamic. There's money. There's people, right? You have what, 400,000, 7000, 20,000, so you're both equally amazing company. You have a leaner company and, and so does that in a different space, how does that impact, um, the peer to peer relationship or do you feel like you partner differently since you're very different firms? So it's, it's, uh, it's a good question. I mean, we lean on external capabilities and the size of the company actually isn't. Nearly as important as our belief system in in the potential outcome that they can deliver. So if you're gonna do, you know, the kind of financial outsourcing that we were doing, this is uh a premier brand and famous for delivering great outcomes in that space. They obviously were top of the list to begin with and then they won. By the way, we're doing some other really cool things together, um, in terms of decommissioning legacy telecom mining for copper and things like that where we need to build a factory. Um, EY also won that work, but you, you asked a really important question. What's changed, and Diana, I think it's It's actually really important to talk about this notion of the boardroom and the conference room and the cube 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 have mastery and that is just not possible in today's market. I don't care what market you're in you have to build the machine to get it right. And the orientation around getting it right is like here's my hypothesis I'm gonna put the best athletes on the field inside and outside the company. I'm gonna look for signals and I'm gonna course correct constantly because it used to be that the, you know, we fixed everything to the annual calendar budgets and sales targets and comp plans and bonuses and all that kind of stuff. You can't do that anymore. It literally is down to, you know, we, we can't cycle through more than like a quarter or a month at a time, but I'm getting signals every day and we're pivoting every day. My job is to get it right and to allocate the capital accordingly, and you have to have a bench of partners that you can go to to deliver those outcomes. Can you do a bit of a deep dive as to uh. Particularly creative partnership that you've had, what you've been able to do together that you might have attempted on your own but is, is now possible, especially something that maybe is rooted circa 2026 that would not have happened six or seven years ago, the ones that we've done together, yeah, or whatever you wanna, if you have a better partnership, then we'll just tell we don't have a better. Well, uh, but it's OK. No, I, I think for me, and, and this is a funny story that we're just talking about before when we were talking about how to really drive capital, you know, creation for Lumen and having our team, and you wouldn't think of EY as helping harvest copper, right? And I think that's a perfect example where we had our strategy people and then we had to be an ecosystem orchestrator on your behalf because we're not actually taking that out of the ground, but we have relationships and Bring that ecosystem together in order to drive the results that Kate and team wanted to have. It was funny, you know, I, I, when we were, we were awarded the work, I said to her, I said like, I wanna come and I wanna harvest, you know, copper, and she's like, Well, Janet, you're gonna have to trade in your shoes for, you know, steel toe boots and a hard hat. But I think those are the stores. We haven't done it yet, but, but when we're done, we'll do that. But, but I think it's really important also that our team, I got this. You got that. We're going. Come with us, alright. Our our team is so proud of the work that they're doing because it's again playing a critical role in their success doing things that haven't been done before and really pushing and helping Lumen really drive change and and I think that's something that they are very, very um tied to personally yeah and so if you think about it it seems like a mundane example but I never thought when I came to take this, you know, company to the next level that I was going to be. Pulling copper, uh, you know, out of the ground and, and, uh, off of telephone poles and sending it up market and trying to, you know, play the capital markets to really understand when the best time to sell these things is and, and how to do the valuation, how to carry it, you know, from place to place. It's an extremely complex and arduous process from start to finish, and we wanna do it with factory-like precision and so it's about assembling that whole supply chain and having a partner. That's really good at helping coach you through that, right? Well, the very nature of EY's partnership, right, kind of the essence of the professional services model. And when I think about where we are right now, we talk about the AI era and, um, obviously a lot of people are doing more, you know, on the West Coast. It's geopolitics. We haven't talked as much about that today, but you know, your global firms. And the and the world has changed. What advice do you have? We talked a bit about playbook earlier, but what if you adapted and changed just given the fact that so much is unpredictable and you, and obviously you want resilience, but any thoughts on that in terms of advice or what you think you have to do differently? Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I, I allocate time for is outbound calling and spellanking. So I do sealanking inside the company, you know, who knows the answer to almost everything? The people and not the ones that report to you necessarily and not necessarily the ones that report to them. But when you go and you dive deep and you do random calls, random phone calls, random calls of kindness, this must be a joke call. It's from the CEO. I, I've had people call the office and say somebody's using Kate's team. And trying to call me um but you know what, when you can convince them to pick it up and it's actually me on the other end and then you have the greatest conversations because they're um spur of the moment spontaneous true and um and you get great answers that's inside but I do the same outside I have advisors uh you know across a bunch of different spaces I have a leadership coach, a business coach, and then I have a bunch of advisors and all the different spaces that we play in. And it's that signal collection that's incredibly important because I don't necessarily think that there's any one source that you're gonna get all the answers from. I think it's about collecting and synthesizing and then forming a hypothesis and then being able to pivot well, and that's a good place to end. Look, we have 4 minutes. We have all the time in the world, but when you think about the personal ecosystem, neither of you, we, we, you know, you're both CEOs of incredible companies, um. How much do you think partnership has been a factor in where you are today? And again, there's a lot of people in this audience who are both ambitious externally in their roles, but they're personally ambitious for what this looks like too. Any thoughts you'd have? Look, I, I think you, uh, to Kate's point, you can't do this alone, right? You need to be able to surround yourself with people that complement you as a leader, and that can be both internally and externally. I think that's very important. You also have to spend a lot of time educating yourself and you know when I came into the role I talked to people like Kate and other CEOs about you know where do you allocate your time and I think more and more leaders are allocating their time to, you know, really hands on learning, especially with the technology. I think that's critically important. What are you doing differently now than 2 years ago? So I'm spending a lot of time with the tech firms, to be honest with you, and that's where, you know, where are they gonna complement, where do we wanna use them on a specific platform or ours we have to make choices. We have to make choices about what are we gonna do here in the United States versus in Europe and, and Asia. I think those are things that are gonna be really important, you know, you talked about, you know, our organization of 400,000 people. My job is sometimes to make it feel smaller to our clients based on sector location expertise. But also I love the um operating model that we have because we can be global for the largest clients that require us to be global and then today we can be local where things are better localized and right now I think the role of the multinational is to be able to flex that muscle when you need to be global and when you need to be to be. I'd be remiss not to ask each of you to say one word about each other description whatever. I'm gonna start with you. Warmth, warmth, I would say authentic. Oh, that's so nice. I love that. OK, now let's have some closing thoughts. We're talking about the power of partnerships and sort of where we go from here, especially look around the corner a little bit. I'm gonna start with you. What, uh, thoughts do you have in terms of advice or even what's on your radar right now that you're thinking. About in terms of what you might do differently, I, I think it's, you know, everybody has to insert themselves into the game in terms of AI and it's everything from innovation to regulation to safety to, you know, deployment and return on, on use cases and everything, and I think there's a lot of sideline and and armchair quarterbacking, and I, I think I'd really. I'd like to see everybody get a little bit closer to, you know, the actual design use deployment and understanding of, of where we are. I think it's, I think it's critical. I love that. Before I answer, I have to put a plug in for Kate's blog on LinkedIn, Daring Diaries, because she says a lot of what needs to be said among leaders today. So I'm putting a plug in for that, and I, I read it, um, religiously. You wanna plug anything of hers? OK, it's fine. No, but I, I do, I'm a big customer, so yeah, everything of hers, but just on the, on the question that you know, I, I do feel like as leaders we have a responsibility to bring our workforce along. And if you look back two years to today, the conversation about workforce has been changing, right? It's not doom and gloom, it's all about upskilling and opportunity. And I think, no offense, but there's lots of narratives that are out there on the workforce, and I think we have a responsibility no we have a responsibility to our people to upscale them but bring them along and speak very honestly about what the future holds. And so that would be, yeah, something I wanna leave you with. You guys celebrate people in a very special way. So please join me in thanking our terrific guests, friends, allies, partners. Thank you, Janet. Thank you, thank you very much. Thanks.