In March 2026, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told CNBC that AI had significantly influenced his decision to step down from his post. The company needed, in his words, “someone with the energy to pursue a completely new transformation of the enterprise.” A few months earlier, Walmart’s Doug McMillon stepped aside for essentially the same reasons: he could, he said, start the next big set of AI transformations, but he couldn’t finish the job. According to McMillon, Walmart needed someone faster to lead them into the AI era and so he was passing the baton on to a new CEO.
These were not failed CEOs being pushed out. Quincey had added more than ten new billion-dollar brands to the Coke stable during his tenure. McMillon had led Walmart for over a decade of sustained growth. These were successful leaders who had both concluded, independently of one another, that the AI era demanded a kind of leadership they could not provide.
What Quincey and McMillon recognized is something most leadership teams have not yet begun to confront: the AI era does not just demand new technology or new strategy. It demands new approaches to leadership. To reap the benefits and avoid the potential pitfalls of AI, leaders require specific skillsets and mindsets that differ from those needed in previous eras.
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But there is a critical distinction between what Quincey and McMillon faced and what most organizations need to do. Both CEOs framed the challenge as a personal one — could they, as individuals, transform fast enough? An organization cannot think this way. It cannot step aside and replace itself. It has to develop the leadership it needs, systematically and at scale, or it will fail with the leadership it has. The 90-day plan that follows is designed to start that work.
The 90-Day Plan
Days 1–30: Assess
The goal of this phase is to acquire an honest picture of where your leadership team stands. Not where they think they stand, and not where they told the board they stand — where they actually stand.
1. Understand your leadership team’s AI fluency. Run a structured assessment of every member of the senior leadership team against a defined fluency rubric. The rubric should cover foundational understanding of how AI systems work, awareness of their failure modes, command of the cost and risk implications, and ability to connect AI capability to business strategy.
