Ken Chenault on Leadership in an Age of AI
Channel: Bloomberg Television
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Read a transcript preview of “Ken Chenault on Leadership in an Age of AI” from Bloomberg Television, uploaded on 2026-11-07.
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Language: English (creator captions)
[0:00] Welcome back to Bloomberg this weekend. I'm Christine Murphy with David Gura, and it's time for
[0:04] c suite Saturday. This week, we're speaking to Ken Chenault.
[0:07] He's the managing director of General Catalyst Partners and former American Express CEO. He has a
[0:11] new book out this week called Equal to the Task, a Life Forged Between America's Promise
[0:16] and Its Truth. And in that book, he talks about the importance of purpose driven leadership,
[0:21] which he says starts at the top. And that's where we began our conversation. How much
[0:25] influence does a CEO like yourself have to kind of change the shape or direction of
[0:29] a company that's been around for for a long time to be innovative?
[0:32] Yeah. I I think a CEO has very substantial influence. But I think what's important is
[0:39] that you you have to galvanize your team. You have to galvanize the organization. You have
[0:46] to give them context on why innovation is so important. And so part of what I
[0:52] did at American Express was emphasize the history of the company. And I said, what is
[0:59] the core business that we're in? It's not the payments business. It's the service business. That's
[1:06] the business that we've been in since 1850.
[1:10] We have to keep that core, but look at the history of the company. Going from
[1:18] a freight forwarding company to a payments company, that was not a linear move. And so
[1:27] the focus on reinvention was something that I emphasized. I wanted
[1:32] to ask you about hiring. Because looking back on your l