#ceo-michael-bender

#ceo-michael-bender

The shift was apparent. People had a stake in the outcome, and they acted like it. Ideas flowed more freely, teams spotted and solved problems earlier, and employees took pride in identifying and implementing improvements.

I have worked with the Minimus team through some of their most critical milestones, and I know firsthand the massive potential of their technology. The demand for near-zero CVE container images and minimal container images with built-in security is only accelerating.

Together, the multicultural segment totaled 46 million households in 2024, representing just over 33% of all households in the country—a 12% increase compared to 2017.

"I'm not [hiring] anyone in between," he says, noting that he recently spoke with a promising candidate who said she'd not used Claude Code-nor had she built anything with agents. She didn't get the job.

Fiddelke, who officially took the reins of the struggling retailer on Sunday, laid out in a note on LinkedIn and on Target's website on Monday what his priorities are as he takes over. They include restoring Target's leadership in cheap-chic merchandise, making its stores and website easier and more pleasant to use, more fully leveraging tech to improve customer experience and operations, and "strengthening" employees and "growing alongside the communities" where Target runs its stores.

CMOs sit at the apex of brand, revenue, customer experience, technology, product, sales and data. Yet they're spending less time in top jobs. The average tenure of a CMO at a Fortune 500 company is now just 3.9 years. Furthermore, fewer Fortune 500 companies are employing marketing executives who report at a C-suite level; these once all-important roles are being absorbed and redistributed to chief customer and chief growth officers.

But if you're innovating within your industry, it's a problem you should expect and prepare for because it means having to operate in two realities-the internal reality where you know the challenges in your industry and how you're going to solve them, and the external reality where nobody else has recognized the problem that needs to be solved. In a highly regulated industry like healthcare, safety, and stability create an inertia that often works against innovation.

Warning to executives: Don't get too comfortable in your corner office. Nearly one in nine CEOs was replaced last year, the highest rate since the financial crisis, and CFO turnover hit a seven-year high, according to new data from Russell Reynolds Associates. The replacements are younger and greener. More than 80% of the 168 incoming CEOs were first-timers with no prior experience running public companies.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Jamie Dimon explained why JPMorgan Chase is spending billions more on AI. He was making a long-term bet. The same kind of leaders make when they build headquarters, factories or infrastructure that won't "pay off" this quarter but will define competitiveness for decades. It's exactly how marketers should think about and position differentiation in the eyes of the C-Suite.