Five Voices – One Vision, Redefining the Future of Work
If you're not uncomfortable, how are you going to create something extraordinary?
Opening CDO Vision New York 2026, Gary Sorrentino, Global CIO at Zoom, introduced a new way of thinking. Moving beyond AI strategies and transformation buzzwords, he challenged leaders to reconsider a deeper question, whether they’re even working on the right problem to begin with.
Five generations. Zero alignment.
We've been told the challenge is managing across age groups, decode what Boomers want versus what Gen Z needs, and we'll crack engagement, retention, and innovation. But Sorrentino argues that age was never the issue. The crisis is about whose voice gets heard, whose perspective shapes decisions, and who gets left on the sidelines.
"High-performing organizations don't have five generations aligned. They have five voices activated," Sorrentino explained. Experience, innovation, digital fluency, humanity, and purpose. When any of these voices is missing from the table, organizations become dangerously incomplete.
Managing by generation feels safe because it's familiar. We conduct surveys, slice data by age cohorts, and present findings that reinforce what we already believe. But it's a proxy, a convenient shorthand that masks what's actually happening beneath the surface.
Performance and engagement don't correlate neatly with birth year. They correlate with whether people's perspectives are valued and whether they have genuine influence over their work. Generational labels give us the illusion of understanding without requiring the harder work, creating systems where different voices can coexist, collide, and create something better than any single perspective could produce alone.
Technology is dissolving traditional boundaries. The 60-year-old executive might be more comfortable with generative AI than the 30-year-old manager who's threatened by it. A 45-year-old adopts new tools faster than their 25-year-old colleagues. When people stop behaving according to demographic categories, leaders are left managing a workforce they don't fully understand, because they're using outdated frameworks.
Most organizations believe they're good at inclusion. They run engagement surveys, host town halls, and create feedback channels. But as Sorrentino puts it, "Companies listen, but they don't hear."
Listening is procedural, collecting input and documenting feedback. Hearing is structural, giving voices genuine influence over decisions and being willing to change course. This is inclusion theater, the appearance of engagement without the transfer of power. When people recognize their voice is being collected as data rather than integrated into decision-making, they go quiet or quit. Nowhere is this failure to hear more visible than in how leaders are rolling out AI.
Walk into most organizations today and you'll find quiet quitting, impostor syndrome, and AI anxiety, each a symptom of the same leadership gap. People fear being replaced, becoming obsolete, or working for a system that no longer values human judgment. But Sorrentino is clear, "AI doesn't replace people; it exposes leadership."
It reveals which leaders view their teams as expendable inputs versus irreplaceable contributors. When leaders fail to position AI as augmentation rather than erasure, fear fills the vacuum, and fear drives the best people away.
The role of the leader is changing. The old model, the person with answers who tells others what to do, worked in stable environments. The new model is a coach, someone who asks better questions, creates space for others to lead, and learns as much as they teach.
This means shifting from annual reviews to continuous feedback, from command to collaboration, from expertise to curiosity, and from top-down mentoring to reverse mentoring. Sorrentino practices what he preaches, learning from younger colleagues about emerging tools and cultural blind spots that experience alone can't reveal.
There's a fundamental tension in every organization, the desire for control versus the need for innovation. Sorrentino argues you can't have both, "If you want innovation, you can't have control, you have to have trust."
Control feels responsible, it's guardrails, approvals, and risk mitigation. But it slows decision-making, signals distrust, and discourages experimentation. Innovation requires giving people room to try things, fail, and iterate without punishment. The most innovative organizations distribute risk, empowering teams to make decisions knowing that the cost of some failures is far lower than the cost of stagnation.
Great leadership requires discomfort. It's uncomfortable to let go of control, to hear perspectives that challenge your experience, to admit you don't have all the answers. But comfort is the enemy of progress. Sorrentino's challenge to leaders is direct, "If you're not uncomfortable, how are you going to create something extraordinary?"
High-performing organizations actively create discomfort. They bring voices into the room that don't agree. They promote people who ask hard questions. They reward dissent, not just loyalty. This is structured discomfort that produces better thinking, stronger decisions, and more resilient teams.
What Leaders Must Do Now
The future of work depends on voice, not age. Sorrentino's vision calls leaders to,
1. Stop managing by stereotypes. Focus on whose perspectives are present, missing, or being silenced.
2. Audit decision-making. Were all five voices, experience, innovation, digital fluency, humanity, and purpose, represented in your last major decisions?
3. Replace control with trust. Identify one area where you're holding too tight and let go.
4. Treat AI as cultural transformation. Address fear, purpose, and human agency. not just implementation.
5. Seek discomfort. If every meeting feels harmonious and every decision unanimous, you're building groupthink, not high performance.
Managing generations is a comfortable distraction. Activating voices is harder work. The organizations that win will be those that stop trying to smooth over differences and start creating room for five generations to speak, push back, and build together. The future won’t be orderly, it will be louder, messier, and far more innovative.