Philipp Navratil took charge of Nestlé in September 2025. He inherited a giant with more than 270,000 employees and a mandate to move faster. One year later, the Swiss food company’s leader delivers a blunt message on artificial intelligence. Mastery of clever prompts alone won’t cut it.

Navratil told Business Insider that staff must grasp their business deeply. They need to see where AI heads next and what it means for the company. Technical wizardry? Not required. Judgment and adaptation matter far more.

The warning lands at a tense moment. Nestlé announced plans to shed about 16,000 jobs shortly after Navratil stepped into the top role. Roughly 12,000 of those positions sit in offices. The rest target manufacturing and supply chain. Automation forms a core piece of the savings drive aimed at CHF 3 billion by the end of 2027. The world changes. Nestlé must change faster, Navratil said at the time.

Yet the CEO does not push every worker toward coding models or mastering neural networks. He draws a sharper line. Understand applications. Anticipate developments. Recognize implications. Many employees still treat AI as another piece of software layered onto old routines. That approach invites trouble.

Process redesign trumps tool adoption

Add AI without rethinking the underlying work and complexity grows instead of shrinks. Steps once essential become dead weight. Navratil urges teams to strip those away. Use the freed hours for data analysis and stronger partner conversations. The focus stays on redesigning tasks rather than worshipping any single platform.

This stance echoes across recent reporting. The Next Web captured the same interview and noted Navratil’s background. The executive joined Nestlé in 2001 as an internal auditor. He later ran Nespresso before ascending to CEO after the board removed predecessor Laurent Freixe. His career path informs the emphasis on business knowledge over narrow technical skill.

Nestlé already deploys AI at scale. Around 100,000 employees tap Microsoft Copilot monthly, according to CIO Chris Wright. The company upgrades its global digital core with SAP technology. A first wave in Asia, Oceania and Africa touched 112 countries and 50,000 staff with no operational disruption. The full rollout finishes in two years.

Early wins appear. Finance teams apply unified data and AI analytics for sharper insights. Sales organizations test virtual assistants powered by agentic systems. Those pilots automate up to 40% of routine tasks and deliver 20% to 35% time savings in select markets. Remy Ejel, CEO for the Asia zone, points to better lead indicators for profit and loss. Agentic AI, he expects, will soon recommend concrete actions.

Navratil himself learns alongside his teams. In a separate Business Insider conversation on promotion traits, he described working with a junior reverse mentor who teaches him to program agents. Curiosity drives him. He pairs it with humbleness and hunger. Those three qualities, observed across two decades at the company, separate employees who advance.

The message spreads beyond headquarters. In June, Navratil spoke at the Deutsche Bank dbAccess Global Conference about consumer shifts driven by agentic AI. Retailers and shoppers will lean on systems that consume vast data rather than respond to visual ads or influencer campaigns. Nestlé holds an edge here. Its scientific literature, sourcing details and production records feed large language models effectively. The company tests agent collaboration for better assortment, consumer experience and supply chain efficiency.

Product development also feels the shift. AI helps tailor items for GLP-1 medication users and speeds formulation work. Supply chain forecasting, recipe optimization and sustainability tracking gain from machine learning models. A 2025 CIO.com profile noted Nestlé views AI as core competency instead of an add-on. Success hinges on rethinking operations, not raw speed of automation.

Learning programs inside the company reflect this philosophy. Talent leaders talk of depth for specialists and fluency for the broader workforce. AI literacy focuses on judgment. Workers learn what to delegate, how to verify outputs and where human decisions remain essential. The approach avoids blanket upskilling that wastes resources.

Critics might see job cuts and efficiency talk as code for replacement. Navratil frames it differently. AI strips unnecessary process. It frees people for higher-value work. Data analysis. Relationship building. Strategic thinking. But only if organizations redesign first.

Executives at other food giants watch closely. Consumer packaged goods faces margin pressure, supply volatility and fast-changing shopper habits. Companies that treat AI as simple productivity software risk falling behind those that rearchitect workflows around it. Nestlé’s size offers both advantage and inertia. Its data troves on nutrition, ingredients and consumer behavior become fuel for agentic systems. Yet translating that into daily practice across hundreds of thousands of employees tests any leader.

Navratil’s own rise offers a case study. From auditor in global roles to country manager in Honduras, coffee chief and Nespresso head, he adapted repeatedly. Comfort never suited him. A sales posting in Panama left him stagnant until a manager pushed change. The lesson stuck. Keep learning every day.

That personal history now shapes expectations for the entire workforce. Business knowledge. Technological familiarity. AI understanding. Combine them. Then redesign how the work actually gets done. Prompts help. They do not suffice. You can craft flawless instructions for chatbots and still watch competitors pull ahead.

The coming months will test whether Nestlé translates these words into measurable gains. SAP rollout continues. Agentic pilots expand. Job reductions roll forward. Savings targets loom. Navratil insists the priority lies in speed of adaptation. For a company long known for steady execution, that demands uncomfortable shifts in mindset and daily practice.

Industry observers note the candor. Few CEOs of this scale dismiss prompting as insufficient so directly. Fewer still tie it so tightly to process redesign and business acumen. The bet seems clear. In an era of powerful tools, human judgment on when and how to deploy them determines winners.