The Frontier Leader Show – AI Strategy, Leadership & Decision-Making for Senior Leaders

AI doesn't remove the need for leadership. It just raises the standard required."   This week I sat down with Cristina Gurguta. Director of Research and Innovation and Associate Partner at INSUS Industrial Sustainable Solutions, and the voice behind the Baby Data Scientist platform.   Cristina started her career as a police officer investigating fraud. Now she investigates data. The overlap, she s...

Strip the humanity out of your business to cut costs and you don't get a leaner company. You get a worse one.   Mark Schaefer, marketing futurist, author of 12 books and the man behind the blog GROW, joins Martin Wheatley to talk about the part of the AI conversation almost nobody is having: not how we use AI, but how our customers are starting to.   We get into: ✳️ Why protecting your brand's DNA...

When AI can outpace what you know, what's actually left for a leader to do? Jenny Ainsworth has a stark answer, and a useful one.   Jenny is a bestselling author and founder of the Connection Intelligence methodology. Before that, she was Disney's European training manager, with 20+ years working with leadership teams across sectors from finance to pharmaceuticals. Her new book Connection Intellig...

"Leaders are not ready for what AI is going to bring." That's how Pierre Naggar opens this conversation. And it lands hard.   Pierre Naggar is the founder of BrightPro and spent almost 30 years in digital marketing and advertising tech before moving into AI automation.   In this episode, we get into what's actually going on inside companies trying to adopt AI, and where it tends to come unstuck.  ...

Most teams are using AI now. Nothing in the actual business has changed. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. Lewis Maleh runs Bentley Lewis, a global executive search firm with team members in London, the US, Europe, Tokyo and Mumbai. He's one of the few founders I've spoken to who's moved past "the team uses ChatGPT" and built AI properly into how the firm operates. Which is a diffe...

AI gives leaders an amplifier they've never had before. The trouble is, an amplifier amplifies whatever's already there. If the messaging is unclear, AI just makes the unclear bit louder. That's where this conversation with Bob Gentle starts, and it's where most of the AI for leadership conversation should probably start too. Bob is a personal brand strategist with almost 20 years in digital marke...

Three pieces of AI news from the past month. One uncomfortable pattern underneath all of them. The Frontier Brief is the monthly solo episode of The Frontier Leader Show, where Martin Wheatley filters what's happening in AI down to what actually matters for leaders running real businesses. This month Martin covers: ✳️ OpenAI's AI Jobs Transition Framework, and the gap between theoretical and reali...

What if the executive team you've always needed was already sitting in ChatGPT?   Wendy Kier, founder of Empower AI, runs her business with 70 custom GPT agents. Twelve of them are strategic partners: a CEO called Lucas, a business coach, a marketing manager, a sales mentor. The rest handle task work like social media, newsletters, and client reports. It's the team most solo founders could never a...

What happens when a founder can interrogate the collective knowledge of his entire company before walking into a customer meeting, without interrupting a single team member?   Julian Schoemig, CEO and co-founder of  Diesta , joins Martin Wheatley to talk about building a fintech platform at the awkward intersection of insurance and payments, and what scaling a 25-person startup actually looks like...

Most AI pilots don't survive past the proof-of-concept stage. So is the problem the technology or what's underneath it?   Neil Alderson (independent advisor to CFOs and finance leaders, 25+ years in finance and transformation) joins Martin to work through what actually has to be true before AI starts delivering returns inside a finance or operations function.   We get into: ✅ ⁠Why "speed to value...

Most AI consultants will tell you "AI won't take your job." Iain Morrison won't. He thinks that answer is too comfortable, and the real picture is more nuanced, more honest, and ultimately more useful.   Iain is the founder of Enlightened People, an AI-enabled HR consultancy, a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, and an ICF accredited coach. He helps HR teams and SME leadership groups figure out what AI...

Welcome to The Frontier Leader Show. In this quick trailer, host Martin Wheatley introduces the show: conversations with senior leaders and operators about what it actually takes to lead well in an AI-shaped world; where judgement, not technology, is the real differentiator. Every episode delivers practical frameworks, candid stories from the front line, and specific moves you can apply to sharpen...