When AI Joins Your Leadership Team

Most people in tech now use AI every day. Very few are running their business on it. This early-start session on the first morning of Leeds Digital Festival is about the gap between those two things, and how to close it.

A few months ago Jonny Ross was a heavy AI user and still the bottleneck in his own business. Every output needed him to carry the context. The tool was brilliant; the business ran on his memory. Today his agency runs on an operating system where AI holds the memory, sits in defined roles, and follows the rituals that used to live only in his head. One of those roles is a CFO that reviews his pricing. It has no problem telling him he is charging too little.

What you will leave with

• The three layers that turn AI from a clever tool into an operating system: memory, roles and rituals
• Why “what role would do this in a well-run business?” beats “what can AI do?”
• Where running your business on AI goes wrong, and how to stay out of the ditch
• One honest, real example of what it changed, and what it did not

Who it is for

Founders, MDs and senior operators who already use AI and want more from it. You do not need to be technical. You do need to run something.

It is not for developers or prompt engineers after deep technical detail, and not for anyone hunting for a list of tools or a magic prompt.

Run of show

• 8:00 Tea, coffee and networking
• 8:30 The talk, When AI Joins Your Leadership Team
• 9:30 More networking
• 10:00 Finish, and on with your Festival

Your speaker

Jonny Ross is a Fractional CMO with more than 27 years in marketing and growth, embedded in the leadership teams of scaling businesses across Yorkshire and the North, and the founder of Fleek Marketing. He runs his own agency on the AI operating system this talk unpacks.

The takeaway

Everyone who comes gets the AI Operating System blueprint, a one-page guide to putting this to work in your own business, sent through after the session.

Free to attend, part of Leeds Digital Festival’s open community programme. Seats are limited to 55, so book early. Tea and coffee provided from 8am, courtesy of the NatWest Accelerator.