AI Agents Archives - Don't Stop Us Now

The CEO Power AI User – Joseph Lyons

May 13, 2026May 14, 2026
by Claire

If you’ve ever wondered what it actually looks like when a CEO goes all in on AI, not just in their business but in their own daily work, then you are going to love this week’s conversation.

Our guest is Joseph Lyons, CEO of ELMO Software, an HR and workforce management platform used across thousands of organisations. Joseph is a seasoned executive with many years at major tech companies including a stint as a regional Managing Director at accounting software powerhouse Xero.

Joseph is genuinely one of the most hands-on AI leaders we’ve spoken to. As you’ll hear, he uses AI for everything from synthesising board papers to interrogating hundreds of customer calls for strategic insight. He describes having AI as like having a personal chief of staff that never sleeps.

In this episode Joseph also shares:

How he and his team use AI as a “red hat” to challenge their strategic thinking
Why his AI human coach turned out to be 25 years his junior
The executive productivity agent built by his HR team, and
What ELMO is doing to make AI adoption the norm, not the exception.

Joseph also has some refreshingly practical advice for time-poor, busy leaders on how to actually get started using AI. In short, Joseph is very generous in sharing with us how he works with AI in his day to day role. Whether you’re a CEO, a senior leader, or simply someone who wants to understand how AI is reshaping the way executives work, we’re confident you’ll take a lot from this conversation.

Enjoy this episode with the savvy and forward-thinking Joseph Lyons.

Useful Links

ELMO Software website

Joseph on LinkedIn

Top Tips

AI Agent Landscape Decoded – Claire & Greta

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026
by Claire

Are you hearing about AI agents everywhere right now? Whether it’s their presence in the software you use daily, special purpose or task “agents”, or customer service “agents”, it’s safe to say they are the topic ‘du jour’.

In this week’s episode, we segment this confusing landscape and cut through the hype to help you make more sense of it all.

After weeks of interviewing guests across different corners of the agentic AI world, we realised the market has become genuinely bewildering, even for us! Vendors are slapping the word “agent” on almost anything, and it’s getting harder to tell what’s substantive and what’s marketing.

Listen in to hear about the simple framework we’ve developed to bring clarity to the whole ecosystem. It maps out the key choices facing any business considering agents, the questions you should be asking, and where the real risks are quietly hiding.

Regardless of whether your organisation is ready to start experimenting with agents or not, this episode will help you take the first steps when you are ready. As they say, when you can see something clearly, your decisions become easier.

In this episode you’ll learn:

The four very different ways to bring agents into your organisation — and why the question isn’t “which is best?”
Why some of the SaaS tools you already pay for might quietly be putting you in a “hostage situation”
What a team of Harvard, MIT and Stanford researchers just uncovered about one of the most hyped agent platforms on the market
The layer of the agent ecosystem where the real cyber security risks live
Four sharp questions to ask any vendor before letting their agent anywhere near your data and systems

Enjoy this practical and jargon-light guide to a topic that isn’t going away anytime soon.

Useful Links

McKinsey / Quantum Black report: Seizing the agentic AI advantage
Capgemini report – ‘Rise of Agentic AI’
MIT Sloan & BCG Report – Leading in the age of AI Agents (useful for Governance and structuring once you’ve made agentic decisions)

Interview

What Happens When AI Agents Do Your Shopping –…

February 23, 2026February 23, 2026
by Claire

AI shopping agents aren’t just on the horizon, they’re here, already transacting, and already raising some important questions.

In this episode, we speak with Katja Forbes an award winning customer experience futurist, business strategist, and keynote speaker recognised for her insights into the intersection of AI, design, and human behaviour. She is also the author of Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun, a book about what happens when your best customer is no longer human.

In this fascinating conversation we cover everything from what’s already happening with agentic commerce right now, to an incredible story out of China that reveals just how fast consumer behaviour can be reshaped at massive scale.

In this episode you’ll hear:

Why the shopping agents built by the retailers you already use may not be working in your interest
What it means that AI agents now have access to their own credit cards and the guardrails (or lack thereof) around them
How some of the world’s largest businesses are already using AI to handle a significant share of their procurement
The practical steps marketers and business owners should be taking right now, before agentic commerce becomes the norm, and . . .
Why your website could become largely irrelevant and what that means for how you show up to both humans and machines.

Katja also shares a candid look at the environmental and ethical questions we need to be asking as frictionless purchasing increasingly becomes a reality.

This conversation is set to change how you think about your next online purchase and, if you’re in marketing or procurement or e-commerce, then this is one you simply cannot miss.

Enjoy this episode with the passionate and ahead-of-the-curve, Katja Forbes.

Useful Links

Katja Forbes website

Katja Forbes on LinkedIn

Interview

Where Luxury Travel Meets AI – Sean Seah

February 6, 2026February 6, 2026
by Claire

Most conversations about AI implementation come from consultants selling solutions or vendors pitching tools. This one doesn’t.

Sean Seah is SVP of Strategy, Technology and Innovation at Langham Hospitality Group, where he’s leading AI adoption across a global luxury hotel portfolio. With over two decades in digital transformation at Microsoft, HSBC, and Zuji, Sean brings a rare perspective as he’s living inside the messy reality of making it actually work.

What emerges from our conversation is a refreshingly practical playbook for AI implementation. Sean reveals why the “boring stuff” nobody discusses—data infrastructure, change management, measurement frameworks—determines whether AI delivers business value or not. He advocates starting small, proving value in weeks rather than years, and letting success create momentum for long term transformation.

We explore how Sean balances short-term wins with long-term strategic vision, how he thinks about his AI strategy in a global context, and why luxury hospitality, with its complex blend of human service and operational efficiency offers surprisingly universal lessons for AI implementation across industries.

In this episode:

How Sean’s approach to long term tech transformation includes the necessity that it must deliver short term value as well.
Why one of Langham’s first major AI investments is customer facing and how it’s faring
Examples of how they practically trained their AI agents and staff, and
How Sean’s ensured Langhams isn’t reliant on any one large language model

Whatever sector you’re in, Sean’s boots-on-the-ground experience offers a practical roadmap for leaders navigating the gap between AI potential and AI reality.

Enjoy this episode!

Useful Links:

Sean Seah on Linkedin
Langham Hospitality Group

Interview

Agents Explained – Dominick Ng

December 19, 2025December 19, 2025
by Claire

If you’ve heard the term ‘AI agents’ but aren’t quite sure what they actually are or how they could help you at work, this is the episode for you.

Our guest is Dominick Ng, Director of Engineering at Relevance AI, a platform that helps businesses build and deploy AI agents. Before joining the startup world, Dom spent nine years at Google, rising from software engineer to senior manager. He also holds a PhD in Computational Linguistics and won a Fulbright Scholarship to UC Berkeley.

What makes Dom such a brilliant guide for this topic is his ability to explain complex technology in human terms. As he puts it, agents are fundamentally about adding human-like decision making to automation — handling the qualitative judgments that previously only people could make.

In this conversation you’ll hear:

A clear explanation of what agents actually are and why they’re different from previous automation
Real examples of agents creating entirely new business possibilities that couldn’t exist before
How to address privacy and security concerns when handing tasks to agents
Dom’s advice for anyone feeling overwhelmed by all of this

Dom is refreshingly honest about both the opportunities and the concerns he has about AI’s impact. His perspective on how humans and AI can work together — and the ‘spark’ that makes human creativity irreplaceable — is genuinely hopeful without being naive.

If you’ve been curious about agents but not sure where to start, this is the conversation you can thank us for later.

As this is our final episode of the year, we want to wish all our listeners Season’s Greetings. Thank you for listening throughout the year, and we wish you a kind and fulfilling new year ahead.

Enjoy this episode with the ever-curious and articulate Dominick Ng.

Useful Links

Relevance AI

Dominic Ng on LinkedIn

Interview

Ahead of the AI Curve – Jim Lecinski

September 8, 2025September 9, 2025
by Claire

Imagine you’re a marketing professor who saw the AI revolution coming years before ChatGPT hit the scene, wrote the definitive book on AI marketing in 2021, and now find yourself at the epicentre of one of the most dramatic transformations in history.

This is the very position this week’s guest, Jim Lecinski, finds himself in. Jim is a Clinical Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s prestigious Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches AI in Marketing and has won Professor of the Year.

Adding to Jim’s canny foresight is his prior, 13-year career as a VP at Google. As a result, Jim brings both the practitioner’s real-world experience and the academic’s analytical rigour to one of the most important questions facing leaders and marketers today: how do you harness AI not just for efficiency gains, but for genuine competitive advantage and growth?

In our conversation, you’ll also hear about:

Jim’s 2×2 framework for thinking strategically about AI applications in marketing
Use-case examples from brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and IKEA where AI is used to revolutionise everything from creative development to customer service
Why businesses need to prepare for the shift from search engine optimisation (SEO) to “generative engine optimisation” (GEO), and what that means practically
The emerging world of AI agents and how this will fundamentally change how we all shop, and
Jim’s essential learning resources for those who want to stay ahead of the curve.

We loved the way Jim shares his own wisdom and insights as well as sharing many examples of what market leaders are actually doing with AI.

We know you’ll enjoy this conversation with the whip-smart professor who saw the AI future ahead of the crowd.

Useful Links

Jim Lecinski on LinkedIn

AI Marketing Association

Marketing AI Institute

Andrew Ng’s AI for Everyone course on Coursera

Interview

AI at the Speed of Trust – Ann Maya

August 7, 2025
by Claire

Our guest this week gets straight to the heart of what actually makes AI work in practice: seamless data integration and moving at what she calls “the speed of trust.”

Ann Maya is the EMEA Chief Technology Officer at Boomi, a company that connects applications, devices, and systems to help organisations navigate digital transformation. With over 20 years in software—from developer to solution architect to senior leadership—Ann has a rare ability to bridge technical complexity with business reality.

In this conversation, we explore why most organisations struggle to scale AI beyond pilots, and why the answer isn’t just about the technology itself. Ann shares:

How a container ship insurance company transformed their underwriter workflow from three days to 15 minutes—and why their legal team immediately wanted in
Why she believes your company’s data is your “competitive secret sauce” and how to protect it while still leveraging AI’s power
The psychology behind why change happens at “the speed of trust” and how smart companies bring their people along on the AI journey
Real examples of what she calls “creative destruction”—and why the next revolution might come from the most unexpected places

Ann also reveals how Boomi has embedded 11 different AI agents into their own platform and shares a fascinating perspective on the current AI race: who’s winning, who’s getting left behind, and what you can control when everything feels like it’s moving at breakneck speed.

Whether you’re wondering how to turn AI skeptics into advocates or trying to understand why your organisation’s data strategy matters more than ever, this conversation offers practical insights from someone who’s helping companies navigate this transformation every day.

Enjoy this episode with the innovative and customer-focused Ann Maya.

Links

Ann on LinkedIn

Boomi home page

Boomi – Discover

Interview

AI Will Replace Jobs But …. – Peter Guagenti

July 9, 2025July 9, 2025
by Claire

This week we’re sharing an AI conversation many executives are afraid to have. Our guest, Peter Guagenti, CEO of agentic platform and AI agent builder, EverWorker, is one of those rare voices willing to say what others won’t: “AI will replace jobs”. Perhaps surprisingly, he goes on to explain why that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

While many in the industry underestimate or downplay AI’s capabilities, Peter speaks plainly about what he’s seeing happen right now in businesses across multiple industries.

Peter has been at the forefront of enterprise AI adoption for nearly a decade. Before EverWorker, he was President of TabNine, a pioneering AI code assistant, and he’s held leadership roles at major data infrastructure and dev tools companies including Cockroach Labs.

What you’ll hear Peter share in this episode:

Why job replacement fears are missing the bigger picture
Which “boring” businesses are actually leading early AI agent adoption
Skills you need to successfully implement AI for automation in any business
Why Peter calls AGI talk “nonsense” and what leaders should focus on instead, and
The one thing about AI’s future that genuinely worries him most.

Peter has a gift for cutting through the hype with plain talking, concrete examples and practical insights in an easy to understand way..

This is a refreshing and informative conversation for anyone wanting a glimpse into early adoption of AI agents and much more.

Enjoy this conversation with the plain-speaking and savvy Peter Guagenti.

Useful Links

EverWorker website

EverWorker AI Academy – free AI fundamentals course for business leaders

Bonus Episode

Pulse Check on AI’s Global Rollout

June 27, 2025June 28, 2025
by Claire

We’re not long back from attending the AI Summit in London – the headline event for London Tech Week. And so this week’s episode is all about sharing the sometimes surprising key insights we took away.

The Summit brought together an incredible cross-section of nationalities, perspectives, and industries, giving us what felt like a real-time pulse check of where AI stands right now. We were there on your behalf, identifying amazing leaders and securing some fantastic upcoming guests for the show.

In this episode, we share our biggest takeaways from the event – and we suspect at least one of them will challenge what you might expect about AI’s current impact in the business world.

What you’ll hear:

The surprising reality about AI’s bottom-line impact in most organisations
Why even the biggest companies are missing a crucial strategic opportunity with their AI approach
The coming wave of autonomous AI Agents and what this means for how we’ll all be working soon,
Some rare ‘behind the curtain’ examples of how some of the most forward thinking businesses are applying AI, and . . .
The fascinating cultural divide we observed between how Europeans and Americans are talking about AI’s impact on jobs.

We also explore why so many AI pilots are failing to scale, the risks of unauthorised AI tool usage in workplaces, and what successful AI deployment actually looks like when companies think beyond just automating existing processes.

If you’ve been wondering whether your organisation is behind the curve with AI, or if you’re curious about what’s really happening beyond the hype, this episode offers some much-needed perspective from the front lines of the AI world around the globe.

Useful Links

The AI Summit London

McKinsey report on the ‘Gen AI Paradox’