What great leadership looks like in an AI-driven world and what Orlando and Florida business leaders can learn from the executives already putting AI to work. Artificial intelligence is no longer something business leaders are preparing for. It is already inside the organization. Employees are using AI to write emails, analyze spreadsheets, summarize meetings, conduct research, prepare proposals, streamline operations, and make sense of increasingly complex data. The opportunity is enormous. So is the leadership responsibility that comes with it. That was at the center of Leading Beyond the Algorithm: What Great Leadership Looks Like in an AI-Driven World, hosted by CEO Leadership Forums in Orlando on August 25, 2026.
Bringing together CEOs and senior executives from across Central Florida, the conversation explored a question becoming increasingly important for every organization:
How do leaders embrace the extraordinary potential of AI without losing the humanjudgment, trust, accountability, and purpose that great leadership requires?
The answer was not less AI. It was better leadership around AI.
AI Is Already in Your Workplace
For Marci LaRouech, CEO of Seay HR and keynote speaker, the conversation begins with people. Employees are already discovering their own ways to use artificial intelligence. They are experimenting with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and other AI platforms to become faster and more productive. In many cases, that is exactly what employers want. But it also creates a new leadership challenge. An employee may upload customer information into a personal AI account to perform an analysis. Someone in HR may use AI to work through payroll or employee information. Another employee may rely on AI to draft a contract, answer an employment question, or produce client-facing work.
The intention may be completely innocent. The risk may not be. This growing phenomenon is often described as shadow AI, where employees adopt AI tools outside the systems, policies, and controls established by their organization.
If your organization has not established an AI policy or strategy, that does not mean your company does not have one. Your employees may already be creating one for you. Leadership therefore has to create an environment where innovation is encouraged while expectations are clear around confidential information, intellectual property, approved tools, human review, and accountability.
AI adoption is not simply a technology issue anymore. It is a people and leadership issue.
AI Can Expand Human Capability
George Speake, EVP & Deputy CEO of Orlando Sanford International Airport, shared how AI is already helping employees operate at a higher level.
As people move from junior positions into more senior roles, their responsibilities grow quickly. AI can help them organize information, understand data, prepare reports, and manage the complexity that comes with those new responsibilities.
One example involved an employee who had integrated Copilot deeply into his workflow, continually giving the system context around his responsibilities and the people and functions he interacts with. Work that previously required considerably more time could then be organized and produced much faster.
But there was an important distinction: the employee still checked the work. AI can expand human capability. It cannot replace human accountability.
For an organization such as an airport, where enormous amounts of operational information are generated every day, AI can also help leaders identify patterns that would otherwise remain buried inside the data.
Instead of simply asking what happened, organizations can increasingly ask: What is the data telling us
might happen next?
When Hours of Work Become Minutes
For JohnHenry Ruggieri, President of SunDance, the opportunity becomes especially tangible when AI is applied to real operational problems.
One example discussed during the forum involved field and site visit reporting. Historically, information collected during a site visit could require hours of additional work afterward to organize measurements, observations, requirements, and project details into a usable report.
With the right technology and AI-enabled workflows, parts of that process can now happen in minutes.The biggest opportunity may not be asking AI to write another email. It may be asking: Which processes inside our organization exist today simply because we never had a better way to do them?
When a three-hour process becomes a three-minute process, AI stops being a novelty. It becomes an operational advantage.
AI Adoption Will Not Always Work the First Time
Brian Bauer, CEO of Florida Eye Clinic, brought another important perspective to the discussion: sometimes an AI implementation simply does not work.
His organization experimented with an AI solution that quickly became clear was not delivering what the team needed. Rather than forcing the technology into the organization simply because it carried the AI label, the team pulled back.
That experience did not change the belief that AI will play an important role in the future of business. It changed the approach. Adoption does not mean accepting every AI solution. Leadership requires experimentation, evaluation, and sometimes the willingness to say, ‘this isn’t the right tool for us.’ Then you learn, adjust, and keep looking.
The organizations that ultimately benefit most from AI may not be those that get every implementation right
the first time. They may be the organizations that become best at learning, adapting, and improving as the technology evolves.
The Real Competitive Advantage Is Not AI Alone
Across HR, aviation, manufacturing, healthcare, and operations, a common theme emerged throughout the CEO Leadership Forums conversation.
AI is extraordinarily powerful. But technology alone is not the competitive advantage.
The advantage comes from knowing where to use it, how to govern it, when to trust it, when to question it, and where human judgment still has to lead.
The companies that move too slowly may miss enormous opportunities. The companies that move without guardrails may create risks they never anticipated.
Great leadership sits between those two extremes. It encourages experimentation without abandoning accountability. It embraces efficiency without sacrificing quality. It uses data without forgetting context.
Artificial intelligence can provide an answer. Leadership still owns the decision.
Creating the Room for Better Leadership Conversations
That is ultimately why conversations like Leading Beyond the Algorithm matter.
CEO Leadership Forums brings CEOs, senior executives, entrepreneurs, and business leaders together in Orlando and Central Florida not simply to discuss what is changing, but to share what they are actually seeing inside their organizations, the successes, the mistakes, the risks, the experiments, and the lessons that only come from leading through change in the real world.
Some of the most valuable leadership knowledge does not come from a textbook, a presentation, or an algorithm. It comes from putting experienced leaders in the same room and allowing them to learn from one another.
The Conversation Continues
CEO Leadership Forums will continue bringing Orlando and Florida business leaders together for conversations designed around the issues shaping leadership, business, technology, and growth.
The next CEO Leadership Forums gathering is scheduled for October 27, 2026 at 4:00 PM in Orlando.
For CEOs and senior executives looking for meaningful peer relationships, real-world leadership perspectives, and access to a community of accomplished business leaders, it is another opportunity to join the room and become part of the conversation.
CEO Leadership Forums. Strengthening the leaders of today to develop the leaders of tomorrow.
0 Comments