Michael Herron is CEO of Atos UK and Ireland, a global AI-fuelled technology services firm working across cybersecurity, cloud, digital applications, AI and workplace transformation. In the UK and Ireland, with nearly 30 years of engineering heritage, Atos focuses on the organisations that keep the country running: hospitals, the National Grid, government departments, financial services and utilities. Their stated mission is an agentic future — sovereign by design, secure by default. Michael has over 25 years in technology and services, starting somewhere unusual for a tech CEO: as a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence. From there to ICL, Fujitsu and CGI, before joining Atos as UK & Ireland CEO in January 2025. He's a dad of two boys, and closely interested in how humans and AI actually work together in practice. What we cover Why he took the job: running towards the fire, the chance to take a whole company on a journey, and the privilege of being CEO in the era of AI. Every CEO he's worked for had the day job plus one defining thing — the tech boom, the crash, Brexit, the pandemic. On his watch, it's AI. Joining a business that had publicly had a couple of hard years, turning over rocks daily, and finding nothing terminally broken Nudge theory as an operating method — and why the size of a nudge is relative to where the business is starting from Work-life priorities, not balance: the non-negotiable first cup of tea, the 12-to-1 running slot his EA Katie guards with her life, the strict two-evening-events-a-week rule, and the running club he takes different employees out with Nature versus nurture in leadership — he's finally off the fence, and puts himself at 70/30 Learning as much from awful leaders as from brilliant ones The man who gave a 22-year-old with serious imposter syndrome a chance: "I don't need you to know anything about IT, but I can see what you do with people" Building culture with outside help, and why it took nine months to land 12 winning behaviours — you can't rush culture His success mantra: 40% people, 30% culture, 20% strategy, 10% luck. A brilliant strategy with average people won't get there; a half-decent strategy with brilliant people will be fine. Surrounding yourself with strong people, and then playing them in the right position — including admitting he got that wrong once and fixed it What people-first leadership looks like in practice: sitting down with people on walkabouts (which drives his team crazy, because he finds out what's really going on), stripping the graphs out of all-hands calls, handwritten notes posted to people's homes Holding the line on behaviour: "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" Agentic AI: mixed human-and-agent teams today, though not yet at scale; why regulation and ethics need to keep toe-to-toe with the technology; and the three columns of AI's employment impact the press tends to ignore — roles replaced, roles evolved, roles created that didn't exist six months ago Doing the right thing for the client even when it cannibalises revenue — and why that tends to come back as a bigger piece of work Michael's three pieces of advice for aspiring CEOs Use your network and do your due diligence. It's not for the faint-hearted, and not everyone will want it once they understand it. Prioritise resilience — physical and mental fitness both. Take the job very seriously, but not yourself. Lead with EQ. The higher you go, the more your EQ needs to match or exceed your IQ.
