Throttle Up Leadership Podcast

The leadership podcast that asks the question nobody wants to answer: What if the problem isn't your people? Weekly conversations exploring why the workforce crisis isn't a people problem. It's a leadership problem. And what organizations and individuals can both do about it.

Throttle Up Leadership Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Dr. John P Dentico, with 189 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Dr. John P Dentico hosts Throttle Up Leadership Podcast, a business show with 189 episodes published.

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  Episode #189

  Episode 189: Your Purpose Is on the Wall and Nobody Gets Promoted for It

  Aug 10, 20261h 5mS1

  Jennie McLaughlin founded Purpose Led Transformation in Melbourne after five years as an Ernst and Young partner building that firm's purpose practice across APAC. She treats purpose as a design problem; if it is not wired into strategy, customer experience and the numbers, it is decoration. Sarah Rozenthuler is a chartered psychologist, founder of Bridgework Consulting in the UK and author of Now We're Talking. She treats purpose as a spoken problem; if nobody in the room will say the true thing, no amount of good design survives it. Together they map a purpose lifecycle that most organizations abandon the moment the words are written down, and explain why only about ten percent ever reach alignment, amplification and assurance. Midway through, both guests face a micro simulation. Amy, an AI avatar, runs client delivery at a professional services firm where the purpose hangs in brushed stainless steel and the quarterly scorecard measures utilization, revenue per head and days to invoice. One of her directors did the right thing for a client, missed his number and lost his promotion; three colleagues watched and went quiet. Amy cannot change the scorecard. The advice splits cleanly. Sarah goes to the conversation with the most edge; Jennie follows the money and questions whether the CEO has the courage for any of it. The episode closes on burnout, cognitive load and where AI actually belongs. 00:00 Two Purpose Practitioners, Two Continents 02:22 Applied Math, Startups and the Sinek Spark 03:32 Happy and Useful: The Road Into Dialogue 05:38 Joyful Eating: When Purpose Survives a Sale 08:09 The Purpose Lifecycle and the Ten Percent Problem 13:37 Scratchy Rooms and the Listening Posture 16:34 Micro Simulation: Amy and the Stainless Steel Promise 18:56 Rude Awakenings or Collateral Damage 26:29 Seven Words and the Bank Teller Test 31:58 Burnout, Fumes and the 170 Percent Conversation 41:31 Cognitive Relief: Who Is Actually in the Loop 48:06 Team Purpose, Following the Money, What Comes Next If you enjoy our podcasts please like, share and subscribe we genuinely appreciate your support.

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  Episode #188

  Episode 188: Your AI Is an Intern and Your Cyber Report Is Fiction: 38 Years of Risk Modeling Says Both

  Aug 4, 202648 minS1

  Charlene Deaver-Vazquez has spent 38 years in IT, from building corporate networks to compliance work across Department of Defense programs to risk quantification for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Today she founded CyberRiskModels.com, where she produces sector-level forecasts that translate cyber risk into numbers executives can act on. Her argument in this conversation is blunt: the annual assessment and compliance framework model was built for a threat environment that no longer exists, and handing a board a maturity score with no dollar translation is worse than unhelpful; it is actively misleading. She also cuts through the mythology around artificial intelligence. It is not conscious and it is not smarter than you; it is a Bayesian algorithm, which means there is always some probability it makes a choice you never anticipated. Her advice is to treat any AI like a capable intern: give it direction, watch it, check the output, and own the result. From there she walks through AI attacks that sail past perimeter defenses, cyber as a war platform, and why leadership, not the IT department, has to own this problem. 00:00 The Report Describes a World That No Longer Exists 02:07 Farm Country Lessons and the Value of Doing the Work 05:44 Why Compliance Frameworks Actively Mislead 07:19 It Is Not Conscious, It Is Bayesian 09:31 Treat Every AI Like a Brilliant Unsupervised Intern 12:14 Open Source, Training Discipline, and the Risk Gap 15:40 The Pivot Point in Malicious AI 16:41 Attacks the Perimeter Cannot See 18:00 When Cyber Becomes Part of the War Platform 21:15 Defending at Machine Speed 26:39 Inertia, Perks, and the Agility Problem 36:00 Stress Test It Before Someone Else Does If you enjoy our podcasts please like, share and subscribe we genuinely appreciate your support.

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  Episode #187

  Episode 187: Nobody Reads 1,300 Metrics: Errol Brandt on Kiraa and the Dashboard Delusion (Parts 1 and 2)

  Jul 28, 20261h 8mS1

  Dr. Errol Brandt has sat through more than 300 month ends, and he arrives with a claim that should unsettle any finance leader: the month end is not a scheduling problem, it is a structural one. Drawing on 30 years at Nestlé and Amcor, he explains why a decade of acceleration projects never held, because work expands to fill whatever time you free up and leaders keep adding requirements to absorb the slack. He traces the moment unified memory and the M1 chip convinced him that intelligence belongs back on the device, argues the frontier model boom rests on a probabilistic tool in a world where business needs determinism, and is candid about Apple sitting in pole position on silicon and privacy while still missing the data plumbing enterprise adoption requires. The second half puts that theory under pressure. Jennifer, an avatar sales manager with 23 reps and six open tabs on a Sunday, discovers too late that a strong performer has been quietly struggling since a territory redraw. Errol works the problem live, starting with personas and behaviors rather than metrics, and explains why one page of personalized, actionable insight beats 1,300 KPIs nobody reads. Along the way he makes the case for servant leadership, small accountable teams over individual contributors, agreed problem statements before anyone leaves the room, and tacit knowledge as the asset most at risk when experienced people walk out the door. 00.00 Welcome and why this conversation has two halves 02.39 Country Queensland, an Amstrad, and a childhood spent coding 04.01 Three hundred month ends and the entropy that eats every efficiency gain 08.57 The M1 moment: betting on local AI before ChatGPT existed 12.57 The bubble, the arms race, and why business needs determinism 17.49 Apple's missing plumbing and the gap Kiraa is built to fill 21.53 Dashboards, traffic lights, and the story the numbers never tell 27.25 Servant leadership, personal agency, and hiring smart lazy people 31.48 Part two: meet Jennifer, six tabs and a Sunday at the kitchen table 41.44 Personalized, actionable insights instead of 1,300 KPIs 51.10 Steve Jobs at MIT: fix the structure, stop treating symptoms 63.33 Photocopier economics and the private data center If you enjoy our podcast please like, share and subscribe we genuinely appreciate your support.

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  Episode #186

  Episode 186: The Founder's Deadly Embrace: Why Falling in Love With Your Own Idea Can Be a Death Sentence

  Jul 22, 202633 minS1

  Dr. John Scott started his career as a NASA astrophysicist, left a tenured academic post, and spent three decades founding and scaling more than a dozen technology companies. Now co-founder and chief strategy officer of Innventure, he calls himself a recovering scientist. He argues that the trillion dollars multinationals spend on R&D every year is not a science problem but a system problem, since only single digit percentages of that spend ever become products that make money. His answer is Down Select, a techno economic methodology that runs every opportunity against nineteen criteria to determine whether a technology paired with a real market need creates genuine new value. Scott explains why needs lead, why economic viability beats elegance, and why founders keep falling into what he calls the founder's deadly embrace. He describes running new companies with serial CXOs until the zigging and zagging settles, using AI to find the right partner contacts and the ex-employee Sherpas who navigate corporate bureaucracy, and why senior leadership exists to supply a strategic framework rather than manage the minutia. AI, he says, should bubble up from the people doing the work instead of being shouted down from the bridge. 00:00 The Trillion Dollar R&D Lottery 01:39 Daytona Beach and the Recovering Scientist 02:35 Strategy Without Tactics, Tactics Without Strategy 03:23 Leadership's Real Job Is the Strategic Framework 04:39 Why Entrepreneurs Become Their Own Worst Enemy 06:26 Ninety Percent of R&D Value Never Gets Realized 08:53 The Founder's Deadly Embrace 11:15 AI, Sherpas, and Getting to the Right Person 15:10 Down Select and Choosing the Right Game to Play 18:37 Disruption Is Non-Linear, So You Adapt 23:24 Needs Lead: Nineteen Criteria Before You Build 29:00 AI Bubbles Up, It Does Not Shout Down If you enjoy our podcasts please like, share and subscribe we genuinely appreciate your support.

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  Episode #185

  Episode 185: Perfection Is Not a Goal, It's Self-Destruction: Dr. Fay Niewiadomski on Leading After the Building Burns Down

  Jul 14, 202645 minS1

  Fay Niewiadomski does not teach courage from a slide deck; she learned it in a bombed out office in Lebanon, standing in the ashes of seventeen years of work. Author of Decisions That Matter and founder of ICTN, she has spent three decades advising presidents, ministers and global CEOs, and she arrives with a claim that should unsettle every leadership program in the business: leadership traits do not exist. Behavior does. Values drive decisions, decisions produce outcomes, and people read the outcomes long before they read the résumé. In this conversation she lays out the three pillars she believes leadership behavior sits on, competence, courage and compassion, and argues that loyalty is not a qualification. She separates strategic decisions from everyday choices, explains why integrity married to credibility is the only authenticity that cannot be faked, and delivers a line that stops the episode cold: perfection is not a goal, it is self-destruction. Along the way she takes on disengagement, the difference between human resources and human capital, and why AI is a library, not a mind. Chapter Headings 00:00 Welcome and a Disruptor for Good 01:37 Jamaica, Lebanon, and the War That Rewrote a Life 06:33 The Bombed Out Office and Three Impossible Decisions 10:37 Meaning Is the New Money 11:22 Integrity, Credibility, and the Authenticity You Cannot Fake 14:30 Forget Traits: Competence, Courage, and Compassion 20:05 Learning Your Way Into a Better Behavior 25:06 Perfection Is Not a Goal, It Is Self Destruction 26:59 The Phoenix, Joseph Campbell, and the Permission of the Dead 31:04 Only 32 Percent Engaged and the Failure of Purpose 34:20 AI Is in the Loop, You Are the Center 40:22 The Four Journeys of a Leader If you enjoy our podcasts please like, share and subscribe we genuinely appreciate your support.

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