Generated by All in One SEO v5.0.1.1, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site.

# Arik Fletcher

Bridging Technology and Trust

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://arikfletcher.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [What Happens If Your AI Vendor Goes Dark Tomorrow?](https://arikfletcher.com/what-happens-if-your-ai-vendor-goes-dark-tomorrow/) - Ask most technology leaders whether they know their organisation's biggest single point of failure, and they'll usually point to a legacy system, a key supplier, or one irreplaceable member of staff. Ask them whether that point of failure might now be an AI vendor they signed up with eighteen months ago for a pilot project,
- [The Skill Gap Nobody Puts on a Project Management Certificate](https://arikfletcher.com/the-skill-gap-nobody-puts-on-a-project-management-certificate/) - Every project manager I've worked alongside can build a schedule, manage a risk register and run a stand-up meeting competently. That was never really in question. What separates the ones whose projects actually land from the ones whose projects technically finish but never quite deliver what the business needed has always been something harder to
- [Where Should That Workload Actually Run?](https://arikfletcher.com/where-should-that-workload-actually-run/) - For the best part of a decade, "put it in the cloud" was close to a universal answer. It was rarely wrong, often cheaper than the alternative in the short term, and it let a lot of infrastructure decisions get made quickly without much debate. That era of easy defaults appears to be ending, and
- [The AI Tools Already Inside Your Business](https://arikfletcher.com/the-ai-tools-already-inside-your-business/) - Somewhere in your organisation, right now, someone is using an AI tool you've never heard of, on an account you didn't set up, to do a piece of their job faster. I don't say that to alarm anyone. I say it because in nearly every client environment I've worked in over the past couple of
- [Your best people are already looking](https://arikfletcher.com/your-best-people-are-already-looking/) - 80% of technology leaders expect to retain their top people this year. 44% of technology workers say they're planning to leave. Both numbers come from the same study, Nash Squared's 2025 Digital Leadership Report, surveying over 2,000 technology leaders across 62 countries, nearly a quarter of them in the UK. Both can't be true at
- [The Growth and Skills Levy is live. Is your training budget still working?](https://arikfletcher.com/the-growth-and-skills-levy-is-live-is-your-training-budget-still-working/) - The Apprenticeship Levy, as most technology leaders understood it, no longer exists. Since the 1st of April this year, it's the Growth and Skills Levy, following the Autumn Budget 2025 and the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper. Oversight has also moved, from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to a new body called
- [The business case for fixing tech's gender gap](https://arikfletcher.com/the-business-case-for-fixing-techs-gender-gap/) - 441,000. That's how many women worked as IT specialists in the UK in 2024, according to BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT's 2025 analysis of ONS labour market data. It's a big number until you look at the share. 22% of all UK IT specialists. Up by exactly one percentage point on the year before,
- [The tech value gap: why your existing stack is worth more than you think](https://arikfletcher.com/the-tech-value-gap-why-your-existing-stack-is-worth-more-than-you-think/) - Every board I sit on asks the same question when budget season comes round. What do we need to buy next. Almost none of them ask the harder question. What have we already bought that we're not getting value from. That second question is the one worth asking first, and new research from Deloitte UK
- [The Clocks That Don't Wait For Certainty](https://arikfletcher.com/the-clocks-that-dont-wait-for-certainty/) - Nobody can agree on when a quantum computer will break today's encryption. Everyone agrees the migration away from it takes about a decade. And meanwhile, your engineers' source code is already leaving the building through the front door. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre has published a timeline for moving the country off today's encryption
- [AI Is a Time Machine, Not a Money Machine](https://arikfletcher.com/ai-is-a-time-machine-not-a-money-machine/) - Why three-quarters of British businesses using AI are more productive, almost none of them are richer for it, and what that has in common with cybersecurity's skills problem Three-quarters of UK businesses using AI report genuine gains in workforce productivity. According to the same research, from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, only 12%
- [The AI Agent That Was Told Not to Touch the Database, and Deleted It Anyway](https://arikfletcher.com/the-ai-agent-that-was-told-not-to-touch-the-database-and-deleted-it-anyway/) - What a string of real agent failures reveals about the gap between how fast AI authority is concentrating and how slowly its guardrails are catching up In July 2025, a coding startup called Replit was in the middle of a nine-day "vibe coding" experiment, letting an AI agent write and manage a piece of software
- [Develop:Brighton 2026: Notes from the Indie Trenches](https://arikfletcher.com/developbrighton-2026-notes-from-the-indie-trenches/) - Three days, nineteen talks, and a lot to think about. I spent the last three days at Develop:Brighton 2026, sitting in on talks about Steam marketing data, reinforcement learning, UI design, and one gloriously unfiltered argument against conflict-driven storytelling. This isn't a session-by-session recap. It's what kept resurfacing once I put all nineteen talks side
- [Britain's Costliest Cyber Attack Was Never About the Data](https://arikfletcher.com/britains-costliest-cyber-attack-was-never-about-the-data/) - What Jaguar Land Rover, M&S and the Co-op reveal about the difference between compliance and resilience In late August 2025, someone at Jaguar Land Rover noticed something odd on the network. Within days, JLR had shut down its own IT systems to contain what would become the most economically damaging cyber attack in British history.
- [Technical Leaders - Working with the Management Team](https://arikfletcher.com/technical-leaders-working-with-the-management-team/) - This document outlines tips for technical leaders to effectively work with management teams. It discusses the importance of understanding management perspectives, communicating effectively, and aligning goals and expectations. Some key recommendations include studying management, asking for guidance, openly communicating, seeking feedback, clarifying objectives, and incorporating outside perspectives to find common ground and work as a
- [The CTO's Role in Business and Tech Strategy](https://arikfletcher.com/the-ctos-role-in-business-and-tech-strategy/) - The document outlines the significance of the CTO role in modern business, emphasizing the need to bridge technology and business strategies while effectively communicating with various stakeholders. It discusses the challenges CTOs face, including managing expectations and building trust, and provides a framework for developing technology strategies. Additionally, it highlights the importance of clear communication
- [Making Connections that Matter - Networking for Technical Leaders](https://arikfletcher.com/making-connections-that-matter-networking-for-technical-leaders/) - The document outlines the agenda for a CTO lunch club focusing on networking, mentorship challenges, and practical strategies for technical leaders. It highlights the evolution of tech leadership towards community building and external partnerships while emphasizing the importance of genuine connections and content creation. Various tools and resources are recommended to enhance networking and mentorship
- [Navigating Emerging Technologies in Business](https://arikfletcher.com/navigating-emerging-technologies-in-business/) - A framework for evaluating and implementing new technologies, with case studies on high-profile successes and failures.

## Pages

- [Home](https://arikfletcher.com/) - Technology leadership across cyber security, AI, cloud and governance Twenty-five years moving between the vendors who build technology and the organisations that buy it, with a career that started in technical training
- [Thinking](https://arikfletcher.com/thinking/) - Latest Insights Let's talk Keen to explore a topic further? Get in touch. Connect
- [Contact](https://arikfletcher.com/contact/) - Get in touch Sessionize: https://sessionize.com/arikfletcherSpeakerHUB: https://speakerhub.com/speaker/arik-fletcher
- [About](https://arikfletcher.com/about/) - I'm a technology leader based in London with over 25 years of experience, spanning hands-on infrastructure and engineering through to strategic consulting leadership. My Journey My career started in technical training. Since then, I've spent most of it moving between two worlds that rarely talk to each other properly: the vendors who build and sell
- [Community](https://arikfletcher.com/community/) - Beyond my professional work, I build and support communities and creative ventures, and I mentor people early in their technology careers. All of it is connected by the same instinct: making expertise and opportunity more accessible. Greyface Guild I founded Greyface Guild, a Community Interest Company supporting diverse, accessible creative and community work. Its portfolio
- [Speaking](https://arikfletcher.com/speaking/) - I speak on two very different things: technology strategy and vendor partnerships on one side, game design and accessibility on the other. Get in touch if you're looking for a speaker for your event, conference or podcast. Technology and business: Why most AI initiatives fail to deliver ROI, and what changes that AI-augmented delivery: getting
- [Expertise](https://arikfletcher.com/work/) - Twenty-five years spread across six connected areas. Below is where that experience actually comes from. IT Strategy and Leadership Technology strategy only works if it's honest. I translate technical decisions into plain business terms: what something costs, what it delivers, and whether it solves the actual problem, without jargon getting in the way. That includes

## MailPoet Page

- [MailPoet Page](https://arikfletcher.com/?mailpoet_page=subscriptions) - [mailpoet_page]
- [MailPoet Page](https://arikfletcher.com/?mailpoet_page=captcha) - [mailpoet_page]

## Office Viewer

- [Navigating Emerging Technologies in Business](https://arikfletcher.com/officeviewer/navigating-emerging-technologies-in-business/)
- [Making Connections that Matter - Networking for Technical Leaders](https://arikfletcher.com/officeviewer/making-connections-that-matter-networking-for-technical-leaders/)
- [The CTO's Role in Business and Tech Strategy](https://arikfletcher.com/officeviewer/the-ctos-role-in-business-and-tech-strategy/)
- [Technical Leaders - Working with the Management Team](https://arikfletcher.com/officeviewer/technical-leaders-working-with-the-management-team/)

## Categories

- [Blog](https://arikfletcher.com/category/blog/)
- [Presentation](https://arikfletcher.com/category/presentation/)

## Tags

- [CyberSecurity](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/cybersecurity/)
- [Leadership](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/leadership/)
- [AI](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/ai/)
- [GameDev](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/gamedev/)
- [Data](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/data/)
- [Risk](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/risk/)
- [Governance](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/governance/)
- [Business](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/business/)
- [Diversity](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/diversity/)
- [Training](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/training/)
- [Retention](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/retention/)
- [FutureOfWork](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/futureofwork/)
- [ProjectManagement](https://arikfletcher.com/tag/projectmanagement/)