The Executive AI Workshop.
A half-day working session for a leadership team that needs a shared understanding of what AI changes for its business, before committing budget or making promises to a board. Not a technology briefing. A session about your organisation's decisions, run in the room or remotely.
Who it is for, and who it is not
It is for a leadership team where the members hold different pictures of what AI is and what it should be allowed to do, and where the next budget conversation, board paper or hiring decision depends on those pictures lining up. It works best when the people who can actually decide are in the room, because the output is a set of decisions, not a set of notes.
It is not a tools demonstration, and it is not the day that changes how your teams work. That is the job of the team workshop and the adoption programme. If what you need is hands-on capability for one team rather than decisions at the top, book that instead. I will say so on the first call if that is the case.
The same method as everything else here, applied to a leadership room: Listen, Build, Keep. The work happens on your organisation's decisions, not on a slide about someone else's.
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Before
Listen: a questionnaire and one call
Before anyone books a room, a short questionnaire and a thirty-minute call establish what the leadership team is actually deciding, where the organisation's work is slowing down and what has already been tried. The session is designed from what comes back. Nothing is off the shelf, and if a workshop is not the right answer I will say so before you book it.
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Part one
A shared vocabulary, drawn at the line that matters
Not what AI can and cannot do in the abstract, but where a wrong answer costs your business a minute and where it costs a client, a person or a case. Once the room shares that line, the next conversation does not restart from zero, and the useful arguments can happen.
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Part two
The map: where AI plausibly helps, and where it does not
We go through the work the organisation actually does and mark where AI plausibly takes effort off a desk, where it introduces risk that is not worth the saving, and where the honest answer is not yet. The map is yours to keep and to argue with afterwards.
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Part three
The first governance decisions
What is allowed, what gets reviewed by a person before it leaves the building, and who owns the grey cases. These are the decisions that let teams use the tools in the open instead of quietly. The one-page AI usage policy I use is the starting document, adapted to your organisation in the room.
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Part four
Keep: a short list of experiments with named owners
The session ends with a short list of next experiments, each with a named owner and a date, and an agreed way of measuring whether it changed real work rather than whether people liked it. That list is the deliverable a board can inspect.
What the room leaves with
- A shared vocabulary, so the next conversation doesn't restart from zero.
- A map of where AI plausibly helps your business, and where it doesn't.
- The first governance decisions: what's allowed, what's reviewed, who owns it.
- A short list of next experiments with named owners and dates.
The honest limit: a half day changes the leadership conversation. It does not change the habits of the teams below it. When the goal is changed behaviour across teams, the executive workshop is the first session of the adoption programme, not a substitute for it.
Do we need to be technical?
No. The session is about your organisation's decisions, not about how models work. Anyone who can judge risk, cost and priority for the business is the right person to have in the room.
Can it run remotely?
Yes. Workshops run in person or remotely. The format changes a little; the decisions the room makes do not.
How many people, and what does it cost?
Both are confirmed after the first call, because they depend on who is deciding and what needs to be decided. I do not send a standard proposal on day one, because there is no standard room.
What do you need from us beforehand?
The questionnaire and one call. If there is a board paper, a strategy document or a list of use cases already in circulation, send it. The session should start from where you actually are.
What if you think a workshop is the wrong answer?
Then I will tell you that before you book anything, and suggest what would help instead. Sometimes it is a team workshop. Sometimes it is a conversation with two people rather than a room of ten.
What comes after?
The list of experiments, each with an owner. If the organisation then wants the habits of its teams to change, the adoption programme carries the same method into live work over spaced sessions.
Tell me what the board is asking.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell me who is in the room and what needs deciding, and I'll tell you whether a half day is the right way to get there.