Free outline

One shared picture of AI, before the board decides

A half-day session in seven parts that leaves a leadership team with one vocabulary, an honest view of the technology, and one question to take into discovery.

Download the Word outlineThe seven parts
Calibration, not training

Same words, different pictures

The board has had a vendor's AI presentation. Two directors have read a book. The chief executive found ChatGPT impressive, and the finance director found it made something up. Nobody is wrong, and nobody has the same picture.

Training teaches people to use a tool. This session does something else: it gives the people who approve spending a shared set of concepts precise enough to decide with. Send the people who approve spending, not their deputies.

The agenda

Seven parts, in this order

Evidence first, then concepts, then the business, then the constraints, then the question.

  1. Why now. The adoption and return evidence, with sources. Why this wave differs from earlier ones: architecture, compute and data arrived together.
  2. What AI is, and is not. Twenty minutes, no equations, with an analogy from the room's own work. Brilliant but fallible: a capable first draft, always checked.
  3. The four levels and the Opportunity Pyramid. One scenario from your business at copilot, assistant, agent and agentic-system level, and your likely examples on each tier. See the four levels of AI and the Opportunity Pyramid.
  4. What competitors are doing. One grid, shown without commentary for the first minute, then the results they have published.
  5. What tools exist. For most needs there is already a product, and much of it may be inside systems you already license.
  6. What the law requires. The EU AI Act's risk tiers, transparency for chatbots, literacy as the expected standard, and four fields added to your existing business-case form. See the EU AI Act for UK businesses.
  7. The question. Not "should we use AI?" but "where will it create the most value, and what is the right approach for each opportunity?" Then the next steps.

A ten-minute look at where the technology is going fits after part 3. It is the only part that dates, so put a date on it.

The reality check

What nobody selling to the board will say

  • What AI can do

    Spot patterns at scale, draft text and code, summarise, automate repetitive cognitive work, predict from history.

  • What it cannot do

    Guarantee accuracy, replace judgement on critical decisions, or know recent events unless connected to a source.

  • The myths

    "Set and forget" and "plug and play" are both myths. Every system needs data, integration, training and an owner.

  • Your staff already use it

    Often on personal accounts. The board cannot govern what it will not admit exists.

Before the session

Five things to do this week

  1. Ask each member of the leadership team to write, in one sentence, what they think AI is. Compare the answers.
  2. Write one real process, a quote, a complaint or a hiring decision, at the four levels of AI.
  3. Put your competitors on one grid.
  4. Add four fields to your business-case template: risk category, data protection, human oversight, transparency. See four fields to add to every AI business case.
  5. Book the half-day.

Want us to run it?

CONVERGE chapter 7 sets out the full session and the reasoning behind its order. Or we can run it for your board, built on research into your own market.

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