For a guided start, with free templates, see the AI adoption and skills hub.
The difference between a licence and a tool people use is configuration: assistants set up for the recurring work in a function, with its templates, its tone and its rules built in. Six we configure for sales, and the pattern behind them.
A licence for everyone on day one produces a bill and a shrug. A rollout by role, with champions, measurement and enablement on each function's own tasks, produces a change in how people work. How to sequence it.
Article 4 of the EU AI Act has asked for AI literacy among staff since February 2025. The 2026 amendments softened the wording, but the expectation stands. Who it covers, what "sufficient" means, and the training that meets it without a compliance programme.
The alternative to blocking AI tools is not a free-for-all. It is five controls, all well established, that make enterprise AI safe to open and unlock the cheapest value in any AI programme.
Not a tour of tools. A good executive AI session gives a leadership team a shared vocabulary, a view of the competitive baseline, a frame for placing opportunities, and the governance map, in a day. Here is the agenda.
Research-led, product-led, system-embedded and data-foundation: every AI use case reaches deployment along one of four pathways, and treating them all as a licence to switch on is why AI programmes disappoint.
A blanket block on AI tools is the costliest governance decision we see. It does not stop AI use; it moves it to personal accounts the business cannot see, and it forfeits the cheapest value in any AI programme.