For your next board meeting
The AI questions your board should be asking.
These are the questions we find leadership teams most need answered as AI moves from helping people to doing the work. Take them into your next board, cabinet or leadership meeting. If any of them is hard to answer, that is usually where to start.
Stage 1
AI helps your people work
People use assistants and copilots to write, research and analyse. These questions are about knowing what is in use.
What AI is our organisation already using that nobody approved?
What can it see that it shouldn’t, such as client files or personal data?
What are we paying for AI, including features switched on inside software we already own?
If a client, regulator or auditor asked tomorrow how we control AI, what would we show them?
Stage 2
AI does the work
AI agents (software that completes tasks on its own) take on whole tasks and processes. These questions are about ownership and whether each agent earns its place.
How many AI agents do we have, and could we name the person who owns each one?
If an agent made a costly mistake tonight, who would know, and who would own it?
Is each agent worth more than it costs, measured against what we actually spend?
Which supplier contracts could hold back our AI plans, and when do they renew?
Stage 3
AI becomes your business
Customers, or people outside your organisation, instruct your AI directly, or it decides outcomes for customers. These questions are about what you own and what the business becomes.
When our AI learns our business, who owns what it learned?
Which of our suppliers is building the AI that could replace us?
What does our organisation look like when software does more of the work?
Could we prove our AI safeguards to customers, regulators, investors or a buyer?
From questions to principles
The questions show where you are. The board principles set what your board expects at each stage.
Your board sets a clear AI policy, and no use of AI should move up a stage without a decision. The principles for each stage, and the gate before each step up, are set out in the framework.
Every quarter
Five measures to review at every stage.
Whatever stage you are at, these are the five measures we suggest your board sees every quarter.
Value. What is AI returning against what it costs?
Cost. What are we spending on AI licences, subscriptions and usage charges?
Risk. Where is our exposure across AI tools, agents and data?
Accountability. Does every AI tool and agent have a named owner?
Progress. Are we moving along the journey as we planned?
Some of these hard to answer?
In a 45-minute walkthrough we go through them with you, using your own organisation, and show where to start.