Program Structure · Subject to Change
The program moves from personal mastery to organizational leadership. Each phase builds on the one before it.
The Intensive · Sun – Wed · 4 Days
Arrive Sunday afternoon, depart Wednesday. Four days of hands-on building at Gallup, across five cities in 2026. Personal AI systems, a real application built against your own friction point, and organizational leadership frameworks.
The Build · Core of the Intensive
Identify a friction point using SCORE methodology. Scope and design with your dedicated build coach. Build through the 4D Cycle — Discover, Design, Develop, Deliver. You leave with something that works. Not a mockup. Not a plan.
The Follow-Up · 5 Weeks Virtual
Two weeks of individual builder coaching, then three weeks of organizational adoption with your key leadership: leadership debriefs, the friction-point exercise, and IT and governance alignment.
The Intensive
Arrive Sunday afternoon. Depart Wednesday with a working application, a personal AI operating system, and an organizational deployment plan. This is not a conference. There are no panels. You build.
Orient, Foundation & Begin Scoping
Executives arrive and hit the ground. The afternoon establishes mental models, operating principles, and the first hands-on building.
Program orientation. Setting expectations: this is not a conference. You will build. Naming the competence journey and creating psychological safety for executive-level learning.
Mental models for AI, not product demos. The orchestrator/conductor model: the executive as conductor, AI tools as specialist instruments. The operating philosophy for the week. Plan Mode introduced — define the outcome before you touch the tool.
Players, capabilities, and where the real leverage is. A practical vendor evaluation framework you’ll use long after this week.
Hands-on at your dedicated Mac mini workstation. Log in, set up accounts, and begin building your personal AI productivity stack. Multi-model strategy introduced in practice — same task in ChatGPT and Claude, learning when to reach for which.
Structured peer introductions. Each executive presents their top friction points. Build coaches begin matching friction points to technical approaches.
Open lab. Continue personal AI system build. Begin friction point scoping with build coaches.
Day Outcomes
Complete Foundation, Discover, Design & Begin Building
A dense day. Morning finishes personal AI systems and validates friction points. Afternoon designs solutions and starts building.
Finish your personal AI operating system build. Practical prompt architecture for executive-level work. Fix Inputs, Not Outputs — when AI gives bad output, fix the prompt, not the result. The output is disposable; the input is the asset. Trust Calibration — learning to evaluate AI confidence and spot hallucination patterns.
Validate your friction point against all five SCORE dimensions: Speed of Decision, Cost Reduction, Operational Efficiency, Risk Mitigation, Earnings. If it doesn’t score, it doesn’t get built. 1-on-1 with build coaches to finalize scope.
Design your application 1-on-1 with your build coach. Architecture, data requirements, user experience. You enter the Develop phase this afternoon.
Quick-fire design presentations to the cohort. Peer and engineer feedback. Designs pressure-tested before build begins.
Two hours of hands-on development. AI agents, LLM integration, document intelligence, automation — whatever your solution requires. Build coaches shoulder-to-shoulder.
A critical evening session. The work here can make the difference between a working prototype and a polished proof of concept.
Day Outcomes
Build, Deploy & the IT Partnership
The peak intensity day. Morning is dedicated building. Afternoon completes builds, covers deployment, and teaches the executive’s guide to engaging IT as a design partner.
Three continuous hours of hands-on building. The Develop and Deliver phases of the 4D cycle. Build coaches shoulder-to-shoulder. The room is quiet and focused.
Finalize your build. Deploy. Get your proof of concept to a working, demonstrable state. Deployment fundamentals covered in context: hosting, access control, monitoring.
Now that you’ve built something real, this conversation lands differently. IT incentive structures — what CIOs and CISOs actually optimize for. The security perspective — legitimate concerns vs. institutional friction. Shadow AI — why ungoverned AI use creates more risk than governed adoption. Each executive drafts their IT engagement narrative.
Practical governance frameworks that balance innovation speed with organizational risk management. Each executive maps the governance requirements for their specific proof of concept.
Celebrate the builds. The shift from “I built this” to “how do I lead my organization to build like this?”
Final polish and demo rehearsal.
Day Outcomes
Demo, Org Design, Lead Through Change & Depart
The organizational leadership day. Demos, Gallup-led org design and change management, and departure with a 90-day action plan.
The narrative structure every executive needs: problem, build, result, organizational implication, the ask. Revise your demo with this lens before presenting.
Each executive presents their proof of concept using the ROI storytelling framework. 5 minutes each, followed by peer feedback. The earned credibility moment: you built this yourself, and you can articulate why it matters.
Applying the orchestrator/conductor model to organizational structure. Span of control. Which roles evolve, which emerge, which consolidate. How to write job descriptions for an AI-augmented workforce. Identifying who in your organization has the traits to become an AI Builder.
Gallup’s diagnostic lens for whether change takes hold. The four conditions: supervisor support, open communication, employee input, leadership vision. Each executive applies the CMI to their own organization — where are the gaps? What needs to happen before AI adoption can succeed?
The full leadership framework for guiding your organization through AI adoption. What Gallup’s data reveals about the engagement differential when managers actively support change, and why open communication and employee input are non-negotiable. Each executive builds their personal change leadership plan.
Your personal action plan. What you will deploy. Who you will engage — including IT. What organizational changes you will initiate. How you will identify your first internal AI Builders.
One commitment per executive. The peer accountability network activates. Preview of the five-week follow-up.
What happened this week. What it means. Where it goes from here.
Day Outcomes
The Follow-Up
The intensive gives you the capability. The follow-up turns it into organizational impact.
Five weeks, two phases: two weeks of individual builder coaching while you start building, then three weeks of organizational adoption with your key leadership.
Cohort Session
Individual builder coaching, 60 to 90 minutes, while the intensive is still hot. You start building for real inside your own environment, so the skill becomes a working tool, not a memory.
1-on-1 Focus
Your build coach works beside you on the first real build: scope, architecture, and a first working version.
Outcome
A real build underway in your own environment.
Cohort Session
Coaching continues as you refine and ship. Tighten the build, handle the rough edges, and get it into real use before it goes anywhere near the organization.
1-on-1 Focus
Deployment and refinement: what’s working, what to fix, and how to get it in front of real users.
Outcome
Your build deployed or in active use. Value proven to yourself.
Cohort Session
Your key leadership joins. Debrief what you built and what it signals for the business. Get the people who control budget and headcount aligned on what AI actually changes.
1-on-1 Focus
Framing the story for your leadership team and the organization-wide opportunity.
Outcome
Leadership aligned. The case for adoption made by the person who built it.
Cohort Session
Map where AI creates real leverage across departments. The friction-point exercise separates the business problems worth solving from the noise: the ones your competitors haven’t figured out.
1-on-1 Focus
Prioritizing the highest-value friction points for your organization.
Outcome
A ranked map of the real problems worth solving.
Cohort Session
Bring IT and security in as partners, not blockers. Align on access, data, and governance so adoption can scale without a legal or risk fire drill.
1-on-1 Focus
Your governance and rollout plan: guardrails that enable instead of block.
Outcome
IT and governance aligned. A path to scale that won’t stall.
Before You Arrive
Distributed 10 days before arrival. Light touch, no heavy lifting.
Current role, organization size, industry, current AI usage, and your top 2–3 friction points.
Set up your ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max subscriptions. Account creation only — machines are pre-configured on-site.
10-minute survey on current AI familiarity, decision-making context, and what you hope to walk away with.
One-page questionnaire about your organization’s IT structure, security posture, and current AI governance.
The Environment
Each executive is provided a dedicated, pre-configured workstation for the duration of the intensive.
Apple Mac mini with keyboard, mouse, and monitor. All core tools, development environments, and AI platforms pre-installed and tested.
Bring your ChatGPT Pro and Claude Max login credentials. You log in on Day 1 — everything else is ready.