Filed under
Strategy, roadmaps, priorities, executive decision making and ownership of AI.
This section brings together 12 insights on AI Leadership and Strategy, with research, practical frameworks and lessons from working with leaders.
12 pieces
A strategy is as much the list of things you decline as the list you pursue. Here are five AI commitments school leaders should say no to this year, a four-question test for deciding, and a one-page register to share.
Most school AI roadmaps fail on sequence, not dates. A roadmap should name five gates, each a condition that has to be true before the next phase can deliver anything, with an owner, evidence and a check date.
Ask twelve heads in one trust who approves a new AI tool and you get four answers. The trust owns the decisions that must be the same everywhere; each school owns the rest. Here is the test that sorts them, and the four a trust cannot delegate.
Most school AI groups are assembled from job titles and goodwill. The ones that decide anything are seated from the decisions the school owes an answer to. Five seats, a test to run before the second meeting, and terms of reference you can write in five lines.
Most new AI leads start with a policy or a training day. Both answer questions the organization has not asked yet. Here is what your first 90 days should actually produce, and the order that makes it hold.
Most letters home about AI list tools and promise safety. Parents want three answers instead: what AI is doing in their child's day, what their child will still do without it, and where they come in. Here are the six lines a letter needs, and the ones no template can fill for you.
School leaders told the Commons Education Select Committee this month that they are desperate for clearer AI guidance. It will not settle what you do this term. Here are the five things a leader actually needs to know, and a test for whether you know enough to decide.
Appointing an AI lead is not the same as owning AI. The decision, the delivery and the expertise are three different jobs with three different owners, and merging them is why AI quietly stalls. A test for leadership teams before they name anyone.
Two schools can hold the same AI policy and be led in opposite directions. Good AI leadership is observable, not documentary: here are the five things you would see, and the Decision Trail that separates leading from announcing.
Most leadership teams are asking AI questions a vendor could answer for them. Here are the ten only they can answer, the test that sorts them from the rest, and how to work through them in one meeting.
A policy tells people what they must not do. A strategy tells them what the organisation has chosen to do, in what order and why. Most organisations have the first and call it the second, which is why their staff are compliant but not directed. Here is how to tell the two apart, and which to write first.
Most AI strategies are written for the people who approve them, not the people who have to live with them. Here are the five decisions a strategy has to make before anyone will actually use it, and the one test to run before you sign it off.
