AI Literacy for Nontechnical Leaders: A Playbook

 I’ve sat in enough boardrooms over the past decade to know that most AI problems aren’t technical — they’re about leadership. The models usually work fine. What breaks down is decision-making: fuzzy governance, unclear incentives, or too much faith that “the tech team’s got it.” I wrote this playbook for any director who doesn’t code — because you don’t need to. What you do need is a way to lead AI conversations and hold your teams accountable for real outcomes.

Research backs this up: 51 percent of boards recruited AI specialists in the past year, yet 71 percent of AI-adopting companies report no tangible earnings impact. The problem isn’t ambition; it’s readiness. Most organizations haven’t built the infrastructure, governance, or leadership capability to make AI work at scale.

Our team at Think & Grow has spent the past year talking with more than 750 directors, executives, VCs, and operators to see what’s actually working inside high-impact boards. The signal is clear: the best boards are getting closer to the work, bringing in independent voices earlier, and treating AI literacy as a core leadership skill — not a side quest. 

The Board’s AI Job To Be Done

Your job isn’t to pick models. It’s to make strategy real. I tell every board I work with that their AI mandate boils down to three things:

1. Set direction. Decide where AI can give you a real edge — not just convenience.
2. Create conditions. Make sure the right data, decision rights and talent are in place.
3. Hold to outcomes. Measure things that matter — cycle time, decision quality, capability lift — not vanity demos.

AI isn’t just another IT project, it’s a business-model shift with tech implications, and every shiny new AI tool deserves a budget line.

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3 Questions Every Director Should Ask Before Approving an AI Spend

When I meet with boards, these are the three questions I push them to ask:

1. What business outcome are we buying? Make the team finish the sentence: “We will shorten X by Y” or “We will improve Z by Q points.” If they can’t, you’re not ready.
2. Where does value actually stick — data, workflow lock-in, or new revenue? Efficiency is great, but real advantage lives in proprietary data, trusted workflows or new products.
3. What will break if this works? If success wouldn’t change roles, controls, or customer experience, you’re probably funding a feature, not a strategy.

Start an “AI Council” (and Give It Real Teeth)

Let’s be honest — most companies still treat AI like an IT upgrade. The boards that move faster are the ones creating a cross-functional AI council that meets biweekly and has real decision-making power. It usually includes leaders from IT, legal, HR, security, finance and key business units. Their job: set the guardrails, track value and flag risk before it lands on the board agenda.

The council proposes; the executive team decides; the board reviews the outcomes. It’s simple, but it works. It keeps AI tied to strategy instead of floating in a tech silo.

That readiness gap is exactly what led us to launch Think & Grow’s AI Practice — to help boards connect technology investment to organizational capacity before capital gets wasted chasing hype.

Readiness and Metrics: What to Assess and Measure

Before you write another check, take a five-minute readiness pulse. How clean is your data? How explainable are your models? Do your people understand what’s changing and why? If you have red flags in any of those areas, stop. Fix them first.

I’ve seen plenty of well-funded AI pilots fail because no one owned the change. Bringing in independent voices early — especially those with AI or regulatory depth — raises the quality of debate and the speed of execution.

And when it’s time to measure impact, skip the vanity stats. No one cares how many prompts you ran. What matters is whether you’re cutting cycle times, improving decision accuracy, or helping people do their jobs better. Check that employees are actually using the tools, that your risk posture is holding up, and that you’re investing in durable capacity — the data, platforms, and automations that last.

This isn’t theory, it’s what I’ve seen across dozens of boards in the past year.

A Smarter Way to Keep AI on the Agenda

You don’t need a two-day offsite to stay on top of AI. I’ve seen boards get more done in one focused hour than some do in a whole strategy retreat. The key is rhythm and accountability.

Start every session by asking one simple question: What did we actually deliver since last time? From there, spend a few minutes on risk — anything that’s changed in your data, governance, or compliance posture. Then give business owners the floor. Let them show where AI is moving the needle in real terms: faster processes, better forecasts, happier customers.

Use the middle of the hour for decision-making — build vs. buy, new partnerships, or how to double down on what’s working. Before you wrap, talk about people: where skills need upgrading, who’s owning change, and what incentives might need to shift.

If you keep that cadence quarterly, AI stops being a “special topic” and becomes what it should be — a standing part of how you run the business.

Avoid These 4 Failure Patterns

1. Tech-first pilots with no customer connection.

Fix: Make BU leaders the product owners and measure customer effort, not code commits.

2. Low-code everywhere, governance nowhere.

Fix: Use guardrails. Keep citizen development in check for critical workflows.

3. Chasing visibility instead of ROI.

Fix: Balance efficiency, quality, and growth cases — the quiet wins pay best.

4. Delegating strategy to the CTO.

Fix: The CEO owns AI strategy. The Board should make sure someone’s challenging the plan — not just nodding along.

3 Roles You Need in the Room

In every strong AI conversation, I see three roles show up:

1. The AI Governance Lead: Not an evangelist, but someone who builds practical guardrails.
2. The Reinvention Specialist: An operator who knows how to rethink how the business makes and spends money.
3. The Regulatory Master: The one who reads the fine print and keeps everyone out of trouble.

If you can’t get them on your board yet, start with an advisory group. You’ll need these perspectives sooner than you think.

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The Shift That Unlocks Everything

The biggest shift I’ve seen is cultural. The best boards create productive tension — they’re candid, curious and unafraid to challenge assumptions. That mix of trust and friction is where good decisions come from.

When we launched the Practice, AI represents the biggest transformation challenge boards have faced in a decade. Too many companies are spending heavily on tools without the foundations — data, governance, and people — to use them well. Our job is to bridge that gap.

AI won’t hand you a strategy. But it will expose whether you have one. Bring these questions to your next board meeting. Run the 60-minute agenda. Be honest about your readiness. Do that, and you’ll move from AI experiments to AI results — faster than you think.