By lunchtime, the executive committee was looking at its own thinking on the screen.
A European financial services firm had completed its AI readiness assessment and brought it into a strategic immersion day for the executive committee. The assessment was the easy part. The firm wanted the harder thing a senior workshop rarely produces: decisions made inside the same day, not slides to read later.
- 8AI readiness dimensions covered, one focused question each
- Real-timeinterviews with the executive committee during the workshop
- Same-daysynthesis delivered into the afternoon block
- Live agendathe committee's own thinking became the agenda
Senior workshops usually fail in one of two ways. The pre-workshop survey, where the committee debates yesterday's answers in today's room. The round-the-table share, where the loudest voices get the airtime and nothing is synthesised at the end. Neither produces something the committee can act on the same day. The firm wanted decisions, not slides.
During the morning, each committee member was interviewed in parallel by an adaptive AI agent, one focused question per AI readiness dimension, with follow-ups where an answer signalled real intent or real friction. By mid-day the synthesis read back, dimension by dimension, where the committee converged, where it split, and which minority ideas deserved executive attention.
The top lines were not a surprise. The data agenda dominated, leadership tone mattered, capacity was a constraint. What was useful was seeing the exact share of the committee holding each position, and where the real dissent sat. Three minority ideas with more energy than headcount, an AI lab outside current constraints, digital twins, a long-horizon AI ambition, would not have survived a one-minute round-the-table share. The synthesis surfaced them with their proponents instead of burying them under the average.
The afternoon moved from describing positions to deciding actions, with owners assigned. The committee's own thinking had become the agenda, which the firm had not managed to do in any other shape of workshop it had tried.
Yes, we are here for this
AI and transformation readiness. You want to surface what your senior team agrees on, and what it does not, in the workshop, before the debate.
And across our practice. Organisations: PRISM diagnostics on strategy, growth, AI readiness, and culture, and custom 360 feedback built around your leadership model. Individuals and teams: research-backed assessments, 360 feedback for one or a few, tandem coaching that pairs a human and an AI coach, adaptive learning personalised to each person. Consulting partners and business schools: diagnostics and programmes delivered under your own brand.
No, we will point you to a partner (when you want to):
- Crunch sales figures to optimise next quarter's pricing.
- Run a one to five satisfaction poll on the cafeteria's Friday curry.
- A/B test which shade of blue your buy now button should be.
- Find your next chief financial officer.
- Migrate your data warehouse to the cloud.
If we are the right help, we will tell you. If we are not, we will say so, and where we know better, we will point you somewhere that is.
The 8-A AI Readiness Framework is co-developed by 100Facets and the University of St. Gallen.