The executive team books a day on risk. The board books a briefing a month later. Each room leaves with its own notes, and nobody has written which decisions stay with management and which ones the board expects to see. A pilot is already talking to customers while those notes sit in two packs.
If you are buying training that has to serve both rooms, the proposal should say what each group will be able to do afterwards. A promise of awareness is a weak answer. You want a named owner, a limit and a date, and you want them agreed where the two rooms can hear each other.
Two jobs, two kinds of preparation
NIST's AI Risk Management Framework playbook says the people who map, measure and manage AI risk need to be empowered, responsible and trained for that work. It asks organisations to define roles for boards or advisory committees and for senior management, and to train oversight roles separately from the people who build or operate the systems. I use that split when a buyer wants one deck for the whole building.
The same playbook says executive leadership takes responsibility for the risks that come with developing and deploying AI. Senior leaders should know those risks, state the appetite and manage what they have accepted. A board can put a committee on AI risk and fold it into the enterprise risk work it already runs. NIST also asks you to record whether the board and senior management sponsor the governance and take part in it. A session they skip cannot answer that.
What the executive day has to settle
Our AI governance workshop runs a leadership day for the people who approve use. They leave able to classify a use, name an owner and approve or refuse it in language a squad can follow. You map the model to NIST, ISO 42001 and the EU AI Act, then translate it into rules you already have. What that day has to settle is in AI governance training for leaders.
Bring a live use. A tool staff already open, or a pilot that can send, pay, file or tell a customer something. Leave with a yes, a no or a limit, and with the name of the person who carries the downside.
What the board hour has to settle
Directors need a narrower job than the executive who will run the model on Monday. Which uses are material enough for this table. Who owns the approval. What the board will see, and how often. What stays with management. The questions for choosing that session are in how a board chooses an AI governance workshop.
Put the board and the executive sponsor in the same hour when you draw the line between them. A board session that never meets the operator produces a minute. An executive day that never hears what the board will ask for produces a rule the board will rewrite later.
What to leave with the other bookings
A statute reading is the wrong room for directors who will never open a statute. So is a vendor tour that never names the tools already in use. Squads about to let a system act need the questions in AI governance for non-lawyers.
Staff still need a short brief on what may go into a tool. That is a different booking. Say which gap you are closing this month.
What to ask before you pay
- Which executives will stay for the decision, and will a director be in that hour?
- Which live use will the room approve, refuse or limit before it leaves?
- Where will that decision be written, and who reports it to the board?
- Which part of the day is for oversight roles, and which part is for the people who build?
If the answer is that everyone will be more aware, you have booked a briefing. Tell me who sits on the executive team, whether the board or a committee will join, and which use is already in motion. We will shape the day around that use and the line between the two rooms.
